What Will Santa Claus Say (When He Finds Everybody Swingin’?) - Louis Prima and his New Orleans Gang
I like this song, which I’m sending today because I’m in New Orleans right now, where both Louis Prima and his musical genre were born.
Why did jazz originate here in the 1890s? Apparently it was a mixture of local African-American rhythms (such as drumming traditions developed by slaves and the call-and-response tunes of the Black Masking Indians of Mardi Gras), new dance genres that emerged from the proliferation of brass brands around the USA after the civil war, and new segregation laws that discriminated against Creoles of colour (which brought together Black and Creole musicians).
Louis Prima grew up in Tremé, a New Orleans neighbourhood that was one of the first places in the South that free Black people could buy property. Prima got interested in jazz after listening to the sounds that spilled into the street from Tremé’s many integrated Italian- and African-American nightclubs. He started his first jazz band in 1924, when he was just 13. During the Great Depression, Prima went to New York City to work at a club called Leon and Eddie’s, which refused to hire him because the owner, upon meeting him, thought he was Black (his parents were Sicilian). He eventually found work in New York City and recorded his first songs (including this one in 1936. You might be familiar with his voice from the Disney Movie The Jungle Book; he plays King Louie! (Apparently Disney considered Louis Armstrong for the role, but thought better of casting a Black man as an ape.)
New Orleans still seems like a musical city. In 36 hours, I have seen more than three sousaphones in the street. Last night, Cody and I were walking around Frenchmen Street, and most of the cafés, clubs and restaurants (several per city block) had their windows open and a live band playing. It reminded me a bit of a low-key fête de la musique. The clubs had bouncers outside, clad in full-body black uniform of bouncers everywhere, but they were much less taciturn than I’m used to, swinging open doors as we walked past, attempting to wave us in: “grammy award winner [I missed the name] is here just for tonight!”, “come on in, the band’s just getting started!”. I am not sure I’ve ever been in a place where I could hear so much live music from the street on a normal evening.
I sometimes feel strange talking (or in this case writing) about travel, because I feel a bit self-conscious about having the sort of work where I fly to different countries (I’m presenting a workshop paper tomorrow) and I don’t want to be that guy. I enjoy travel writing from other people, though. A few recommendations: Matthew Lakeman’s magisterial effortposts (which he demurely titles things like Notes on Nigeria), Devon Zuegel’s field notes (a day in Bangalore, living in Miami), Michael Nielsen’s sincere webpage of Meaningful Places. Beyond that, I do feel grateful that I could do a bit of learning about history today as I was also laying down memories that situate it in a specific, lived-in place.
Wishing music into your normal evenings,
- Tessa