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NEW ORLEANS 29
were apt to be frequent and violent—but there would be a brass band at your funeral playing:
Oh, didn't he ramble
'Til the butcher cut him down . . .
"and all the people," to quote Armstrong again, "would leave their worries behind. Particularly when 'King' Oliver blew that last chorus in high register." Those who didn't play an instrument at all would form the 'Second Line'—the rag tag and bobtail who followed every procession and parade to drink in the music.
Life in New Orleans
The blossoming of jazz in New Orleans must be seen against a background of the city's life. It was explosive and colourful. There were, as Louis Armstrong tells, "churchpeople, gamblers, hustlers, cheap pimps, prostitutes, and lots of children. There were bars, honky-tonks and saloons." Fights with bricks, razors, or bottles were the steady background of the city's low life, punctuated by dramatic outbursts of shooting or knifing which the law good-humouredly regulated to some degree. "It was a law in New Orleans," says Jelly Roll Morton, "that anyone could carry a gun that wanted to, almost; the fine was only ten dollars or thirty days in the market, your job being to clean up the market in the morning. Most of the prisoners ran away, so the thirty days didn't mean anything." |
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