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NEW ORLEANS |
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through the streets, until someone called to us to sing a few songs."
Rampart Street, Basin Street, Perdido, Gravier, Liberty, Saratoga, Poydras—the very street names of New Orleans shout colourfully. This was the atmosphere in which negro jazz could flourish. Guitarist Louis St Cyr wrote of New Orleans: "This is a town could break up a show."
Crescent City
New Orleans was known as the 'Crescent City' because it was founded in a loop of the river Mississippi. It started as a French city, was handed over to Spain in 1763, opened to America as a port, and finally acquired by America in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Because of its gallic origins, New Orleans had an atmosphere of tolerance to the negro. And the gulf between white and black was shaded off by the Creole population (who, in New Orleans, were those who could claim descent from a French or Spanish ancestor). New Orleans flourished and grew rapidly into the great port and dockyard town of the Southern States.
In New Orleans, music was part of life—to an extent Britons may find it difficult to understand. For many of us nowadays, music is an 'extra'—something little Tommy 'takes' in his spare time at school, if his parents can afford the extra five guineas a term to give him some genteel occupation or keep him out of mischief. In New Orleans, it was otherwise. |
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