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You know, of course, the weekends in New Orleans in the fifties and sixties, if you couldn't find something to do, you are a hermit.

Number one with Friday Saturday and Sunday nights were the big nights, especially the Friday and Saturday night.

Everybody who was somebody and thought they was somebody played the Dew Drop.

It was the place to play There are, of course, any number of indigenous drinks, but the kind of joints that I've hung out in, you know, if you ask for rhymes, gin fares, or something like that, they just look at you like you were insane.

If you wanted to go celebrate some event, like an anniversary or a birthday or somebody coming in from out of town or something, you know, really show them a great night on the town.

The Blue Room was where you went they were calling us a little Bourbon Street and we didn't want that name.

We just passed a snowball stand and see that city.

And so let's call it that city I'm Peggy Scott Laborde.

A night on the town, a favorite bar plays New Orleans had it all.

There's still plenty of entertainment around but many of us recall a special evening date or celebration, all part of the nightlife that was I loved Bourbon Street, the Bourbon Street, Neon, the hot blues and pinks that popped and fizzled in the show bar sign, the Moulin Rouge windmill that turned around, the neon windmill that turned around the Casino Royale with the sign Alouette La Blond Tasseled Twirler direct from the Follies.

Bridger Bourbon, New Orleans most famous street is associated with the naughty and the gaudy.

It's reputation developed in the 1940s when an influx of soldiers on their way to war were in need of some R and R. After the war, the streets popularity skyrocketed Roy Anzelmo family owns several clubs on Bourbon.

The war was over.

We won the war and all the sailors and soldiers and everybody's coming back.

Also, Bourbon Street really rock and roll at that time.

By the fifties and into the sixties, the main attraction on the neon strip were the nightclubs where exotic dancers held court with their own unique spin on the dance world.

David Cuthbertson father was an entertainer on Bourbon Street.

My first job in show business was running a spotlight for Evelyn West, biggest and best.

The girl with the $50,000 treasure chest is insured by Lloyd's of London.

And Evelyn's entire act was in rhymed couplets and she'd shake her assets and she'd have a few drinks before the show.

And when that happened, she could get where she was and she'd have to go back and start all over again.

A good friend of mine was alive at La Blond, the tassel twirler, or director of Follies Forger Albert was from Montana.

She didn't know from the Star anything.

She'd come out, she'd say, I don't show them, honey.

I just do tricks with them.

One of the most popular exotic dancers during the fifties and late sixties was Linda Brigitte, known as the Cupid.

Don she epitomizes to me probably the Bourbon Street Street stripper, beautiful girl, beautiful face, but petite body out of this world.

You know, she danced around the couch with the band, played the song.

Linda and I sleep on the couch.

She I can't all the charms about Linda then she'd lay down on the couch and she start to do sort of calisthenics.

And she was arrested for obscenity and she was pardoned by Governor McKeithen.

And in the Press Club, Gridiron Show that year, Linda had agreed to agreed to appear.

And she walks across the stage and bumps into a guy who looks like Governor McKeithen, and she says, Oh, pardon me.

And he says, OK, gubernatorial pardon?

Each dancer touted her own unique abilities.

Well, I was always fascinated, in particular by Patti White.

The schoolteacher turned stripper in the window of her club.

I don't remember which one it was, but there was a life size photograph of her lying discreetly on her stomach.

You know, with her legs up in the air with heels on.

And I think she was wearing a mortarboard on her head.

And I just thought that was wonderful.

I thought, you know, why don't why don't my teachers look like that?

Kitty West was Evangeline, the Oyster Girl, and she'd come out of an oyster shell.

The stage would fill with with mist, and they'd have it draped in Spanish.

Moss, and she would come out of her oyster shell and dance with her giant Pearl Lily.

Christine call her the cat girl.

She was really good.

She was a dancer.

She was also she could have been a gymnast.

She had very good muscle control.

I was impressed because I was about 16 for growing boys.

The relaxed rules of Bourbon Street offered lessons not generally taught in school.

Of course, in those days we didn't have the Internet, so you had to learn your anatomy some kind of way.

It was a great place for a kid back in the early fifties, it really was all the neon and glamor and fun.

In the old days, the Picayune came out in the morning and the item came out in the afternoon.

And in the afternoon item there were all the ads for the Bourbon Street clubs, and I was mystified by this.

And I remember asking my father Well, what does she do?

And he would somewhat gruffly explain in no uncertain terms I'll tell you a little secret.

I was going in the strip joints when I was about 14.

I looked I looked a lot older than I was.

Never got to ask for ID or anything.

I don't have any problem.

That was pretty exciting to sit there and watch this, you know, and, you know, you're not supposed to be in there.

Back then.

You could drive down Bourbon Street, if I'm not mistaken, all the time.

And and of course, they have the whole strip shops.

And I remember driving down one time for my mother and father and my father's at the wheel and my mother's in the front seat and I'm in the back seat.

I remember him just walking and he killed himself in this terrible business.

Terrible.

And he's just going away and just putting up with it.

I saw Lily, Christine, the cat girl, on my 18th birthday.

I rode the Desire Street car, and you couldn't get me out of the window.

It was so glamorous, so alluring and eerie.

In high school, Jimmy Anzelmo worked as a delivery boy for his father's Bourbon Street sandwich.

Shop.

I would deliver to all the strip clubs on Bourbon Street, and I loved it.

I would get to go in the dressing room, and when I would go in there, I'm getting an eyeful.

But I acted like, oh, this is just normal for me.

Like, it's not such a big deal, but it was a big deal.

A lot of strippers would have me go to this seamstress that used to do the costumes off and all, and they would have me go buy their pasties for them.

And all my friends in high school, said Jimmy, getting a job at your dad's place.

This is where I want to work and in the early sixties, a young saxophone player from Arkansas had made a pilgrimage to New Orleans to seek an audience with his music idol.

The only thing I wanted to do was hear Al Hirt play, and because I was under age, the guy to play said, Well, you can't play unless he let you in.

But he's around the corner.

And I walked around the corner.

He was sitting in a big Bentley reading the newspaper, and I banged on the window and I said, Look, I'm 15.

They won't let me in.

I'm a saxophone player.

The only reason I want to come to New Orleans is to hear you, please let me in.

And so he took my mother and me into the club, put us up on the front table and gave me a Coke.

And I got here and played two sets.

I've never forgotten but what about the other distractions on Bourbon Street for a 15 year old boy?

To me, it was just about the music, you know, all the wild stuff I was totally oblivious to.

I just wanted to hear the music before music legend Dr. John attained international fame, he was a much in-demand musician on Bourbon Street.

More than willing to bend the rules for a young fan.

When I was a little boy, my dad would give me a dollar to go to the movies and I would walk down Bourbon Street.

The Doctor, John, would kind of stand outside at Madam Francine's, and he said, Come on in.

And he would get to know each other and see my show, and he'd sit me down there I was about 15 years old, buy me a Coke, and I would see Doctor John, me and James Booker with Straw Boston bands at three clubs Trader Joe's, which was Madam Francine and Trader Joe's type of Joe's Total Patio alternate.

And we worked like a full hour set playing with the strippers and whatever kind of dances and stuff and the comedians.

And we worked and the for a while I was playing like a dance gig and then we played for I was playing a jam session with the four hour jam session was like wasn't like work with they pay this nice and it was sweet.

Oh, providing the beat to the glitz of bourbon were some of the finest musicians the city is known.

All the great musicians in New Orleans played for the strippers because that was their bread and butter work.

Because back then, you know, jazz gigs weren't all that plentiful.

So many musicians, people out in the now heard they all played for four strippers on bourbon street.

And Clinton said that sagittarian the witnesses were so wild that she made them put up a scrim curtain in front of her talent and the heavenly body because they were distracting to to the art she was trying to project on the stage.

A great place like the Dream Room.

Sam Butera played there.

Sam be tearing the witnesses a Louis Prima played Freddie in the developed and they had an all night jam session which was thought four in the morning on a Sunday morning and from 4:00 till about nine at 9:00 in the morning, all of them drunks falling on the street every Sunday morning featured over a Dixieland Hall.

The songstress Blanche Thomas writes, Thomas was, I would say, the soul sister of a time when it came to blues, jazz or gospel.

She could sing at all.

Rance Thomas was the lady, also part of the French Quarter nightclub scene.

This pianist singer Sweet Emma Barrett t I met.

Yeah.

Andy, why don't you come home with Bailey Monk you come home I know.

After playing Avalon, I started O.

Music legend Clarence Frogman Henry called Bourbon Street home for over 20 years.

He ain't got no you hear different than I hear.

Sometimes you hear country and western.

Sometime you hear the crowd that the jokes.

You know sometimes I get big town guilt.

And when I land and come in and they'll come come in.

You got to sing mostly blues songs.

You know, all my life, Barry was so great.

That I could sing in about three, 4 hours without singing the same song.

You know, when you walk by, you can see him.

He was kind of shoved in his little corner, you know, playing the piano, the organ, and very little dance floor.

But, you know, people managed to get up and dance.

It was great.

Just a half block off Bourbon Street, the bunnies were hopping till the wee hours at the Playboy Club.

There's one in many places in New Orleans that back in the early sixties that was staying open till four in the morning.

It was a coat and tie establishment, very sophisticated.

All the drinks for a dollar and a half.

Some of the guys, some of the people tried to grab the little cotton tails on on the rear which was a no no, by the way, you could get thrown out for doing that highly skilled bumper pool bunnies made it hard to keep your eye on the ball.

They had bunnies that were proficient at this.

OK, I think this is all these girls did was practice bumper pool.

Well, of course, the guys didn't care too much whether they won or lost because the girls were bending over shooting, shooting the pool sticks.

So it was a body scene at Lucky Pairs where the bartenders dispensed equal parts, spirits and sass.

Music legend Frankie Ford headline there in the 1970s, as the bartenders would say, was the only only bar in the world with a customer was never right and they'd see a customer who had not been in walked in.

So all was velvet and gold and all and two marble fireplaces.

So throw your wallet on the bar and get out.

We go there for breakfast late in the morning.

They had a lot of prostitutes there and the front bar, a restaurant is in the back and we'd all go there for steak and eggs after we got off work in a front part at a piano player, Frank Frank and Floyd want to play in out later on.

As long as I worked there, I never saw an exchange of money.

I knew what was going on.

I didn't fall off the go go too drunk, you know?

I mean, I mean, they said, Does that go on in the French Quarter?

I said, Good Lord, Ray Charles could see that beware the unsuspecting tourists who wandered from the relative safety of bourbon and stumbled upon the seedier side of Decatur Street, home to a joint with a scandalous reputation, the legendary la Casa de la Moreno's.

What a Place probably the greatest bar that the city of New Orleans has ever had anything went.

There were, you know, college students.

There were hookers, there were drag queens.

There were I guess one would call them beatniks in those days.

Incredibly loud music, people dancing on the bar, dancing on the jukebox, pulling their clothes off.

I mean, Tennessee Williams referred to it as the greatest place in the world.

Closer to Canal Street, a string of bars catering to Greek sailors on leave offered a startling look at life in the Mediterranean for Venturesome Debs and their dates.

The Greek bars, I guess, were sort of analogous to the jazz spots in Harlem in the twenties, where all these, you know, Dixie White uptown folks would go after hours, you know, when they were bored with their own nightspots, they would go there.

And the great bars were kind of the same way because they were earthy and elemental.

To put it mildly, when you had all these these Greek sailors, you know, these wiry guys dancing the Serpico with one another, then the ladies of the evening that catered to them, who were all enormous, they would tower over these Greek sailors, but the bar would be full of them.

But people, again, you know, would leave uptown parties and debutante bashes and carnival balls and things like that.

And they would go down to the Acropolis in their tuxedos and evening gowns and drink ouzo and watch all this colorful squalor in the emerging, visible gay culture both in New Orleans and in other cities.

Bars were more than just venues for entertainment.

The gay movement, political movement came out of bars very much as the black civil rights movement came out of churches.

Often, bars were the only place that gay people could socialize and interact in any sort of military.

Part of French Quarter nightlife were bars that catered to both the gay and straight clientele one of the best known in the 1940s and fifties was Tony Pacino's.

It was sleazy.

It was everything in New Orleans was supposed to be to the tourists, and in the back bar was a bartender called Candy Lee and Candy, for $5, would show you that he had the women's underwear on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and he'd have the right day on.

He had a seltzer bottle that he used to spray on himself and say it was, you know, cleaning up time.

I clean that up too.

I mean, they sell it on television.

It was Massengill time and he's very himself.

He was.

So I got around that it was run out of town later on.

Now, I think they brought him to the Jefferson Parish line on Airline Highway and said goodbye to a lot of my relatives own gay bars.

And one particular club was Tony Pacino's OK. My dad had a restaurant next to it called King Spaghetti House.

My dad was a pretty big man.

62 was professional boxer, and my dad would freelance there is a bouncer because a lot of these thugs used to come in here and think they could just beat up on some gay guy, and that would be it.

They had a rude awakening because my dad would knock them out.

His name's Anselmo, but he changed his name to King, and the gays would call him Miss King because they loved my dad.

He defended them in jail from my dad.

Home is king.

Someone just trying to hurt us.

And my dad would go over there and throw these guys out Another popular spot was Dixie's Bar of Music, run by Dixie Fudge, not in her sister Irma during Mardi Gras, when lots of untoward things happen.

Miss Dixie didn't want them happening in her bar.

She says, I cater to the Catholics, such as I didn't cater to the riffraff.

I cater to.

The cufflinks.

Said she'd get up there with a foul spot if she saw two guys going into a corner together.

She put the foul spot on, so I had none of that.

I'm at Tennessee Williams there, Truman Capote and Miss Dixie ran a, as they say in in England, a fair house.

And if after work we got a little settled, she would take your car keys and give you $5 and say, Get a cab home and come get these tomorrow.

I think one of the greatest things I can say in this town I had a tab of mistakes is ball music.

She trusted me.

I will say this, though, and the more I travel and see gay bars in other cities, I think we're really wonderfully fortunate in the world because I think ours are much more open generally than you find in other places.

People in New Orleans stop by the bar on the way to work and get a cup of coffee that the bar is open at 8:00 in the ass.

Yeah.

So I think bars generally have a more important role socially.

In New Orleans than than other places.

I three I the French Quarter wasn't the only location for a stepping out.

Just across Canal Street was a place where the stars were out practically every night.

The Roosevelt Hotel's Blue Room was New Orleans Premiere Supper Club for over 40 years.

If you were an entertainer and you played the Blue Room, you were on the A-list of performers because this was a swank place.

This was a classy place.

The room became known for presenting such legendary performers as Jimmy Durante, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, and Sophie Tucker.

I worked at six years old with Sophie Tucker at the Blue Room Kitty Day matinee on Sunday.

The kids were running across the stage and all of this, and I came off stage crying, and Sophie Tucker in the kitchen grabbed me and she says, What are you crying about?

I said, Well, they're so bad.

And she said, There is no such thing as a bad audience.

There's a bad performer, and you allow them to make you bad she said, Look at me.

I've given $3 million to the cancer fund.

I still come through the kitchen, so you're nothing but a saloon singer.

And don't forget it, they serve beer up there.

Sophie Tucker wasn't the only performer who had to make their way to the blue room stage through the kitchen.

It was the only way to get there.

All the greats walked through the kitchen Marlena Dietrich, Pearl Bailey, Carol Channing, Ella Fitzgerald, you could see Dietrich some nights peeking out, and Frank ganyard said she was counting the house lines by trying to see what the boys saying will tell them.

I'm having the same goal.

See what the wall is saying that will Cuthbert, a diehard Dietrich fan, attended every one of her Blue Room performances.

Don't spend my money.

And when I do get to interview her the second time I said You're very funny up there.

And she's just it's all making fun of yourself.

That's all I do.

She said, How could you sing these silly songs?

I sang in the movies for a million years.

I don't make fun of them.

Dietrich's signature gown was a legend in itself until I waited to the end of the interview because I thought I would get the bum's rush faster.

That led away, and I said, Well, you know, we hear things about your dress, but it's padded or holds you in.

And she said to her assistant, And I'll bring the dress.

And she brought the dress over to me.

She stuck my hand in the dress.

She says, It's just a dress.

It's a beautiful dress, but that's all it is.

She says, I can't wear very much underneath it.

She says, It's me underneath there for one blue room, perennial comic Joey Louis Post Time was just as important as curtain time.

I think the Joey Louis life, the Ritz Brothers who also got the Blue Room a good bit always timed their appearances there so that when the fairgrounds was open, well, Joey Louis apparently at the very beginning of his act, he would stride out onto the Blue Room floor, reach into his pockets, and pull out these fistfuls of losing parimutuel tickets and throw them into the air for Louis, a former vaudevillian working blue meant something in addition to the rooms decor.

You know, risque was calm, terial stuff that would be just silly.

Today, although he did sing a song called Dance Ballerina Dance that you forgot to put on your pants.

Usually they didn't allow kids in for Joey Louis because he was pretty blue, but there were still some kids down there.

And Joey Lewis says it's OK.

They're drunk.

It's astounding when you think about it, because I saw people like Cab Calloway there, Tina Turner, James Brown, which one of the most memorable Toms, meaning the Soul Brother number one when he told me he just played a concert in Switzerland for 12 million people and I'm like, I don't think I can be so.

And he said, no.

12 million, really?

And I said, You mean on TV?

And he said, No.

12 million people and I told him that I thought the biggest concert of all time was the Rolling Stones and Superdome.

That was 86,000.

But he insisted he had played for 12 million people.

Another great thing about the Blue Room was this was a celebratory place.

This is where people came for their birthdays, their anniversaries, people proposed to people here.

This was new Orleans nightclub.

A once chart topping pop duo resurrected their careers at the Blue Room, inspired by another husband and wife team from an earlier generation Sonny and Cher, after their rock and roll fame had died down.

We're trying to find a way to prolong their careers.

In effect, they appropriated Louis Prima and Keely Smith's act, and Cher did Putdowns of Sonny Cher.

We'd take a sip of a drink, he says.

That's why she sings so much better than me.

She drinks and she says there is enough booze in the world to make you sound good, baby.

And the first place they did that act was at the Fairmont in New Orleans.

Another hotel supper club was the swan room at the French Quarters Malian hotel.

Among the swan rooms headliners was Liberace or Liberace.

When they would come to town, have big, big trunks full of luggage and all at his candlesticks for his brother George.

And he had a whole entourage and it all come in with big steamer door trunks.

It took like every bellman on his staff had to bring all his stuff up to the room.

He used to be in the lobby all the time, always flamboyant, always in his outfit.

You know, performance was great.

You could hear a pin drop when he was playing acts at the Swan Room weren't always musical ones.

David Cuthbert in his father, a ventriloquist, went to see an old friend perform, fell over ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.

Bergen didn't have very good lip control that he never did.

It was a joke in one of his movies where Constance Moore asked some Edgar Bergen, she says, How do you talk without moving your lips?

He says, You're asking for professional secrets now.

And Charlie McCarthy says you're also asking the wrong man.

Originally a casino in the 1950s, the Beverly became a dinner playhouse in the 1970s, offering a glimpse of Hollywood stars.

Sometimes in the final acts of their careers.

They had everybody from Van Johnson, Lana Turner, Sid Shaw, Reese and Miller, Bob Crane.

I think that was his last, if not last second, the last appearance before he was so brutally murdered.

Now, Orville, I want you to tell me the truth.

We're going to be married.

And when is the big day dream thing?

When the moon in its last quarter silver the blossoms of the almond tree.

New Orleans native Dorothy L'Amour traveled the road back home.

The star of the Beverly.

She had a movie star voice, and she had her regular voice.

And if she got comfortable with you, she talked in her regular voice, which is very much a New Orleans voice.

Actress Carrie Alden, a ten year veteran of Beverly Play's costarred with L'Amour.

I mean, it was just so that she turned into this little, little baby, Jane, with a Ninth Ward accent.

Could you get me a Coca-Cola?

She said, dumb shit.

What do you think about my gowns and this show?

And I said, Well, they're very attractive.

Dotty was done in her sixties, and she had these sweetheart necklines.

And she says, Well, they got up.

They got, you know, something built into to boost me up here.

She says, But I can't read no foundation garments with them.

I thought, What do you wear underneath?

She says, Not shoes.

You got to come back stage from a costume.

Changes the better than the show.

Out front Cuthbert developed a special friendship with the larger than life Lana Turner, who didn't disappoint Beverly audiences, expecting a real movie star.

She started at 4:00 in the afternoon to make up for an 8:00 curtain.

She would glue each eyelash individually to her own eyelash, and she said they paid to see Lana Turner.

And by God, they're going to get Lana Turner.

She was always changing her costumes, too, because their audience demanded that.

And one guy I remember had a piece of business to cover one of Lana's costume changes where he dropped his gun down his pants well, Lana took longer and longer and longer to make a costume change, and this guy was having to do all sorts of business digging around his pants, trying to find the gun.

She left the poor actors upstaged, trying to ad lib, and we all started giggling after a while.

And somebody approached about th but she was a beauty and American beauty, and there was no doubt about it.

The Beverly was also notable for showcasing local performers as one show that I couldn't believe I was even casting was something called Pajama Tops with June Wilkinson, who was a former Playboy Playmate, and she was married to the Houston Oilers football star quarterback.

I guess Dan pestering me at the time and June was just quite voluptuous and lovely.

I mean, really a beautiful, beautiful girl.

And Chris Owens, I think, must have come every single show to the Beverly on her night off and she would swoop in wearing white.

So at the end, when that curtain call, Jean would speak.

And I think she acknowledged Chris Owens in the audience and when that's my bosom buddy and Chris loved it, of course, I ten miles away and a world apart from the Beverly was a nightclub still remembered with reverence the legendary dewdrop in it was tucked away on the South Street in central city.

O Dewdrop was the entertainment mecca of the South, not just New Orleans.

It was a one stop place, hotel, restaurant, nightclub, barbershop.

It's like the focal point of the uptown culture scene for music and arts.

You know, my greatest memories there was seeing like maybe Joe Tex.

I thought Joe Tex was one of the greatest performers when I first saw him when he was wasn't even a big act.

He was great.

But I mean, seeing Ray Charles or Charles Brown, those were thrill thrills to me.

I saw Ray Charles there at The Price I got tell you that Arthur Price, I said play the five was the five keys was little Willie John.

They all used to come in town and head straight for the Dew Drop.

I met Richard, that Little Richard, I saw Huey Smith.

James Booker was not fancy and it was hot.

It was not a glamorous place.

But what went on there was glamorous.

There was always a variety show.

You had a featured vocalist you had a comedian and you had what they call a shape dancer or a exotic dancer, whichever the title may fit.

There was a guy that walked on nails and, you know, he would swallow fire and things like that.

Call him decoy.

You know, he's like a illusionist.

He had like a a guy to call sensible, used to tap dance, and he'd dress up in a Western outfit, and he had the ball.

And his name was Blondie, a cast of characters a long standing tradition at the Dew Drop was for the show's emcees to appear and drag the queen of the Dew Drop hosts or hostesses was the outrageous Patsy Vidal.

Yeah, he would dress in these gowns and feathers and have this grand entrance.

And Patsy always saying, Oh, look, me and a couple of song like, I'm going up on the mountain, the face, the rising sun.

If I find anything good, I'm going to bring my sweet man some because I'm a hip shakin mama Patsy taught me hip shakin Mama I didn't use all the verses because Patsy used to get pretty risque, and there's some verses in there that I wouldn't sing under no circumstance it would take a patsy to pull it off, and Patsy would have a cigaret holder about that long, and she'd say, Welcome to the Dew Drop.

See us drink hot air and stick with your party.

And she would come on with all of me.

That was the theme song.

She would come on and say, Wow, man, I take all of big sexy knee, and she'd kick out a leg so you could see I observed Patsy a couple of times.

Patsy was quite an eye, terribly off color.

That's why I can't talk about it.

I mean, she, you know, she'll never be the man her mother was, you know, that kind of thing.

Perhaps best known as the lead vocalist for Huey Piano Smith and the Clams singer Bobby Marchand enjoyed a stint as a dewdrop emcee.

I mean, when he always managed to do something about emotion, I thought he was a woman.

He was introduced as Roberta, and he was in his house dress.

It is hair curlers and stuff and his hair up.

And later when it was introduced and it was Bobby and he was in a suit and I had no idea it was the same person.

During its heyday in the fifties and early sixties, owner Frank Pena made the Dew Drop a performer's sanctuary in the segregated South.

Whenever the entertain this came to New Orleans, they could not stay at the downtown hotels so Frank had that type of facility where they could come and stay and have breakfast because he had a little restaurant on the side whenever they entertained the come on the road and get stranded in New Orleans, Frank Penny would take him in.

And never forget Ray Charles.

You know, he was stranded in New Orleans and Frank would send him out to different places for ten, $12.

So I saw Ray Charles at the Fredrick School up here on the expressway in Gretna.

I told Ray Charles one time, I used to go to a labor union hall and stand outside to listen to him, and the whole band would stand there and we'd all write the lyrics and my guitar player would write the chords.

So we'd have a new Ray Charles song, Ray Charles, the well, why don't you come in?

I said, Because I'm white.

I couldn't get in the labor union.

And he said, Whoa, I didn't know that I just blocks from the Dew Drop in great music and good food, shared the menu at a place where patrons were expected to dress the part nobody could into the portals of Hayes's Chicken Shack.

Unless you had a collar and tie and well-dressed.

There was no thing just tennis shoes and going in there with caps on backwards.

Hayes Chicken Shack was the place that I saw a John Coltrane play during the sixties, and John Coltrane was the major figure in avant garde jazz back then.

Everybody expected him to play mainstream jazz, and when he came to to play, Elvin Jones came and nailed his drums to the floor.

And I said, Oh man, we'll be insulted.

And they if the Dew Drop In was the place to be in the fifties and sixties, by the 1970s, that title was passed to a sprawling entertainment complex on South Claiborne Mason's Las Vegas Strip, Mason's Motel on Cleveland Avenue.

I was there from Jump Street when the Dew Drop folded up.

Everybody started hanging out at Macy's.

If you went to Mason's the Las Vegas Strip, it meant that you were going to hear good music, for one thing, with Germaine, Basil and Lady B.J., who used to waitress at Mason's who then started singing.

And now, of course, he's, you know, Broadway Red Tyler played.

I had a standing engagement there with Germaine Basil, Chuck Berry with Franken.

Oh, they played after years.

Of course, I was like a hang out at this place you go to after the game because this is breakfast, you know, the musicians would come there and eat breakfast.

They were politicians who would be in there from the black community.

And I guess some of the people who were involved in the arts, I guess maybe Masons was the Black Root Chris Steakhouse or something.

You know, at one point we used to see Frogman Henry at the Joy Lounge, fourth and Huey Long in Gretna, and we used to sneak in because we were under age and past.

Marcello would come over and he'd say, You out, I'm going to call you Daddy.

I said, He's probably in the back dancing you could drink or you could eat, watch shows or listen to music.

But for many New Orleanians, nightlife was defined by where you could dance.

We used to play for all the school dances, for singing at Sacred Heart, Sing Down My Next whatever school dances there was.

For many teens growing up in New Orleans during the fifties and sixties, going to dances was the highlight of their weekend the Catholic Youth Organizations, or CIO, sponsored many of these get togethers.

I went to see y o boxing, but I never went to a CIO dance.

There may not have been that much difference.

Play the truth.

Grab your loneliness.

I know.

I know it down you know the big one?

The big the number one Kahuna.

The big one is Sacred Heart.

On Saturday night, a lot of the hoods used to go to Central Dance.

They would bring their girls to the dance, but they would never dance with them.

They would always lean up against the wall in in the shadows and talk among each other.

And the girls would migrate toward the middle of the floor and talk and dance with each other.

And you walk into this dance and you're looking to meet a girl or dance with a girl and Sacred Heart.

And you see, you know, three or four of these girls dance with each other and know before you say to yourself, well, you know, I'm not.

But of course, one of these girls, a dance, you know, by the time you got to the girl to ask her if she wanted to dance, some six foot three guy would peel himself off the wall.

And start walking towards you.

I want to start a fight because you're you're you're talking to his girlfriend.

In addition to church gyms, halls owned by fraternal organizations and unions were often packed on the weekend.

Among them was a Masonic lodge called Germania Hall, located on Bienville.

And Mid-City was playing a gig at Germania Hall for some fraternity, a sorority or something.

And after a gig, the guy said, Look, I'm giving a band all these kegs of beer.

So Leonard James, who was a bandleader, of the first and then bass, he said, carrying his case of beer.

And the guy who owns Jimmy Hall says, drop it right where it is and put a gun away and change it.

Learned which to take down.

And he comes up behind a guy who's there carrying a can of beer and perhaps a bag of potato chips behind the guy's head.

Cigaret drops his gun when he grabs the keg.

Being running, this guy comes out, breaks a microphone up on his own, kids beating the drums, throwing him down.

At the end of it, he goes completely nuts.

My last memory of it is that Lennie James is talking to the guy from down the bar, which guy's waving a gun, breaking equipment up and saying here again, you know, I'm sticking with this.

And we may not play anywhere.

We don't have any equipment to play with wholesale warehouse by day, block in the rafters by night.

FNM patio and shop Atlas was a hot spot for dancers in the sixties.

Most of the time, it was used for Manny's janitorial service.

That's what the M stands for.

And I guess on weekends they would clear it out and have dances there.

Got extremely hot and very, very muggy as well could guess.

The guy left with more makeup on him than the girl brought with him.

You know, because mean, you know, my dance is so close and so sticky, you know, you had all of her makeup on you, plus whatever.

They had all the local talent Irma Thomas, Benny Spellman, Ernie K-Doe, and now Tommy Ridgeley, these high school fraternities would put on these dances.

They'd always have cool names like the Swamp Stomp.

Popular bands were like the Greek fountains.

And I love them because they had matching Madras pants.

And that was quite an unusual thing at the time for them was kind of a funky place.

Everybody knew the secret.

Where was be?

Why or how bring your own liquor?

And the place was situated in a perfect location right along the levee by the railroad tracks.

So you could just kind of sneak out and slipping into darkness.

You know, it'll do what you want it without your momma knowing about it.

After getting there.

Step straight that CYO dances and places like FNM Patio in Germania Hall dancing New Orleanians could graduate to dance halls such as San Jacinto and liturgies like this was a downtown dance hall was called the Old Folks Home and last year there was a sign that said no jitterbug.

I thought that was for decorative purposes, just to be just to set the mood.

So then, you know, it was an old fashioned place.

So we started jitterbug and these waitresses that ran out the whole just kind of surrounded.

They like a posse and said, no, no, you can't do that.

You'll hurt the old people.

In the 1950s, official attitudes towards gay dancing inspired creative application of the concept of change partners in dance, we're told.

And the police said we can't have same gender dancing in the Bourbon Street bars because a tourist might wander in unsuspectingly and see this.

And it would of course be the end of civilization as we know it.

So there were some ways to get around it one bar had a back room where dancing would occur.

When the police would walk in the front door, someone in the front of the bar would flip on a switch that would bring all the bright lights onto the dance floor in the back room so everybody would switch partners.

So they had boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl partners where the police came in and out years Hulky talk, known as Merton VIX, proved that passion is ageless.

Most of the patrons were older West Bank people, and they would dance and it would be like the man had been at sea for six months and hadn't seen a woman and the woman had been waiting for 15 years with the wallflowers for a man to ask her to dance.

And she was making up for lost time I mean, they and they talk about Dirty Dancing.

This was the real thing.

And they were just doing the foxtrot where tonight.

I know, I know.

It turns out the lakefront area offered a number of opportunities for dealing with any post dance passion.

Well, whatever was closest to the dance that I went to, if it was St Anthony's on Canal Street, I would go to L'Enfant, which is close by, and then I would go to the Rockery because I had a car not to meet young people at 15, had a car.

Life was the number one smooch place in the city.

Huge, huge parking lot.

You know, the best time to go is the wintertime because the windows were fog up a lot Linfen, I remember because that's definitely a place where you could go and be underage and get served alcohol and they would even have curb service and bring it out to your car.

Yeah, Florence was was too crowded and it was impatient, you know, with the girl, you know, you could always go to Rockaway.

Baraka was a lot smaller, wasn't as dark as a little noisier.

Or not quite as much privacy.

I remember Rockaway as a place that you were taught to avoid if you were afraid because you get killed, if you went there because it was a big pit place.

And Rocky was famous because they had the most condom machines in New Orleans when it was very scandals even to buy a condom.

But they had like 27 varieties that rockery.

And so obviously the pits were having a lot more sex than the frats and the final destination for the evening's third act the shores of Lake Pontchartrain where passion was the point.

Yeah we used to go to a point that I remember my first wife went out to the point and we were making out and somebody stuck the head in the wind.

It scared the hell out of me.

But when you work in a quarters, everybody's got apartments.

All the strippers, their apartments, they know they have to go.

Had nowhere when I was 18, these friends of mine put on a Mardi Gras ball at the World Arlene's and I started dancing with this older woman she was probably like about 26 or something.

We ended up making out at the Royal Arlene's, and then she said, Why don't you take me to your apartment?

And I'm like, Apartment, you know, I live with my parents and Metarie.

So we head to the lakefront.

And then I took her home to Chalmette, where she lived.

And then, of course, I was in love the next day.

And then I called her house and found out that she was married.

So that was the end of that romance.

As teens approached legal drinking age, New Orleans offered more choices in live music, especially Uptown Now.

Sylvia's was uptown, and I would go to Sylvia's to hear James Rivers, and sometimes James Rivers would walk across the bar almost like the Pied Piper, you know?

And then we'd go form a line and we'd go out onto Red Dance right out the door.

And then back in Sunday morning, when the sun was rising, a Willow Street nightclub known for packing the house with live music, rose from humble beginnings.

Well, I had a place called Quasi Motels, which wasn't too far away on Maple Street.

And it was a small place.

So I was kind of limited there.

And it was this fella named Al Pellegrini who used to come in quasi motels, and he kept saying, you know, you ought to buy my place.

And it wasn't much of a place.

It was pretty dilapidated and everything, but there was a lot of potential there because it was big.

Fittingly, Anzelmo named his place Jimmy's.

He eventually enlarged the club to accommodate 1000 people, bringing in a variety of local and national acts.

And I opened up in 78.

My first act was Little Queenie in the parochial Otis.

Second night was the Neville Brothers.

I didn't even have a sign on.

Jimmy's at the time, and I packed the place and I says, Oh, this is going to be easy.

The hottest band at Jimmy's was a group called The Cold There's never been a band like that again, really, in the last 30 years.

I just really draw a thousand people every night and Screaming Girls.

It was like when the Beatles first started.

I feel like a few blocks away on Oak Street was another hot spot to hear live music.

Jed's the club's proprietor and namesake.

Jed Palmer is a legendary figure in nightclub circles.

He was a character.

Let's see, I can't tell that story.

I said I cannot.

I don't want it on film.

Let me think about.

Well, we there used to be a band called the Butthole Surfers.

They used to absolutely packed the place and Jed, his deal with the Butthole Surfers was an envelope with cash.

He'd show up, he'd collect his envelope, and then whatever they did or didn't do, at the door was up to them.

And he didn't care.

He did not he didn't want to be bothered.

And he booked many, many, many of the great acts of New Orleans and also great national acts.

He had Meatloaf played there.

Elvis Costello played there, in addition to the national acts at Jed's and Jimmy's, there was another location in a most unlikely setting.

There was nothing anywhere in the South, like the Warehouse.

It was the Fillmore East and the Fillmore West of of the South.

Sydney Smith became the official photographer for the warehouse when he was only 17.

It was a an unconventional music palace.

It was just the right size.

It was intimate it was also a social thing, you know, see and be seen, you know, with your friends.

I think people glamorize it now, but the warehouse was like descending into hell.

It was actually a cotton warehouse on top of Tula Street, and it might have had one or two fans in there, but it was just very hot all the time.

They had a bunch of old stinky, musty carpet on the floor.

They had a few places in the roof that leaked all the time into buckets.

And then there all these kids just loaded out of their minds on the floor, throwing up there was just disgusting.

But we loved it.

No, no chairs.

Make a time for chairs.

People dance and people happen jumping around, you know, nobody cared about it.

There was just people this was the sixties, you know, they were just into like, let's let's go, let's let's hear it.

Let's get into it.

Everybody is totally into the music.

It was a different era.

It was a warmer feeling.

People were more friendly with each other.

It was in the days that long here actually meant something.

It was a whole different feel days for a mythical rock band chosen to headline opening night at the Warehouse.

The gig turned into a long, strange trip.

We went to the warehouse in the first night and it was the flock this band from Chicago was playing, and that electric violin player, Fleetwood Mac, was the second act, and that was when they were a blues band, before they had the women in the group and then the Grateful Dead.

And then, of course, everybody knows the Grateful Dead were busted on Bourbon Street that night.

That became a famous song Stand Down on Bourbon Street said the closest thing the Warehouse had to a house group was a band of brothers from Macon, Georgia.

Any time the Allman Brothers played there, it was a fabulous night.

I mean, they would play all night long, and that was another thing.

There was no curfew at the warehouse so if a band wanted to, they could play till dawn.

And then when the Allman Brothers finished playing at the warehouse, they'd go and play at the hotel bar.

And then the next day they come out and play for free.

At City Park or Audubon Park.

They were all country boys.

They, you know, there was no attitude, no ego.

The Warehouse hosted a late career coming out party for one of New Orleans most beloved musical treasures.

And when Professor Longhair was unveiled to the public after years of seclusion, I think it was at a wishbone ash.

And he just kind of, you know, tottered after the piano and played this wonderful 45 minutes worth of music.

But I mean, after that, nobody wanted to hear Wishbone Ash.

You knew after that that he wasn't going to be sitting at home nights anymore.

During the 1970s, a section of Metairie in suburban New Orleans became an entertainment district almost overnight.

It was just a spot that people were comfortable.

It was nice lounges, friendly atmosphere, good bands.

I mean, it had the variety of things that Bourbon Street at the time didn't have, and it was really no place for the grown ups to go at that time.

At one point, Roy Anselmo owned six clubs in that city, a name that he says he had something to do with.

Mauricio and me were run down one day.

They had a snow boss.

There was golf gulf that's in the snow box.

They were calling us a little Bourbon Street and we didn't want that name.

We just passed a snowball stand and sing Fats City and said, Let's call it Fats City.

A handful eventually grew to 75 entertainment related businesses.

My sister in law used to go there and she was a cop for four years older than me, and she would go there with some girls after work and different things.

And that's what really I said, Well, let me check this place out, you know?

And so we then it just grew.

I mean, that was the place to go, you know, it was just everybody was in Fats.

It was like the happening place.

There were plenty of nightlife choices available.

The Spanish Galleon, the quarter note, the place the Showboat and The Godfather.

I see the people now.

And I said, Oh, I love that place.

I love that place.

I met my wife there.

I met my girlfriend there.

I thought I was the godfather.

That's what people tell me, too.

If you spent money, you get a good table.

If you didn't spend as much in the back somewhere, they couldn't argue that this is my place and use it.

A girl was always quite right.

If somebody would bother the girl, we put the guy out.

Plus, I know him and the guy was a spender.

And I'd leave him and it was the best time of my life.

By the mid eighties, Fats City lost many of its most popular clubs.

I think Bourbon Street came back in the eighties and word got out to the kids that, hey, you know, Bourbon Streets Back know we're going to go hang in the quarter now.

In two words, apartment complexes.

It was the age of swinging singles, and I think that explains it all.

And the fact that all those people in those apartment complexes are now in their sixties and seventies explains why there's no Fat City anymore.

Club owners in bar room.

Honest I'd have wet t shirt, got mud wrestling and things just it becomes a circus.

It's not is that classy anymore?

It's free drinks.

Food is free drinks for that.

Everything's free and I didn't give anything away because I would buy the ladies drinks.

I always figured it was more personal to buy a lady a drink than to put aside out the all ladies drink for free.

So the people at the soda pop scale and high rollers, they leave it.

Everybody wants to go with the high rollers.

They go we all shall try.

We may never Jamaica Ha was one of the hot spots for the dances around New Orleans.

I look at it still today.

I pass by.

I think it shrunk, you know, because when you're young, you think these places are bigger than what they are.

And then when you look at it in the daylight from the outside, you say, Oh my God, out of the band.

And all these kids fitness plays and dance because you did, you know.

So what has happened to some of our special spots?

Bourbon Street continues to feature live music and girls but burlesque style striptease shows are a thing of the past.

The site of the warehouse is now an empty lot.

No hint of the music filled nights.

There the Dew Drop in no longer features live music, but still stands quietly on LaSalle Street.

The Blue Room is no longer a supper club but is used for special events.

The Beverly Dinner Playhouse burned in the 1980s and the Fat City Snowball Stand was replaced by a strip shopping center that eventually became home to morning call coffee stand the nightspots that we've lost, maybe all but precious, lasting memories, but the news is good.

There's still lots of places left for the next memorable experience.

The next music set in New Orleans.

The nightlife that was in some ways still is and then I have my secret place in case everything else failed.

Morton Brothers on Saint Claude and very few people knew that they have cars and on the that was on Saint Claude and Turell Martin.

Brothers, poor boys.

And they had enough just enough room in the back, in the parking lot in the back for about ten cars was perfect dark, no lights.

All the bands around the city knew everybody's music.

So you don't have to worry about having a rehearsal before going because they knew your music.

So you just told them what key if they didn't already know the key and you would go and you would perform.

So I may have performed with with Dr. John and his group at that time although he was a doctor John that kind of a concise sort of area with a couple of bars being on the other side of Causeway Boulevard.

But but that area, 18th Street, North Arno, that was like, you know, solo like the hard Eden born.

But it was funny because when you go there in the day, yeah, it was horrible looking, you know, it looked really trashy.

But in the night, you know, with all the lights and all the thing, I mean, it still wasn't the most glamorous place, but it was just the convenience, I guess, of having all the bars so close to one another.

And again, like I say, the days of just, you know, you drank so freely and so much in those days turned 18.

And I could buy a drink on my own.

The first place I went to the house of John, I say, give me a Tom Collins.

Wow, that was big five.

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