Blitzzzzz
01-29-2007, 10:42 PM
I started out looking for the old resteraunt thread at the bottom of this forum, but I got side tracked by this stuff. Here is the original seven posts pasted together with just a smidge of editing. Worthy of a sticky for the newbies, I think.
If you find necessary edits, just post them at the bottom and I'll fix them.:cool:
The following is an article that I found in the March/April 2005 issue of Prime Magazine which I picked up free at a local coffee shop a couple of weeks ago. The article says it is reprinted from the April 1994 issue of New Orleans Magazine. I tried to find this somewhere on the web to copy or link it but I could not. I enjoyed reading it enough that I decided to retype it and post it for everyone, so here goes:
Past Tense
by Liz Scott Monaghan
The Founding of Jazz Fest
The BLACK and WHITE of it
It's been growing and thriving for a quarter century now, but even so, the Jazz Fest was late arriving here in the cradle of jazz. Newport, RI, of all places, gave birth to one, years before New Orleans did. And thereon hangs a tale.
But a happier story is how it did, eventually, come to be, and we'll talk about that first.
The details change, as they do in good stories, depending on who's telling it. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival's 1970 brochure syas that 300 musicians entertained a crowd half that number.
George Wein, Jazz Fest founder, remembered 200 attendees and 320 musicians.
The attendance was bolstered when Joyce Wein, George's wife, walked over to a nearby grade school and talked the teachers into letting the kids come over and soak up a little culture. Or so said Quint Davis, director/producer. When Wein tells it, it's not school children, but orphans, who came to the fest.
What's documented is that it lasted five days. Pete Fountain and Clyde Kerr and their orchestras kicked things off on Wednesday night, April 22, aboard theSteamer President. On Thursday, at noon, the Eureka Brass Band lined up on Canal Street and enticed the faithful and the merely curious to follow their sweet sounds along the curve in Basin Street and through the gates of the New Orleans Jazz Fest and Louisiana Heritage Fair.
"That was the official name then," said Davis, "the longest, stupidest name you could imagine." Now, it's the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, but mostly it's called Jazz Fest.
Admission was $3. There were four sound stages featuring jazz, Cajun, blues and gospel music; plus the Olympia, the Eureka and the Tuxedo brass bands. And there were several tribes of Mardi Gras Indians, appearing in full regalia for the first time (Davis is particularly proud of that) on a day other than their two traditional parading days: Mardi Gras and St. Joseph's Day.
All this, plus 20-somehting booths featuring homestyle New Orleans food and crafts, were enclosed by a canvas fence in what was then Beauregard Square, named for New Orleans' Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. (Now it's Congo Square, which it was called before the Civil War, when slaves met and danced and sang there.)
There were also performances in the adjoining Municipal Auditorium.
Davis hadn't bothered the musicians about signing contracts. "I just told them to be there Thursday at 2 o'clock," he said. Betty Rankin, who'd worked with him in the Tulane University Archives, and the wife of clarinet player Willie Humphrey, were stationed at an entrance. "We were supposed to recognize the performers by sight and let them in," she said.
They had a couple of unexpected visitors.
Woody Allen, who is a jazz clarinetist in addition to everything else, happened to be in the neighborhood. He wandered in, walked around, and sat in with a Preservation Hall Band playing under an oak tree.
Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson were scheduled for evening concerts in the auditorium. On Thursday afternoon, when things were just getting underway, they turned up in the Square. Jackson listened to the Eureka Brass Band, then hooked her purse over her arm, took the microphone, and launched in "Just A Closer Walk with Thee." Nobody had expected that. Davis took it as a good omen.
"It was a prototype of what the Jazz Fest is all about, bridging the gap between gospel and jazz," said Davis.
Performers at the evening concerts included Duke Ellington, Al Hirt, Fats Domino, the Dukes of Dixieland, Germaine Bazzle, James Rivers and Sweet Emma Barrett. These were a bit more formal, with reserved seats for $3.50 to $6.50.
There were no reserved seats for the daytime shows though. Onlookers, both blacks and whites, stood around the stages, and pretty soon they wee clapping, then tapping their feet, then unabashedly dancing. This, in 1970, when the South was freshly emerging from nearly a century of segregation, and events attended by both races were still a bit of a novelty. New Yorker George Wein marveled. He'd thought this was a redneck city. And with reason.
Bakc in 1962, after both the Newport Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival that he'd helped launch with Pete Seeger became widely known, he'd been invited by New Orleans Mayor Victor H. Schiro, members of the Chamber of Commerce, and other local luminaries to talk about staring a festival here. But that was before the Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination in public accomodations was passed, and in New Orleans, as elswhere in the South, black musicians oculdn't expect to stay in top-flight hotels or play before mixed-race audiences. Wein knew that would never work.
"We met for three or four hours in a little room beneath the Rib Room at the Royal Orleans Hotel, while they tried to think of ways to get around their own laws," he says. But no one could come up with a solution.
the act became law in 1964, and Wein was contacted again. "They said we could do it now, and so we planned it for the spring of 1965.
"But on New Year's Day in 1965, a professional football game was scheduled in New Orleans. And black football players arrived at the airport. And a lot of taxi drivers weren't ready for integration yet, and wouldn't take them as passengers. So the players went on strike. And after that the festival was cancelled."
It had already been publicized as "The New Orleans International Jazz Festival." Later that year, an event billed as "The Annual International Jazz Festival of New Orleans, La." was held, but it consisted only of a series of concerts at the Roosevelt Hotel. (Its promoter was a lawyer anmed Dean Andrews, who would two years later land in the spotlight when he testified at the Kennedy assassination trial.)
"I got called back in 1968," said Wein. "They wanted me to try again. Then they realized my wife is an African Amercan. So they didn't want me."
An organization headed by Durel Black staged two jazz festivals in the Municipal Auditorium, but neither was an over whelming success. In 1969, the year after Woodstock, Wein was contacted for the fourth time.
"Durel Black said, 'George, we want you to run the festival.' He'd cleared me with the Chamber of Commerce.
"I said, 'Durel, the days of the Newport Festival are over. We have to create something new.'
"This had to do with the relationship to young people, especially after Woodstock. The Newport Festival had reserved seats, and people couldn't move around. Besides, I wanted to reach everybody. Jazz wasn't enough.
We called Dick Allen, head of the Jazz Archives at Tulane University, and he recommended Quint Davis."
Davis was a skinny, long-haired student who worked at the archives. "I was just a kid," he said, "but all this music was what my life was all about; rhythm andblues, gospel, second-lining, the Mardi Gras Indians-that was my life. I knew nothing aobut the music business, but I knew all the musicains."
He and Allison Miner, who also worked at the archives, took on the job of lining up the acts, visiting chuches and clubs.
"The first Fest had three elements which it still has: workshops in the morning, evening concerts, and the jazz and heritage fair," says Davis.
But it lost money and Durel Black was all for cutting it back to a series of evening concerts in 1971. Wein held his ground and won.
The second year, Quint Davis rediscovered Professor Longhair, Henry Roeland Byrd, and talked him into performing at the Jazz Fest. He was a sensation, of course, and the rest is history.
By the third year, the Fest had outgrown congo Square. George Rhode III, then catering manager at the Fair Grounds racetrack, suggested moving it there, and that's where it's been ever since. It lasts 10 days, and annually hosts as many people as Woodstock did. It may, says Wein, be the largest paid-admission festival in the world. But there's no Disney slickness to it. The homegrown spirit from Congo Square lingers on.
Davis is pleased that it does. "That's something strange to strive for-depolishment," he said. "But we do."
Of course, things change as they grow. Betty Rankin, who guarded the entrance back at the first fair, sometimes wishes it wasn't so.
"I'm elated that it's so successful, of course," she said. "But it used to be that you went because you love the music. People still go because they love the music, but now a lot of others go because it is the place to be. I see kids with boom boxes on their shoulders-listening to that when thre's live music all around.
It used to be that you'd see everbody you knew there. You still see everybody you know. It's just that there are a lot of faces in between."
Here is the beginning of the posts by Rope from last year.
They were taken from a book called JAZZ FEST MEMORIES written by Allison Miner & Michael Peter Smith. These excerpts are by her. For anyone interested in getting the book, I’’m sure you will be able to see a copy in the books tent on the fairgrounds. I’’ve noticed that there is also a bit of a deal on Amazon.com, combining it with another photo book called NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FEST, A PICTORIAL HISTORY by Michael Peter Smith & Ben Sandmel.
From ““Jazz Fest Memories”” by Allison Miner
INTRODUCTION
It was 1969, the end of the psychedelic era; the Beatles White Album was popular and the Chicago Transit Authority was wondering if anybody really knew what time it was. I had been in New Orleans for two years, happily working for Dick Allen in the (copy & paste glitch) the line asked, "May I speak to Dick Allen? This is George Wein."
"Oh," I answered. "You're the man who's going to be doing the jazz festival. Dick has asked me if I would like to be involved, and I know you're looking for young people to help."
George's very next words were: "Yes, we're looking for young people who want to be exploited."
I said, "Well, great. I have a friend named Quint Davis who's a real expert on rhythm and blues and contemporary jazz, and I know a lot about traditional jazz and country blues. So, yeah, I'd love to meet with you."
Our first meeting was at Cafe Du Monde, and over coffee and beignets I sort of "signed up." So did Quint. Now all we had to do was everything else that it would take to put the first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival together. The next step was to go out and get the music.
PART 1
OUT AND ABOUT
The music scene in New Orleans was mainly Bourbon Street and disco.To book the music for the first festival, we went to the only places that live music was really happening: the black clubs. We went to the Night Cap Lounge, on Louisiana Avenue, and the Off Limits, where Willie Tee and Earl Turbinton played. We had no contracts, just our voices and ourselves. We would go and hang out, drink a beer, dance, talk to people, and just be friends. That has always been one of the secrets of the success of the fesival; from the beginning it has always been about people, not money or tremendous crowds or national acclaim but wonderful people whom I've always been proud to call my friends.
We did our fieldwork by telephone, and unfortunately I didn't have one. We would go to All Good's Restaurant across from Touro Infirmary and use their pay phone to make our calls. I remember calling Snooks Eaglin at his mother-in-law's house. Dick Allen had given us the number. Snooks was the first person we booked for the fesival. At that time he was a street singer. He didn't play in any clubs, just for neighborhood groups and churches. Snooks played at the first festival and has played at every fesival since. Another musician who came on board at the very beginning and has played every year since is Clancy ("Blues Boy") Lewis. He was at the Triangle Lounge in Gert Town, and he was fantastic.
At that time no one else was "out and about." Integration laws had just been passed, and people like Allen and Sandra Jaffe were getting arrested for having black people in Preservation Hall. So here we were, two young people trying to put on a multiethnic music festival, and that had never been done before in the Deep South city of New Orleans.
On Sunday mornings we would listen to live church-radio broadcasts, and the shows would announce the concerts for the afternoon. One Sunday we heard that there was to be a program of gospel music at St. John's Institutional Baptist Church at four o'clock. Of course, we went and that afternoon we met the Zion Harmonizers and Lois DeJean for the first time. They became part of the festival that day and have been part of it ever since. I fondly remember another Sunday when we visited a Sanctified church off of Airline Highway that Larry Borenstein had told us about. There we met Elder Ott and the Ott Family Singers. We became friends immediately. Elder Ott is on the Jazz Festival staff today, still working hard to make the Gospel Tent a wonderfully spiritual experience.
PART 2
FINDING WHITE PEOPLE TO PLAY
Quint and I soon realized that we had no white people. To remedy this we started reading posters around town. One in particular read Big Walker Bluegrass Jamboree. I called the number on the poster and said, "Hello. This is Allison Miner, calling from New Orleans. My friend and I are interested in coming to your festival."
"Oh, you're from New Orleans?" the man responded. "Would you be the judges of our talent show?" He had no idea that we were young kids, and we had no idea that Walker, Louisiana, was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity. So we agreed to be the judges, and they treated us like royalty. There were Confederate flags everywhere, but nobody seemed to notice but us. The winner of the talent show was Hubert Davis and the Season Travelers. Hubert had played with Bill Monroe as a young man. The band members were all his family. We met the Meyers Brothers Bluegrass Band, and they were fantastic.
Another one of my favorite memories, one that I never want to forget, has to do with the sense of "family" that permeates the festival. I think it was the third year, and Hubert Davis had performed the same day as the Ott Family Singers. Hubert came to me and said, "You know, we've been in Nashville most of our lives, and we never played with black people before." Then he smiled so warmly and sincerely and said, "But we sure love the Ott family now, and we love your festival." The Ott family was standing right there, and they all smiled at each other and then started hugging each other. It's so amazing what the festival has done to change people's lives. It was happening to them right then and there, and we were all very thankful.
PART 3
SHOWTIME
The first festival was held in Congo Square, which is now a part of Armstrong Park, on Rampart Street. There was a Gospel Tent and four other open stages. Some of the stages had no microphones. Fortunately, musicians like Babe Stovall and Brother Percy Randolph were so powerful that they didn't need mikes. They just sat out there on chairs and played and sang.
There was so much love at the festival. The visiting artists came on Greyhound buses and stayed at our house. There was no money in the budget for hotels. Great musicians like Bukka White, Big Joe Williams, and Robert Pete Williams stayed with us. They were such incredible musicians and such remarkable men that it was a privilege and a pleasure to have them. We were a family and we all loved each other.
From those early days, I'd like to think that my contribution has been maternal. I have always wanted to make sure the musicians were treated right, that they were fed and had an experience that they happily remembered. They were part of a festival that touched peoples lives.
The city of New Orleans built the stages for us, but when it came time for the festival to begin, we realized all we had were platforms. Joyce Wein and I went to Krauss and bought yards and yards of fabric. We decorated and waited. And waited. Nobody came. There were about three hundred musicians and volunteers and only about fifty people in the audience. We took a roll of tickets to the nearby public school and gave all the children tickets for the weekend. We told them to come and bring their parents. It was embarrassing that nobody came. Then when the music started, the people in the neighborhood just took pocketknives and slit the thin canvas fence that we had put up. We didn't even care; at least there were people.
Until that first festival I had never heard live Cajun music, only bad recordings. I'll never forget the first time hearing it in its authentic, traditional form. I was standing in Congo Square, and I heard a triangle, which has become my favorite instrument. You just have to have something special to play the triangle. When I heard it, I went flying across the square. I screamed, "It's real! It really exists!" I just couldn't believe it; it made me cry. It was so real and foreign that it was like going to another land.
PART 4
Mardi Gras Indians
Another music form that has been represented at the festival since the very beginning is Mardi Gras Indian music. One of my earliest mentors, photographer Jules Cahn, introduced me to jazz funerals, "second line" processions, and Indian parades. He would drag me to every event that was going on, and we would film and photograph until I was exhausted. I'd say, "Jules, please. I'm starving. Can we get something to eat. Without even a glance my way he'd say, "Oh, Allison, don't be such a slave to your stomach!"
One night Jules and I went to Barrows and Sons Lounge. Jules had me holding lights and the microphones while he was filming. When we got home, we listened to the tape and noticed Bo Dollis's voice for the first time, since we had been so busy working at the lounge. Both of us said, "Who in the hell is that? What a voice! Listen to that guy!" Then we had to find him.
We got a phone number of a bar on Washington Avenue where Bo hung out. I called and asked if we could set up a meeting with him. Well, not only did we meet with him but about thirty other Indians. When Quint and I walked into the meeting place, a bar on Dryades Street, they were all just standing there looking at us: two young white kids. We were children trying to describe the festival as best we could, and they said that they would do it. I think we were all shocked, but they were a superb part of the festival. They paraded from Jackson Square to Congo Square, and it was really magnificent. The Wild Magnolias and the Golden Eagles have been at the festival since the very first one.
The festival was a labor of love. Quint and I didn't even get paid. George took us out to dinner to all the finest restaurants in town. We loved every minute of what we were doing. We were committed to the music and knew we were doing something worthwhile, something that counted, something that would be a lasting memorial to the people and the music that they were making. Seeing Mahalia Jackson was all the reward that I could ever have wanted.
Mahalia Jackson simply appeared at the first festival. She was singing at a musical in town and heard about the festival. She came out and started singing with one of the brass bands. This gorgeous, unbelievably majestic soul sang "A Closer Walk." Next to Louis Armstrong, she is probably the greatest singer to come out of New Orleans. I was in awe of her! Everyone was.
PART 5
THE SECOND YEAR & FESS
One of the most amazing performers at the second festival was Henry Roeland Byrd, a.k.a. Professor Longhair. Until the festival I had only heard of him through recordings of music and an interview that were on file at the archives. The sound of the interview was so bad. They must have been on a front porch with cars going by. Quint also had a recording of one of Fess's most renowned songs, "Big Chief." Even though the recording was poor, the talent on it was obvious.
When Byrd came out to the festival, he was carrying an aluminum folding chair for a woman who was supposed to be one of his managers. He referred to her as, "Miss Terry." His suit was so shiny. It must have been pressed so many times that it practically wasn't there.
He wasn't performing anymore. He was working as a custodian, sweeping the floor at the One Stop Record Shop in the 1500 block of South Edmund Kimbro. Snooks Eaglin was playing on another stage. Quint asked Snooks to come and perform on stage with Fess.
When the three of them started to play, The entire festival and everyone came over to see and hear these great musicians. It was truly amazing, even in that early stage of Fess's "comeback." He was definitely a presence, but he wasn't yet what he was to become. He was malnourished and run-down. He had had such a hard, hard time.
From that time on, we were Byrd's friends. He came to our house almost every day; he became part of our lives, Quint's and mine. Fess and I had a talkative relationship as only a man and woman who are close friends can have. He said I was a lot like his wife, Alice, who was also a Libra. They had been together since the 1930's. We became an extended family.
PART 6 -
FAIRGROUNDS & HEROES
By the third festival we had moved to the Fair Grounds. This site was so large compared to Congo Square, and the festival was practically empty that year. We didn't have much staff and very few volunteers. The Fair Grounds had no drainage system, and after one of the first days of the festival, it rained. Quint, Henry Hildebrand III, and I picked up all the garbage in the rain and slush at the end of the day. In those early days people brought their own drinks, and there were broken whiskey bottles everywhere. When I look at how the festival has changed over the years, I find it hard to believe.
I remember one night when, even though I was exhausted, I was so exhilarated that I ended up partying all night long at the Cornstalk Hotel in the French Quarter with the sound crew from Massachusetts. I got home early in the morning to find Robert Pete and Bukka in the kitchen. Both of them had on my aprons. Robert Pete was washing dishes and Bukka was sweeping the floor. They were shocked and scandalized that I had stayed out all night. Both of them asked, "Where have you been all night?" It was funny to see them standing there in aprons, scolding me as though I was a naughty child.
Those men are still my heroes. They were not just ordinary men; they carried the oral history of a proud musical tradition. They led such hard lives, like Professor Longhair, who died at sixty-one. The soul gets worn down when you have such a difficult life. Robert Pete collected metal and sold it. He had been a sharecropper. Brother Randolph was a junk collector who rode a bike around the city. He played harmonica and rub board. For all these men the festival gave them their identity. For the time each played on stage, he was somebody. When the festival was over, they went back to their hard lives. It never ceased to amaze me that they could sustain such joy and beauty in their music when they had such a difficult time at life. They did whatever they could the rest of the year to stay alive, like collecting scrap metals. Many of them had never been heard, nor ever would be were it not for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. I am proud that I helped make that happen for many of them, and I'm very happy to know that music continues to be important in this city.
In New Orleans, people can hear music year round now because there is such a talent base. The festival helps support music and musicians. There is more music per square foot in New Orleans than in any other city in the world, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. It's our life! When I pass down St. Claude Avenue and see some boys and girls coming home from school holding their instruments, I get such a warm feeling. I think, oooh, they're continuing the tradition; they're doin' it.
When I first came to New Orleans from Daytona Beach, I thought I was going to take the city by storm. The truth is that the city took me by storm. I love New Orleans, and I'm glad that I've made a contribution to it. When I came as a kid, I hoped that I would. I never thought it would be such a wonderful people experience. Even when a stranger who had listened to one of my interviews says, "That was fantastic," it really means something to me. What I've done has changed people's lives. They come to hear the music and listen to the words of the great men and women who sing and tell the story of life, and they go away transformed.
In the early days, I knew the festival was more than the music. It was a family of hard working people who gave their lives for what they believed. This fully functional family labored together and loved each other and put on the greatest music festival in the world, in the only city where such a phenomenon could succeed so well because of it's commitment to and support of music.
One of my latest memories is of George Wein at the piano, poised and ready to play. He looked at me and said, "This is for you, kid." He played "Thanks a Million." - Allison Miner
In regards to Allison Miner, check out this web site:
http://www.gnofn.org/~veracity/allison/
It has some background on this accomplished and fascinating woman.
And a couple of posts about Allison
polkaholic
posts: 83
registered: 2002-03-13
location: minneapolis
I may have posted this anecdote before, but in my 16 years of Jazzfest memories, one that consistently stands out among the very best was the tribute to Allison the year she passed. It was during the time that the grandstand was being rebuilt, so the heritage area was relocated to what appeared to be horse grooming barn. In these humble surroundings, with Bo Dollis and Monk Boudreaux singing "Indian Red" in her honor, it was absolutely beautiful. I never met the woman, and I was crying like I had lost my closest friend.
nolalou
posts: 8
registered: 2003-04-15
location: New Orleans
I met Alison back in '78 shortly after I moved to New Orleans from NY state. She was my next door neighbor, anb was married to Andy Kaslow at the time. (he was a sax player in Prof. Longhairs band). My earliest memory of her is about a month after I move in the the house next to thiers when New Orleans had a real bad flood, and our street had several feet of water in it. Once the water drained out, I helped her move a wet sofa and other furnature onto the curb! She and Andy were my 1st introduction to the New Orleans music scene, and her infulence will be felt for many years to come.
If you find necessary edits, just post them at the bottom and I'll fix them.:cool:
The following is an article that I found in the March/April 2005 issue of Prime Magazine which I picked up free at a local coffee shop a couple of weeks ago. The article says it is reprinted from the April 1994 issue of New Orleans Magazine. I tried to find this somewhere on the web to copy or link it but I could not. I enjoyed reading it enough that I decided to retype it and post it for everyone, so here goes:
Past Tense
by Liz Scott Monaghan
The Founding of Jazz Fest
The BLACK and WHITE of it
It's been growing and thriving for a quarter century now, but even so, the Jazz Fest was late arriving here in the cradle of jazz. Newport, RI, of all places, gave birth to one, years before New Orleans did. And thereon hangs a tale.
But a happier story is how it did, eventually, come to be, and we'll talk about that first.
The details change, as they do in good stories, depending on who's telling it. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival's 1970 brochure syas that 300 musicians entertained a crowd half that number.
George Wein, Jazz Fest founder, remembered 200 attendees and 320 musicians.
The attendance was bolstered when Joyce Wein, George's wife, walked over to a nearby grade school and talked the teachers into letting the kids come over and soak up a little culture. Or so said Quint Davis, director/producer. When Wein tells it, it's not school children, but orphans, who came to the fest.
What's documented is that it lasted five days. Pete Fountain and Clyde Kerr and their orchestras kicked things off on Wednesday night, April 22, aboard theSteamer President. On Thursday, at noon, the Eureka Brass Band lined up on Canal Street and enticed the faithful and the merely curious to follow their sweet sounds along the curve in Basin Street and through the gates of the New Orleans Jazz Fest and Louisiana Heritage Fair.
"That was the official name then," said Davis, "the longest, stupidest name you could imagine." Now, it's the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, but mostly it's called Jazz Fest.
Admission was $3. There were four sound stages featuring jazz, Cajun, blues and gospel music; plus the Olympia, the Eureka and the Tuxedo brass bands. And there were several tribes of Mardi Gras Indians, appearing in full regalia for the first time (Davis is particularly proud of that) on a day other than their two traditional parading days: Mardi Gras and St. Joseph's Day.
All this, plus 20-somehting booths featuring homestyle New Orleans food and crafts, were enclosed by a canvas fence in what was then Beauregard Square, named for New Orleans' Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. (Now it's Congo Square, which it was called before the Civil War, when slaves met and danced and sang there.)
There were also performances in the adjoining Municipal Auditorium.
Davis hadn't bothered the musicians about signing contracts. "I just told them to be there Thursday at 2 o'clock," he said. Betty Rankin, who'd worked with him in the Tulane University Archives, and the wife of clarinet player Willie Humphrey, were stationed at an entrance. "We were supposed to recognize the performers by sight and let them in," she said.
They had a couple of unexpected visitors.
Woody Allen, who is a jazz clarinetist in addition to everything else, happened to be in the neighborhood. He wandered in, walked around, and sat in with a Preservation Hall Band playing under an oak tree.
Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson were scheduled for evening concerts in the auditorium. On Thursday afternoon, when things were just getting underway, they turned up in the Square. Jackson listened to the Eureka Brass Band, then hooked her purse over her arm, took the microphone, and launched in "Just A Closer Walk with Thee." Nobody had expected that. Davis took it as a good omen.
"It was a prototype of what the Jazz Fest is all about, bridging the gap between gospel and jazz," said Davis.
Performers at the evening concerts included Duke Ellington, Al Hirt, Fats Domino, the Dukes of Dixieland, Germaine Bazzle, James Rivers and Sweet Emma Barrett. These were a bit more formal, with reserved seats for $3.50 to $6.50.
There were no reserved seats for the daytime shows though. Onlookers, both blacks and whites, stood around the stages, and pretty soon they wee clapping, then tapping their feet, then unabashedly dancing. This, in 1970, when the South was freshly emerging from nearly a century of segregation, and events attended by both races were still a bit of a novelty. New Yorker George Wein marveled. He'd thought this was a redneck city. And with reason.
Bakc in 1962, after both the Newport Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival that he'd helped launch with Pete Seeger became widely known, he'd been invited by New Orleans Mayor Victor H. Schiro, members of the Chamber of Commerce, and other local luminaries to talk about staring a festival here. But that was before the Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination in public accomodations was passed, and in New Orleans, as elswhere in the South, black musicians oculdn't expect to stay in top-flight hotels or play before mixed-race audiences. Wein knew that would never work.
"We met for three or four hours in a little room beneath the Rib Room at the Royal Orleans Hotel, while they tried to think of ways to get around their own laws," he says. But no one could come up with a solution.
the act became law in 1964, and Wein was contacted again. "They said we could do it now, and so we planned it for the spring of 1965.
"But on New Year's Day in 1965, a professional football game was scheduled in New Orleans. And black football players arrived at the airport. And a lot of taxi drivers weren't ready for integration yet, and wouldn't take them as passengers. So the players went on strike. And after that the festival was cancelled."
It had already been publicized as "The New Orleans International Jazz Festival." Later that year, an event billed as "The Annual International Jazz Festival of New Orleans, La." was held, but it consisted only of a series of concerts at the Roosevelt Hotel. (Its promoter was a lawyer anmed Dean Andrews, who would two years later land in the spotlight when he testified at the Kennedy assassination trial.)
"I got called back in 1968," said Wein. "They wanted me to try again. Then they realized my wife is an African Amercan. So they didn't want me."
An organization headed by Durel Black staged two jazz festivals in the Municipal Auditorium, but neither was an over whelming success. In 1969, the year after Woodstock, Wein was contacted for the fourth time.
"Durel Black said, 'George, we want you to run the festival.' He'd cleared me with the Chamber of Commerce.
"I said, 'Durel, the days of the Newport Festival are over. We have to create something new.'
"This had to do with the relationship to young people, especially after Woodstock. The Newport Festival had reserved seats, and people couldn't move around. Besides, I wanted to reach everybody. Jazz wasn't enough.
We called Dick Allen, head of the Jazz Archives at Tulane University, and he recommended Quint Davis."
Davis was a skinny, long-haired student who worked at the archives. "I was just a kid," he said, "but all this music was what my life was all about; rhythm andblues, gospel, second-lining, the Mardi Gras Indians-that was my life. I knew nothing aobut the music business, but I knew all the musicains."
He and Allison Miner, who also worked at the archives, took on the job of lining up the acts, visiting chuches and clubs.
"The first Fest had three elements which it still has: workshops in the morning, evening concerts, and the jazz and heritage fair," says Davis.
But it lost money and Durel Black was all for cutting it back to a series of evening concerts in 1971. Wein held his ground and won.
The second year, Quint Davis rediscovered Professor Longhair, Henry Roeland Byrd, and talked him into performing at the Jazz Fest. He was a sensation, of course, and the rest is history.
By the third year, the Fest had outgrown congo Square. George Rhode III, then catering manager at the Fair Grounds racetrack, suggested moving it there, and that's where it's been ever since. It lasts 10 days, and annually hosts as many people as Woodstock did. It may, says Wein, be the largest paid-admission festival in the world. But there's no Disney slickness to it. The homegrown spirit from Congo Square lingers on.
Davis is pleased that it does. "That's something strange to strive for-depolishment," he said. "But we do."
Of course, things change as they grow. Betty Rankin, who guarded the entrance back at the first fair, sometimes wishes it wasn't so.
"I'm elated that it's so successful, of course," she said. "But it used to be that you went because you love the music. People still go because they love the music, but now a lot of others go because it is the place to be. I see kids with boom boxes on their shoulders-listening to that when thre's live music all around.
It used to be that you'd see everbody you knew there. You still see everybody you know. It's just that there are a lot of faces in between."
Here is the beginning of the posts by Rope from last year.
They were taken from a book called JAZZ FEST MEMORIES written by Allison Miner & Michael Peter Smith. These excerpts are by her. For anyone interested in getting the book, I’’m sure you will be able to see a copy in the books tent on the fairgrounds. I’’ve noticed that there is also a bit of a deal on Amazon.com, combining it with another photo book called NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FEST, A PICTORIAL HISTORY by Michael Peter Smith & Ben Sandmel.
From ““Jazz Fest Memories”” by Allison Miner
INTRODUCTION
It was 1969, the end of the psychedelic era; the Beatles White Album was popular and the Chicago Transit Authority was wondering if anybody really knew what time it was. I had been in New Orleans for two years, happily working for Dick Allen in the (copy & paste glitch) the line asked, "May I speak to Dick Allen? This is George Wein."
"Oh," I answered. "You're the man who's going to be doing the jazz festival. Dick has asked me if I would like to be involved, and I know you're looking for young people to help."
George's very next words were: "Yes, we're looking for young people who want to be exploited."
I said, "Well, great. I have a friend named Quint Davis who's a real expert on rhythm and blues and contemporary jazz, and I know a lot about traditional jazz and country blues. So, yeah, I'd love to meet with you."
Our first meeting was at Cafe Du Monde, and over coffee and beignets I sort of "signed up." So did Quint. Now all we had to do was everything else that it would take to put the first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival together. The next step was to go out and get the music.
PART 1
OUT AND ABOUT
The music scene in New Orleans was mainly Bourbon Street and disco.To book the music for the first festival, we went to the only places that live music was really happening: the black clubs. We went to the Night Cap Lounge, on Louisiana Avenue, and the Off Limits, where Willie Tee and Earl Turbinton played. We had no contracts, just our voices and ourselves. We would go and hang out, drink a beer, dance, talk to people, and just be friends. That has always been one of the secrets of the success of the fesival; from the beginning it has always been about people, not money or tremendous crowds or national acclaim but wonderful people whom I've always been proud to call my friends.
We did our fieldwork by telephone, and unfortunately I didn't have one. We would go to All Good's Restaurant across from Touro Infirmary and use their pay phone to make our calls. I remember calling Snooks Eaglin at his mother-in-law's house. Dick Allen had given us the number. Snooks was the first person we booked for the fesival. At that time he was a street singer. He didn't play in any clubs, just for neighborhood groups and churches. Snooks played at the first festival and has played at every fesival since. Another musician who came on board at the very beginning and has played every year since is Clancy ("Blues Boy") Lewis. He was at the Triangle Lounge in Gert Town, and he was fantastic.
At that time no one else was "out and about." Integration laws had just been passed, and people like Allen and Sandra Jaffe were getting arrested for having black people in Preservation Hall. So here we were, two young people trying to put on a multiethnic music festival, and that had never been done before in the Deep South city of New Orleans.
On Sunday mornings we would listen to live church-radio broadcasts, and the shows would announce the concerts for the afternoon. One Sunday we heard that there was to be a program of gospel music at St. John's Institutional Baptist Church at four o'clock. Of course, we went and that afternoon we met the Zion Harmonizers and Lois DeJean for the first time. They became part of the festival that day and have been part of it ever since. I fondly remember another Sunday when we visited a Sanctified church off of Airline Highway that Larry Borenstein had told us about. There we met Elder Ott and the Ott Family Singers. We became friends immediately. Elder Ott is on the Jazz Festival staff today, still working hard to make the Gospel Tent a wonderfully spiritual experience.
PART 2
FINDING WHITE PEOPLE TO PLAY
Quint and I soon realized that we had no white people. To remedy this we started reading posters around town. One in particular read Big Walker Bluegrass Jamboree. I called the number on the poster and said, "Hello. This is Allison Miner, calling from New Orleans. My friend and I are interested in coming to your festival."
"Oh, you're from New Orleans?" the man responded. "Would you be the judges of our talent show?" He had no idea that we were young kids, and we had no idea that Walker, Louisiana, was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity. So we agreed to be the judges, and they treated us like royalty. There were Confederate flags everywhere, but nobody seemed to notice but us. The winner of the talent show was Hubert Davis and the Season Travelers. Hubert had played with Bill Monroe as a young man. The band members were all his family. We met the Meyers Brothers Bluegrass Band, and they were fantastic.
Another one of my favorite memories, one that I never want to forget, has to do with the sense of "family" that permeates the festival. I think it was the third year, and Hubert Davis had performed the same day as the Ott Family Singers. Hubert came to me and said, "You know, we've been in Nashville most of our lives, and we never played with black people before." Then he smiled so warmly and sincerely and said, "But we sure love the Ott family now, and we love your festival." The Ott family was standing right there, and they all smiled at each other and then started hugging each other. It's so amazing what the festival has done to change people's lives. It was happening to them right then and there, and we were all very thankful.
PART 3
SHOWTIME
The first festival was held in Congo Square, which is now a part of Armstrong Park, on Rampart Street. There was a Gospel Tent and four other open stages. Some of the stages had no microphones. Fortunately, musicians like Babe Stovall and Brother Percy Randolph were so powerful that they didn't need mikes. They just sat out there on chairs and played and sang.
There was so much love at the festival. The visiting artists came on Greyhound buses and stayed at our house. There was no money in the budget for hotels. Great musicians like Bukka White, Big Joe Williams, and Robert Pete Williams stayed with us. They were such incredible musicians and such remarkable men that it was a privilege and a pleasure to have them. We were a family and we all loved each other.
From those early days, I'd like to think that my contribution has been maternal. I have always wanted to make sure the musicians were treated right, that they were fed and had an experience that they happily remembered. They were part of a festival that touched peoples lives.
The city of New Orleans built the stages for us, but when it came time for the festival to begin, we realized all we had were platforms. Joyce Wein and I went to Krauss and bought yards and yards of fabric. We decorated and waited. And waited. Nobody came. There were about three hundred musicians and volunteers and only about fifty people in the audience. We took a roll of tickets to the nearby public school and gave all the children tickets for the weekend. We told them to come and bring their parents. It was embarrassing that nobody came. Then when the music started, the people in the neighborhood just took pocketknives and slit the thin canvas fence that we had put up. We didn't even care; at least there were people.
Until that first festival I had never heard live Cajun music, only bad recordings. I'll never forget the first time hearing it in its authentic, traditional form. I was standing in Congo Square, and I heard a triangle, which has become my favorite instrument. You just have to have something special to play the triangle. When I heard it, I went flying across the square. I screamed, "It's real! It really exists!" I just couldn't believe it; it made me cry. It was so real and foreign that it was like going to another land.
PART 4
Mardi Gras Indians
Another music form that has been represented at the festival since the very beginning is Mardi Gras Indian music. One of my earliest mentors, photographer Jules Cahn, introduced me to jazz funerals, "second line" processions, and Indian parades. He would drag me to every event that was going on, and we would film and photograph until I was exhausted. I'd say, "Jules, please. I'm starving. Can we get something to eat. Without even a glance my way he'd say, "Oh, Allison, don't be such a slave to your stomach!"
One night Jules and I went to Barrows and Sons Lounge. Jules had me holding lights and the microphones while he was filming. When we got home, we listened to the tape and noticed Bo Dollis's voice for the first time, since we had been so busy working at the lounge. Both of us said, "Who in the hell is that? What a voice! Listen to that guy!" Then we had to find him.
We got a phone number of a bar on Washington Avenue where Bo hung out. I called and asked if we could set up a meeting with him. Well, not only did we meet with him but about thirty other Indians. When Quint and I walked into the meeting place, a bar on Dryades Street, they were all just standing there looking at us: two young white kids. We were children trying to describe the festival as best we could, and they said that they would do it. I think we were all shocked, but they were a superb part of the festival. They paraded from Jackson Square to Congo Square, and it was really magnificent. The Wild Magnolias and the Golden Eagles have been at the festival since the very first one.
The festival was a labor of love. Quint and I didn't even get paid. George took us out to dinner to all the finest restaurants in town. We loved every minute of what we were doing. We were committed to the music and knew we were doing something worthwhile, something that counted, something that would be a lasting memorial to the people and the music that they were making. Seeing Mahalia Jackson was all the reward that I could ever have wanted.
Mahalia Jackson simply appeared at the first festival. She was singing at a musical in town and heard about the festival. She came out and started singing with one of the brass bands. This gorgeous, unbelievably majestic soul sang "A Closer Walk." Next to Louis Armstrong, she is probably the greatest singer to come out of New Orleans. I was in awe of her! Everyone was.
PART 5
THE SECOND YEAR & FESS
One of the most amazing performers at the second festival was Henry Roeland Byrd, a.k.a. Professor Longhair. Until the festival I had only heard of him through recordings of music and an interview that were on file at the archives. The sound of the interview was so bad. They must have been on a front porch with cars going by. Quint also had a recording of one of Fess's most renowned songs, "Big Chief." Even though the recording was poor, the talent on it was obvious.
When Byrd came out to the festival, he was carrying an aluminum folding chair for a woman who was supposed to be one of his managers. He referred to her as, "Miss Terry." His suit was so shiny. It must have been pressed so many times that it practically wasn't there.
He wasn't performing anymore. He was working as a custodian, sweeping the floor at the One Stop Record Shop in the 1500 block of South Edmund Kimbro. Snooks Eaglin was playing on another stage. Quint asked Snooks to come and perform on stage with Fess.
When the three of them started to play, The entire festival and everyone came over to see and hear these great musicians. It was truly amazing, even in that early stage of Fess's "comeback." He was definitely a presence, but he wasn't yet what he was to become. He was malnourished and run-down. He had had such a hard, hard time.
From that time on, we were Byrd's friends. He came to our house almost every day; he became part of our lives, Quint's and mine. Fess and I had a talkative relationship as only a man and woman who are close friends can have. He said I was a lot like his wife, Alice, who was also a Libra. They had been together since the 1930's. We became an extended family.
PART 6 -
FAIRGROUNDS & HEROES
By the third festival we had moved to the Fair Grounds. This site was so large compared to Congo Square, and the festival was practically empty that year. We didn't have much staff and very few volunteers. The Fair Grounds had no drainage system, and after one of the first days of the festival, it rained. Quint, Henry Hildebrand III, and I picked up all the garbage in the rain and slush at the end of the day. In those early days people brought their own drinks, and there were broken whiskey bottles everywhere. When I look at how the festival has changed over the years, I find it hard to believe.
I remember one night when, even though I was exhausted, I was so exhilarated that I ended up partying all night long at the Cornstalk Hotel in the French Quarter with the sound crew from Massachusetts. I got home early in the morning to find Robert Pete and Bukka in the kitchen. Both of them had on my aprons. Robert Pete was washing dishes and Bukka was sweeping the floor. They were shocked and scandalized that I had stayed out all night. Both of them asked, "Where have you been all night?" It was funny to see them standing there in aprons, scolding me as though I was a naughty child.
Those men are still my heroes. They were not just ordinary men; they carried the oral history of a proud musical tradition. They led such hard lives, like Professor Longhair, who died at sixty-one. The soul gets worn down when you have such a difficult life. Robert Pete collected metal and sold it. He had been a sharecropper. Brother Randolph was a junk collector who rode a bike around the city. He played harmonica and rub board. For all these men the festival gave them their identity. For the time each played on stage, he was somebody. When the festival was over, they went back to their hard lives. It never ceased to amaze me that they could sustain such joy and beauty in their music when they had such a difficult time at life. They did whatever they could the rest of the year to stay alive, like collecting scrap metals. Many of them had never been heard, nor ever would be were it not for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. I am proud that I helped make that happen for many of them, and I'm very happy to know that music continues to be important in this city.
In New Orleans, people can hear music year round now because there is such a talent base. The festival helps support music and musicians. There is more music per square foot in New Orleans than in any other city in the world, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. It's our life! When I pass down St. Claude Avenue and see some boys and girls coming home from school holding their instruments, I get such a warm feeling. I think, oooh, they're continuing the tradition; they're doin' it.
When I first came to New Orleans from Daytona Beach, I thought I was going to take the city by storm. The truth is that the city took me by storm. I love New Orleans, and I'm glad that I've made a contribution to it. When I came as a kid, I hoped that I would. I never thought it would be such a wonderful people experience. Even when a stranger who had listened to one of my interviews says, "That was fantastic," it really means something to me. What I've done has changed people's lives. They come to hear the music and listen to the words of the great men and women who sing and tell the story of life, and they go away transformed.
In the early days, I knew the festival was more than the music. It was a family of hard working people who gave their lives for what they believed. This fully functional family labored together and loved each other and put on the greatest music festival in the world, in the only city where such a phenomenon could succeed so well because of it's commitment to and support of music.
One of my latest memories is of George Wein at the piano, poised and ready to play. He looked at me and said, "This is for you, kid." He played "Thanks a Million." - Allison Miner
In regards to Allison Miner, check out this web site:
http://www.gnofn.org/~veracity/allison/
It has some background on this accomplished and fascinating woman.
And a couple of posts about Allison
polkaholic
posts: 83
registered: 2002-03-13
location: minneapolis
I may have posted this anecdote before, but in my 16 years of Jazzfest memories, one that consistently stands out among the very best was the tribute to Allison the year she passed. It was during the time that the grandstand was being rebuilt, so the heritage area was relocated to what appeared to be horse grooming barn. In these humble surroundings, with Bo Dollis and Monk Boudreaux singing "Indian Red" in her honor, it was absolutely beautiful. I never met the woman, and I was crying like I had lost my closest friend.
nolalou
posts: 8
registered: 2003-04-15
location: New Orleans
I met Alison back in '78 shortly after I moved to New Orleans from NY state. She was my next door neighbor, anb was married to Andy Kaslow at the time. (he was a sax player in Prof. Longhairs band). My earliest memory of her is about a month after I move in the the house next to thiers when New Orleans had a real bad flood, and our street had several feet of water in it. Once the water drained out, I helped her move a wet sofa and other furnature onto the curb! She and Andy were my 1st introduction to the New Orleans music scene, and her infulence will be felt for many years to come.