NoirNewOrleans

22/02/2024

Rare color shot of Bourbon Street at night in 1963. In the early 60s, the Sho Bar featured some of New Orleans' best R&B talent, including the one and only Ernie K-Doe, and King Floyd (years before he'd cut "Groove Me" with Wardell Quezergue).

The singer Joe August, known as Mr. Google Eyes--one of the city's first R&B vocalists--often hosted these shows. But he quit show business after a near-death experience that began when he was arrested for “miscegenation” upon leaving the Sho Bar with his girlfriend, a dancer at the club, who was white.

You can find the full story, as recorded by Jeff Hannusch, on A Closer Walk: https://acloserwalknola.com/places/sho-bar/

📸 by Laird Scott

22/02/2024

14/02/2024

05/02/2024

27/01/2024

A Closer Walk. New Orleans Music History, Block by Block. A Closer Walk is your online guide to New Orleans’ authentic music history. Presented by WWOZ.

26/01/2024

💙Photo shoot "A Great Day In Harlem", 12 August 1958
by Art Kane, From left Benny Golson, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk

Photographer Art Kane took the most wonderful photograph in jazz history – remarkable for many reasons. In features 57 of the best jazz musicians and the image has come to be called, ‘A Great Day In Harlem’. Of the 57 musicians featured only two remain alive – 💙SONNY ROLLINS and 💙BENNY GOLSON

https://www.facebook.com/TheWorldOfJazz

12/01/2024

One of our favorite Mardi Gras deep cuts is "Shot Gun Joe" by Ernest Skipper with Flag & the Boys, a band name concocted for this ca. 1983 recording on the Rosemont label.

The song combines backing vocals by the Yellow Pocahontas Black Masking Indians, horns from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (in what may be their earliest recording, per Home of the Groove's Dan Phillips), and some surprisingly tasty "pew-pew" Stars Wars-esque sound effects.

"Shot Gun Joe" wasn't a hit, but these days this record goes for hundreds of dollars.

Information about Skipper is scant online, so we'll share what we know: born in 1948, he graduated from Clark High School in Treme, which produced generations of notable musicians.

After cutting "Shot Gun Joe," Skipper played in Rudy Mills' Carribbean Funk Band, and fronted his own Thunder Blues Band.

He continued to operate a local music production company, and exhibited paintings at Jazz Fest (he lived not far from the Fairgrounds, in the Seventh Ward--also the home turf of the Yellow Pocahontas and Dirty Dozen leader Greogry Davis).

Skipper was also known to pop up at Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge, and served as one of the grand marshals at K-Doe's funeral in 2001.

Skipper passed away in 2009, at the age of 61.

If you know more about Skipper we'd love to hear from you.

For the inside scoop on Rosemont Records, read this article (and watch the embedded video with founder Alfred Taylor) courtesy of Brice White on A Closer Walk: https://acloserwalknola.com/places/rosemont-records/

Photo from Discogs

09/01/2024

In the 1940s, before the drummer Idris Muhammad toured with Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield, or wrote and performed the drum parts for the Broadway musical Hair, or recorded his acclaimed jazz fusion albums--when he was still known as Leo Morris--he followed Black Masking Indians around the 13th Ward.

Here he is recalling the scene in his memoir, Inside the Music:

We had two Indian tribes in our neighborhood. Donald Harrison’s father, who worked as the custodian of our elementary school, lived in the house adjacent to McDonald [sic] #6. Donald Harrison, Sr. was the chief of all the Indians in our neighborhood. His tribe was Guardians of the Flame.

Then we had Uncle Jolly. He was the chief a couple of blocks down. His tribe was the Wild Tchoupitoulas. These were the two Indian tribes in our neighborhood. During the month of Mardi Gras, guys would start playing in their houses, and then they would come outside and play in the streets. It’s called a dry run. They would go from bar to bar. And they would pull people out of each bar and lead them inside the next one.

On Mardi Gras day there are parades from morning until night. As the parade would second line, that bass drum attracted me because it was so big and loud. The bass drum player has got a cymbal turned upward on top of the bass drum. There’s a coat hanger wrapped in a circle and stuffed down on a broom handle that’s been cut off.

I would get underneath the bass drum as the band would come by and I would dance to it. I was that small!

And the bass drum guy would say: “Move your ass away from here before I hit you with this mallet.”

Muhammad went on to play drums on The Hawkettes' classic "Mardi Gras Mambo" as a 15-year-old in 1954, and become a Chief of Congo Nation alongside Donald Harrison, Jr. decades later (hence the cover image of his memoir).

For more on Black Masking Indian music, check out A Closer Walk: https://acloserwalknola.com/tours/indian-red-music-dance-suits-mardi-gras-indians-tour/

19/12/2023

A rarely seen shot of Congo Square from 1958, before most of the demolitions of the adjacent neighborhood and the construction of the fence that would encircle it.

As suggested by the cluster of men sitting in the shade at the far right, Congo Square in this period was a precious swath of green space in a dense section of Treme.

The buildings behind the men, and the blocks beyond them, would be bulldozed by the City in fits and starts over the next 14 years. The land would remain empty for nearly another decade before the City fashioned it as Armstrong Park.

The Municipal Auditorium, visible beneath the trees on the left, had been built on a single block of the neighborhood in 1929. Ironically, plans to put it directly on Congo Square fell through not because of the land's value as a portal through which African culture infused New Orleans and the country, but because a white civic organization objected to losing the segregated swimming pool then located on the grounds.

You can take a virtual tour of the space on A Closer Walk: https://acloserwalknola.com/tours/armstrong-park-tour/

📸 Congo Square, near St. Peter and Rampart Street, Ralston Crawford Collection of Jazz Photography, Hogan Archive, Tulane University Special Collections, New Orleans, LA.

20/11/2023

27/10/2023

It’s a good sign for a New Orleans jazz landmark.

28/09/2023

Work is underway to renovate the former home of Donna's Bar & Grill at the corner of Rampart and St. Ann.

In the 1990s, Donna's earned its moniker as New Orleans' "brass band headquarters" by featuring live music across just across North Rampart Street from Congo Square. It was a prime venue for the brass band renaissance of the era, when groups started incorporating hip hop into their sound. It also provided a residency to bandleader Bob French on Monday nights.

Managers Donna Poniatowski and Charlie Sims didn't own the building, though, and couldn't pay to repair it after Hurricane Katrina (it'd been deteriorating for years prior to the storm). They closed for good in 2010, and the structure degraded until it was cited by the City for demolition by neglect in 2021.

The owners have since submitted exterior renovation plans that were approved by the city--drawings show a hypothetical bar and lounge inside. We don't know if live music is on the docket or not--an attempted reboot in 2011 ran into permitting issues--but we're happy to see the building on its way back to commerce.

You can find more about the modern brass band movement here: https://acloserwalknola.com/tours/take-street-brass-bands-new-orleans-1980-tour/

09/09/2023

03/08/2023

Music to My Eyes: Material Culture of Southern Sound August 3–6, 2023 410 Chartres Street in the French Quarter REGISTER NOW From our earliest instruments through mid-twentieth-century recording devices, music has been essential in southern homes, churches, and communities.