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Uptown—Downtown |
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rights. Through this there came a halt to the Robert Charles Riot.
After the riot, nobody knows for sure what became of Robert Charles. He lived in twin houses and it was stated that they burned the house next to his and smoked him out. Rut there has never been anything authentic that Robert Charles was captured. Later on some friend wanted to betray him and was killed. Then years after we heard that Robert Charles had been taken very sick and had confessed who he was on his deathbed, but that isn't positive. Anyhow, like many other bad men, he had a song originated on him. This song was squshed very easily by the department, and not only by the department but by anyone else who heard it, due to the fact that it was a trouble breeder. So that song never did get very far. I once knew the Robert Charles song, but I found out it was best for me to forget it and that i did in order to go along with the world on the peaceful side.
It was right there in the Garden District, where the Robert Charles riot took place, that I heard all the great blues piano players. Yes, it was some terrible environments that I went through in those days, inhabited by some very tough babies. Of course, wherever there is money, there is a lot of tough people, no getting around that, but a lot of swell people., too.
Speaking of swell people, I might mention Buddy Bolden, the most powerful trumpet player Ive ever heard or that was known and the absolute favorite of all the hangarounders in the Garden District.* Buddy played at most of the rough places like the Masonic Hall on Perdido and Rampart, at the Globe Hall in the downtown section on St. Peter and St. Claude, and
* "Born about the time of the Emancipation, Buddy typifies the Negro's expression of the political and social freedom in the creation [of jazz]. A barber with his own shop, as well as editor and publisher of a scandal sheet, The Cricket, Buddy Bolden found time to play the cornet as few men and to form, in the early 1890's, a band which was to typify nearly all that jazz has meant even to today. . . . Before the Spanish American War, he was a public figure of immense popularity, well known to white New Orleans ... he and his band were in demand everywhere. . , " p. 180, Shining Trumpets, by Rudi Blesch. |
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