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INTERLUDE TWO |
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Downtown .............and.... Uptown
Mulatto ................ and.... Black
Upper Caste............and... .Lower caste
Trades and Professions___and-----Day Laborers
Accepted (somewhat) . .. .and... .Jim-crowed
Educated...............and___Illiterate
Sophisticated ...........and.... From the country
The Storyville musicians broke this pattern. Hot music forced mulatto Downtown to share with "black* one's musical knowledge, to compete with "black" as an equal, to acknowledge "black's" gifts and maybe even to love "black" as a brother artist. Yet the blues warns . . .
1 dont want no black woman puttin sugar in my tea, 'Cause Iblack is eviF and Trn sheered she might poison me . . .
"Have another beer, Paul."
"Thanks. That's all I can drink since I lost my wife. In fact whiskey-drinking cause her to leave me. Then I come to realize I had lost everything in life. My nerves is shot to hell now." He brooded over his empty glass.
"You know what happen to us musicians—I mean us real musicians from the Seventh Ward where we were all educated in music and knew our instruments—when we came in here, we had to change. Why, my daddy, he was recognized king bass player in this town, but he wouldn't play ratty. He wouldn't play unless you put his part up in front of him, and then he could make a monkey out of the average player of today. Well, he couldn't make it here in the district. He couldn't make a living!"
Paul was still astonished and bitter over this.
"See, us Downtown people," Paul hurried on, "we didn't think so much of this rough Uptown jazz until we couldn't make a living otherwise.
"Say, for instance, I was working with the Olympia Band, |
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