Fun find 'o the day.. Complete history of New orleans & surrounding area

I'm kind of a history buff, so I'll check it out sometime, it looked interesting.

Here's a history site on my hometown on the Mississippi, check it out if you like.

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/

also, I used to teach guitar to the kiddos at St. Philip Neri back in the day (early 80s).

If you remember learning "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Drivin' My Life Away" in early morning guitar class from Miss Kathy, that was me :hi: (I didn't pick the songs, the group I taught with had a repertoire/curriculum. The kiddos wanted to learn "Centerfold" but we had to have a little discussion about how Sister prolly wouldn't like that too much.)

a black and white 1947 film from the library, "New Orleans" with Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. I love the old movies because of the "clues" in them. It's like looking at old family albums and realizing your grandma was saucy.

I feel so sad about New Orleans though I've never been there I feel like I know /knew it. My daughter was there as a very young teenager and she took a whole roll of film on mostly food...the gumbo before she ate it, the shrimp, the clean plate...the whole roll of film was mostly food scenes with a lot of clean plates!

I haven't put it on yet but I'll bookmark this and let you know after I watch it (I know what it's like to try and track down a song you're really engaged with). The blurb starts-out with, "Music's greatest legends re-enact the birth of jazz in this song-filled tribute to the town where it all began: NEW ORLEANS".

I think it'll be a good one and I'll let you know about the song. An aside, I've recently been down-loading Johnny Mercer songs and all of that would never have existed without New Orleans.

it was at beginning of show.

Back to movie...

On Mardi Gras day people stand along the street, waiting for Rex (or, if they can get up early enough, for Zulu). I used to stand at the corner of Napoleon and St. Charles. After the Rex parade went by, the truck floats came. These were big trucks which had been converted into Mardi Gras floats, and they rolled by all day long. Each truck had been rented by a separate group of people (who were of course in costume). Since they are on the truck float for a long time, the people put a port-o-let or two up there with them so the members of their party would have a place to go to the bathroom.

One year there was a teenage girl riding on one of the floats--with her family and some other people--and she had a secret. She was pregnant, but no one knew it. It's not even clear whether SHE knew it.

Be that as it may, this girl went into labor while she was riding on that truck float. She gave birth in the port-o-let. The baby died IN the port-o-let. The family and friends knew the girl was sick, but she was alone in the port-o-let.

The parade ended, Mardi Gras ended, and the poor baby was found, deceased, still on the truck float.

The girl was prosecuted for homicide (evidence was found that the baby had been born alive.) She was not convicted, however.

As we used to say, ONLY in New Orleans.

You would find the same family living in a quite ordinary house--the same family, but not the same people--for generations. There's a block on Annunciation Street, near the river, where most of the people are the descendants of the original owners of the houses. (I heard this block survived the hurricane and didn't flood into the houses.) These houses are not big mansions. Just ordinary houses. New Orleanians did not move away from New Orleans, except if they maybe moved to Bay St. Louis or to Picayune or Chalmette. And those places were so full of New Orleanians, they might as well have not left.

It's all gone now, though. All of New Orleans except the French Quarter, some of uptown, Algiers, and (I imagine) some parts of Carollton (which is arguably part of uptown.) I think mid-city, Gentilly, Lakeview, Bucktown, and most or all of Elysian Fields Avenue must be gone. And I know the lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East, Irish Bayou, and areas close to Lakeview ARE gone.

"The Day the Music Died" or "Silence of the Lambs"?

night 'night...

I just wish N.O. had taken the spotlight in some, er, different sort of way.

:D

*Uh!*

Down in New Orleans
Where the blues was born
It takes a cool cat
To blow a horn
On LaSalle and Rampart Street
The combo's there with a mambo beat

The Mardi Gras, mambo, mambo, mambo
Party Gras, pambo, mambo, mambo
Mardi Gras, mambo-ooh
Down in New Orleans

In Gert Town
Where the cats all meet
There's a Mardi Gras mambo
With a beat
Join the Chief with the Zulu gang
And truck on down
Where the mambo's swing

The Mardi Gras, mambo, mambo, mambo
Party Gras, mambo, mambo, mambo
Pardi Gras, mambo-ooh
Down in New Orleans

Back atcha! The Hawkettes--later the Meters, etc. "May the Grand Duke Alexis ride a buffalo to Texas", and all that! Hey, I danced to Fess live a couple times at Jed's. "Bald Head" was my favorite.

I sincerely hope there'll be a Mardi Gras. There can be--they still had Mardi Gras even when they had that police strike-are you old enough to remember that? No parades rolling, but Mardi Gras was still in evidence, especially in the Quarter.

I played there a couple of times... in my hood. ;)

The year of the police strike - 1979. I never partied harder in my life than that very Mardi Gras! :D

but Jed died some 10 or so years ago. He was not old when he died.

The year of the police strike we decided to try the much-touted Mamou Mardi Gras (where they ride around collecting chickens, then bring them back for the huge pot of gumbo). It was... different.

Later that evening I just had to look in on the French Quarter, though. It was very wild.