Keeping the Beat on the Street (18 page)

Mac Rebennack (Dr. John) also recalls the Baby Dolls when he was growing up in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the tradition seems to have evolved:

One of the gangs was made up of all the whores and pimps from Perdido Street; their parade was called Gangster Molls and Baby Dolls. Everyone in this group dressed as outlandishly as possible. The women wore eye-popping dresses; the ones who looked highest priced wore ultra-sharp women's suits, but with see-through bras underneath. Others wore slit miniskirts showing lace panties, stiletto heels, and flowing low-cut blouses….

They were ridiculous and funny all at the same time. They'd come busting out of their dives during Mardi Gras, their dresses and suits lined with satin and glitter, real sharp-looking and hilarious. They'd march down the greens, that broad strip of grass that separates one side of the street from the other, cutting up, shakin' the bacon and carrying on, and everyone would back off to let them start high-steppin.' And you had best back off, too, because they took their kicks seriously.
²⁹

Jerry Brock believes he saw the last parade of the Baby Dolls:

I remember 1981, when I went out with the Kazoo Band and Baby Dolls. That was the last year they paraded. They invited me along. We met at Felicia's house. She was one of the Baby Dolls—she lived on Orleans Street. We had a big breakfast—eggs, pork chops, gumbo, biscuits. There were about twenty-five to thirty of us.

Everybody was prepared—making sure their costumes were right, making sure their instruments were as out of tune as possible. Then everybody got on their knees and said a prayer that God would keep them safe on Mardi Gras Day.

Then we hit the door. It was one of the most surreal things I've ever witnessed. It was like a Fellini experience. We sang all those bawdy songs, with a crowd of fifty or so joining in. Songs like “The Pecker Song,” about a man that played with his pecker so much that his pecker wouldn't peck no more. I was just flabbergasted. We'd turn a corner, pull up in front of somebody's house, and there'd be a barren card table with a single bottle of whiskey on it. Everybody knew that it was for them, and a friend was honoring them on Mardi Gras. There might be a few finger sandwiches too.

So they'd hang around for a little bit, play a song or two, and then on to the next stop. We were supposed to stop masking by six o'clock, but we went on until around four in the morning. We went back to Felicia's house, had a good meal, and hit the street again.

BORN
: Texas, September 4, 1955
Interviewed at the Croissant d'Or Café, Ursuline Street, October 2002

I've always tried to be behind the scenes and supportive of the music and the New Orleans culture. I came here in 1976, to contribute to starting WWOZ radio; my brother Walter and I were both community radio activists
.

I had been involved with Lorenzo Milam in a station called KCHU in Dallas, Texas. He gave us a choice of locations; we had already been involved in setting up new radio stations in Tampa, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. We chose New Orleans because it was in the South, where we were from. We knew of the music of Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Sidney Bechet, and Jelly Roll Morton; both my brother and I, from a very young age, were fanatics for literature and music of all kinds. The astounding thing, once we arrived in New Orleans, was that we had no idea that this musical tradition was a continuum of a much earlier tradition, with the people. It just hit us like a ton of bricks
.

Within the first two weeks of being here, we'd met everybody. It floored us that this was a living, breathing culture that exists on a neighborhood-to-neighborhood basis. The original programming plans for WWOZ had been much more eclectic until we realized that no one was broadcasting to this community. The only time you heard any New Orleans music on the radio or TV back then was a little bit during Mardi Gras, and that was it. We realized there was a void to be filled
.

We were hanging out with Professor Longhair, James Booker, and Huey “Piano” Smith, the Lastie family, all these other beautiful people. And Danny Barker had a big influence on me personally. In many ways, he was like a father figure to me
.

Walter and I used to always joke that if we were to dedicate the programming of WWOZ to Garden District architecture, we'd never have problems raising money. But we realized that the important thing was to dedicate it to New Orleans music culture. At that time, the majority of that culture was being done by working-class people, as far as economics go
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When Danny saw the work we were putting into the project, he just opened his arms to us. Being the intellectual cat that he was, he really understood the struggle that we went through. The City of New Orleans and the archdiocese took us to federal court and tried to stop the radio station. Essentially 9 0.7 FM, where WWOZ exists on the dial, was the last frequency of any consequence. Their public statement was that they wanted to use that frequency for teaching students at the Notre Dame Seminary—religious broadcasting techniques and practices
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Lorenzo Milam was the founder of noncommercial radio in America—he lives in San Diego now. He'd been identified by the extreme right in America as the Antichrist. In 1973 he wrote what became known as the “Petition against God.” He had spent all his time and energy and money building commercial radio, and he saw that religious broadcasting had the support and the wherewithal to open all these radio stations. They were taking up all the noncommercial frequencies that were available. He made a petition to the FCC [Federal Communication Commission] requesting a ninety-day freeze on allotting any new permits, to determine whether there should be a whole new frequency band for religious broadcasts. To this day, the FCC has never officially accepted the petition, but people are still organizing in communities to defeat it. My brother and I were identified with Lorenzo Milam, so once we got here, the Catholic Church wanted to stop us. They saw us being a part of this man who was against religious broadcasting. So that's the unstated reason why they took us to federal court
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The music doesn't have the depth it once had. Even though New Orleans is still considered one of the most musical cities in the world, it's only a fraction of what was here, when you really look at the thousands of jazz artists who emerged out of this community in the early part of the century. What happened here was a renaissance which has affected popular music all over the world since it occurred
.

You could compare it to the Baroque renaissance in Austria, with the Bach family, Handel, all of them. That's why our dedication became having this New Orleans music recognized, not just as a fine art, but also as a great art. People like Kid Thomas and George Lewis and Danny Barker and the Barbarins—these people dedicated their lives to this music. That's one thing you feel in New Orleans today, that the sense of dedication isn't as great as it once was, that music isn't just something you do for a living, that it's a way of life. What sets this community apart from many other musical communities—it's because the music is a living, breathing continuum. It's a tradition that goes back to the founding of the city
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Danny Barker had returned from New York in the mid-sixties. He recognized that the music he loved and had grown up with was dying out. You had a few semiactive brass bands. The Olympia was really the only regular working brass band. The Eureka had died out. Floyd Anckle would pull the Majestic together for gigs from time to time; Doc Paulin always did certain parades every year, the Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church being one of them. But there wasn't much encouragement to young people to get involved
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I can't remember exactly how I first met Danny. I think he brought me to a jazz funeral around 1978. In a simplified way, it turned my world around. I'd heard of these things, but I'd no idea of the depth and the pathos and the tradition that musical funerals represented. By being with Danny, I was already a celebrity. The band was the Olympia. I met James Andrews Sr., the trumpet player's father, that day. Youngjames, who started the All Star Brass Band, began playing with Danny's Roots of Jazz Brass Band in the early eighties. After the funeral, James Senior needed a ride home, and he was living close to where Danny lived, four streets away, in the St. Bernard project. I gave them a ride, and then I went over to James's house in the projects and met his wife, Lois. At that time, young James couldn't have been more than six years old. I've had a friendship with James since that time—I still see him at least once a week
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All of these experiences emphasized to me the importance and significance of building this radio station and getting this music into the community through the media. There had been hundreds of people at this funeral; you could sense the importance of the event. These musical funerals and second line parades are much more important to the people who attend them than the Saints' games or Mardi Gras
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They're dedicated to doing that, and you can feel it. You hear the people moan, and cry, and see tears flowing, the solemnity of it, and at the same time, the celebration of it. I was greatly moved by that, and it motivated me to start hanging around the second lines. At that time, the only light-skinned people hanging around second lines were myself, Michael Smith the photographer, and Jules Cahn the entrepreneur. I wasn't writing a book, I wasn't taking photos, I wasn't making a film—I just hung out
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I got to meet all these beautiful people, whom I still have friendships with: the guys who went on to create the Dirty Dozen, Tuba Fats, Little James. I remember going to the first funeral little James Andrews played, when he was twelve years old: it was the funeral for his grandfather “Black Walter” Nelson. His sons were Papoose and Prince La La—Papoose had played guitar with Fats Domino
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We finally got on the air with WWOZ on December 4, 1980, and I started hanging out with James Andrews Sr. a lot. He was nicknamed “Twelve” because, as a crap shooter, he would always be able to hit double sixes: it's known as “boxcars” in the game of craps. James had around his neck two gold dice, with the two sixes aiming out, so you could see them. He organized and formed the High Rollers Social Aid and Pleasure Club. He's dedicated his life to the second line. That's the most important thing he has ever done, or will ever do:participate in that
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Into the seventies, there had been a slight revival of New Orleans music. A lot of great players were still alive who had been ignored by the media. Tipitina's club was opening uptown, WWOZ was getting together, and the Jazz Festival was becoming a worldwide event
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Certainly the media can exaggerate, misconstrue, and mislead. But with WWOZ, we had the people doing the programming themselves, having hands-on participation. After spending $50,000 on legal expenses, I got a call from an FCC commissioner on December 3, 1980. He said, “Can You be on the air?” Within twenty-four hours, we were broadcasting. It was amazing
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We were broadcasting out of a cinder-block transmitter shack on the Mississippi River. So there was no way our audience could reach us. This went on for about five months. I'd stay up all night making tapes, then drive out to the transmitter, sit there for ten hours a day, and run the tapes. It was pretty painful
.

Then the people at Tipitina's allowed us to put a studio above their nightclub. The very first day we had a phone so people could reach us, Snooks Eaglin called us. He said, “I'm listening. I can hear it. Sounding good to me. Keep it going. I'm with y'all.” I'm like, “Who is this?” He says, “This is Fird Eaglin.” I said, “Can we put you on our mailing list?” He said, “I'll have to call you back. Let me ask my wife.” Then the second day, David Lastie calls up, when we'd just played the very first recording he'd ever made. He had been driving in his car when he heard it, pulled over to a pay phone. He said, “This is David Lastie. I can't believe y'all got that record.” Musicians just came out of the woodwork. Nobody had given them any attention in their own community. When my brother and I were running WWOZ, it was the only radio station in America that had a fifty-fifty black and white audience
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Walter and I worked for almost four years for not one dollar. We struggled. Both of us were working numerous part-time jobs and working twelve hours a day at the radio station. We finally started to get paid towards the end, but not much. That's why people like Danny Barker just embraced us. People in New Orleans figured we were either total idiots or insane millionaires with Texas oil fortunes. They didn't know we were truly idiots! It was through that dedication that the people gave us what we needed—the community built WWOZ with
their
sweat,
their
blood,
their
money. That's why it's as successful as it is today. That's what gave it its base
.

Danny's love of the brass bands, and Leroy Jones and Tuba Fats, that's what made me close to those guys. He introduced me to Shannon Powell, Michael White, Lucien Barbarin. He realized that we shared a love of the music
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In 1980, we produced the first recording by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. It wasn't released—I still have the master tapes. We did it solely so that we could have their music to play on the radio, and we played it constantly
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The first time I ever heard them was at Big Chief Jolly's funeral. Big Chief Jolly, George Landry, a wonderful barrelhouse piano player, in the style of Jack Dupree, was also the uncle of the Neville Brothers. He had really encouraged them to get into music. He was also the Big Chief of the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indian tribe. His funeral was a big deal; it was a massive event. I think it was early
1979.
I was recording the funeral—I had this little stereo recorder. The Olympia had played inside the church and led the casket out. There were lots of Indians; the Nevilles were there and the Meters, all beating tambourines. It was at a church uptown. The Dirty Dozen was there. It was a group that had just come together—you could hear that they were struggling with ideas within the framework of the music. They had not, at that point, progressed to where they were playing those incredible tight arrangements and riffs that they became known for, using the New Orleans second line tradition as a basis to jump off into any form of music they chose. They were all very talented musicians, but their ideas just hadn't crystallized yet
.