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Louisiana is a human gumbo that exists nowhere else in America, and its diversity comes from its European and African roots.

That gave rise to its existence more than five centuries ago, when New Orleans was the gateway to the New World.

It's the coaches, stupid.

Yes, James, it's the culture that makes us different.

There's an exuberance here, a sugar, Davy, a love of life mixed with the religious zeal of multiple denominations.

Unlike other southern states, almost a third of us are Catholic.

That's why we have parishes, not counties.

Mardi Gras is a state holiday.

We spell our words differently.

Our food is spicy.

The Holy Trinity has a double meaning and there's no ethnic majority.

This is the story of our disproportionate contribution to America's music, art, sports, history and politics.

It's why Louisiana and Mississippi, or any place else.

At some time, there is always more than one side to a story.

And the same is true for Louisiana's history and love.

While the rich ethnic culture we enjoy was created in part by those who lived here or chose to come here.

It's also made up of those who arrived against their will sometime in the fighting.

Louisiana was part of the triangle of trade that began in the 1700s.

Sugar cane grown here was shipped to the northeast, where it was used to make rum, which was in great demand in Europe.

Upon the return, ships stopped along the west coast of Africa.

The era of the Middle Passage draws to an end, with the 1808 prohibition in the United States of America of an international slave trade.

The slave trade now becomes domestic.

Sugar plantations are booming.

Cotton plantations are booming.

They desperately need labor.

That's going to be in slave labor time.

It creates this imbalance where there's a need for labor in the Lower South, and then there's a surplus in the Upper South.

And so people that are enslavers in the upper South, they see the value of their slave property go up in hundreds of thousands, perhaps up to a million of enslaved African Americans from Britain, from the US, make their way through New Orleans.

They were penned here.

Then they went to the auction block.

There were private sales, and then from there they would go off to the plantations.

Unlike small farms where food was grown for consumption by family members, plantations like the Whitney Plantation, founded in 1752, were large flat tracts of alluvium, rich land where commodity was grown for resale, intended by cheap labor.

None was cheaper than slavery.

We are the only plantation that interprets that history in Louisiana, and it's so important.

You know, we feel that people understand the reality and the truth of plantations.

They were brutal places.

Sugar crop is one of the most brutal, one of the most difficult crops to labor in.

So the lifespan of a person that it's in the fields and is working in the crops is 7 to 10 years.

But we have to think about the skill that these men and women had in order to just survive this sugar production process.

It got them out of bed, got money, yet they can feel like they've been cut off, but we can beat it.

Got beat kind of.

My buddy Leadbelly Ledbetter, the grandson of slaves and the son of sharecroppers, grew up in Moorings Port, just outside of Shreveport.

He wrote this song reminiscent of the lives of his ancestors.

I mean, good, Leadbelly spent time as an involuntary resident of Angola prison.

There.

He wrote the ballad Good Night, Irene, and was discovered by the musicologist John Lomax.

I find that you are a fine songwriter who, along with his son Allen, recorded Leadbelly Body of Work, which is now in the Library of Congress, led Billy's version of Midnight Special.

Rock Island Line and Cotton Fields made him a folk music legend and number Oh continued at home.

Those who led Billy memorialized in song or considered human chattel.

Most enslaved people did not have last names.

They weren't given last names.

But what I think is the most beautiful aspect on the last names in this area specific is that enslaved people took the first names of enslaved people as their last names.

So, for instance, we see common first names like Alexis Bastiat baptized Joseph Pierre.

And so we have a list of those first names.

And those names are contained on our wall of honor.

So we have them etched in granite.

A little funny, but you didn't make them much fun.

And the more gotten here, that part.

Will.

Well, and we know that, Africans in Louisiana, for the most part, did not come here voluntarily.

They were brought here against their will.

Right.

But they also made an immediate and important contribution to the gumbo.

Okra.

Because okra.

And in that language, gimmie gumbo is where the word gumbo comes from.

And, to put gumbo in a pot, it was a thickening agent as well as a flavoring agent, but mainly a great vegetable that was came to us as gifts from the Africans.

So we put okra in, to the pot, and we're going to stir that in quickly.

So now we have our dark brown roux.

The French, we have our okra of the Africans in the pot.

And now we're just kind of looking at the Louisiana landscape.

And it's important, I think the African population gave this dish its name.

Absolutely.

And that's one of the great things about telling the Louisiana story.

People stand in all when you start to drop these little thoughts about the uniqueness of how things, came together in Louisiana over the last couple hundred years.

And gumbo is just a great example of it.

Descendants of the enslaved often still reside in the same geographic areas once inhabited by their ancestors.

For example, the author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest Gaines, grew up in Oscar in Point Copy Parish on land where his parents sharecropping and where his grandmother was enslaved.

Many have not broken the cycle of poverty.

One notable black woman who did break the cycle of poverty is Sarah Breedlove.

She was born to slaves in the rural north Louisiana hamlet of Delta near Tallulah.

She changed her name to madam C.J.

Walker and began selling and then manufacturing hair care and cosmetic products for black women.

In the early 1900s, she became the first female self-made millionaire in America.

But not surprisingly, the African-American experience in Louisiana is not limited to white slave owners and black slaves.

Unlike most other southern states, Louisiana had a relatively large free black population.

New Orleans, in particular, and Louisiana in general, becomes famously distinct for having a large, well-educated, and very culturally influential free people of color, population.

The Creole population resulted from the influence of the French and Spanish interracial marriages, and contractual relationships between white man and black Creole women, known as placards or placement.

The definition of Creole has proved somewhat elusive throughout the years.

Creole is complicated because it exhibits multiple truths.

And so to understand this term, there we go.

Has a Portuguese in the Spanish etymology, and it comes from Claire, which means to create.

But it also means to race, to have been bred to arise from.

And the earliest uses of Creole in the 1500s and 1600s typically were ascribed to that which was New World born of Old World born origins.

So what does it mean there?

From here, the Creole population is unique to Louisiana and flourishes today, particularly in Orleans, Saint Landry and Natchitoches Parish, where folk artist Clementine Hunter grew up on Melrose Plantation.

By the mid 1800s, the roux was simmering for the gumbo that would become Louisiana.

Well, I think the uniqueness is the fact that at one time seven, six, seven nations arrived here with all of that excitement and contributed in my opinion, equally.

When you look at it, I mean, without any one of those nations, we wouldn't be Louisiana and we wouldn't have gumbo.

And they all flowed into Louisiana, from the ocean or from the Mississippi River.

And they stayed here and they didn't come in through any other port.

Primarily it was the port of New Orleans.

They brought these seven nations to what is now Louisiana.

That's right.

And they found their holy land, so to speak, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

If you think of that Mississippi River, it gave them every single thing they wanted.

There are three immigrant groups that contributed heavily to Louisiana's culture.

The first were the Irish.

The Irish first arrived around 1845 to escape the potato famine, and the first generation of Irish that came to Louisiana and came to New Orleans were the poorest of the poor.

The 1830s saw a large number of major so-called internal improvement projects, which is what we now call infrastructure.

First and foremost, that meant canals, to a lesser extent meant railroads.

Where are you going to get this labor?

Well, there's enslaved labor that is considered quite valuable.

And they find them in immigrant labor and particularly Irish labor.

Their obligations to these workers is only their wages paid about a dollar a day.

And after that, they're on their own.

Thousands of Irishmen died from malaria and yellow fever while digging the New Basin Canal in the swamps.

The Irish influence on Louisiana politics is pretty dramatic when you think about the relatively small number that came during the potato famine to New Orleans.

So New Orleans, mayors with names like Fitzpatrick, McShane, O'Keefe, Legislative delegations before single member districts that had two cases of Sullivan and O'Brien and McGettigan.

All these Irish names and Carmela's an Irish name, right?

Carville is an Irish now.

My great grandfather was born in Ireland.

Whatever you think of a classic carpetbagger that was my great grandfather, John Madison Carville.

After the war, he came down here.

He ran and won as a Republican for the Louisiana legislature didn't.

So James Carville, his grandfather, is a Republican.

Great grandfather is a Republican member of the Louisiana legislature.

Let the record reflect.

But the Irish weren't the only European immigrants moving to Louisiana.

By the mid 1800s, large numbers of Germans arrived in New Orleans and first became French ified.

And imagine the scene when a French clerk questions the new arrivals.

And gives what is your name?

Your name?

What is your name?

Come over.

I place well, in the English name.

French name.

German name.

What is your name?

And I think I like zig.

I'm tagging.

I don't name the perplexed German.

Can't speak French or English, but finally realizes that he's being asked his name.

Which and, Mr.

Le Branch.

Welcome to Louisiana airs, Vic, as he has just become Monsieur Le Broche.

Next.

Many settled in Saint Charles and the river parishes in the vicinity of Loch des aliments.

The Lake of the Germans.

The Germans move westward from New Orleans along the river, where many of their lineage now reside, convinced that they are in fact Cajuns.

But their names suggest otherwise.

A speck hey, del, which was Heidel OOB, which was Huber Miller, which was Muller email, which was Himmel, Trish McNair, Toups, Lambert, Posey and Sarang.

We see relationships among Europeans and Germans and people of African descent.

So you have, in my case, in my family, we have Scheck Snyder.

So that is a very obviously German name.

That is, but there is a black community of Scheck Snyder's as well as a white community of Snyder's.

And we acknowledge each other as Cousin.

Some made their way to Baton Rouge, like the Clan Peter clan, who once owned much of what is now southeast Baton Rouge.

The primary exits off Interstate ten, Essen and Siegen are both towns in Germany.

Still others wound up further west in Acadia Parish, the heart of Rice Country in the Louisiana prairie.

Chef, I know that you have a lot of the human gumbo in you as well, but I know that you're German primarily, right?

Right.

Well, German and French, I mean, you know, a lot of my ancestors on the river wall, Germans and those on Lake de xylem, and some of them were French, some of them there was even some Spanish influence.

And in our veins as well.

But it's typical of just about any louisianan on the street.

We're going to be a mélange of something, but we know that they came and they brought potatoes and they brought beer.

And so a lot of people like a little hit a beer in their gumbo and of course, the smoked meats.

The Germans were actually the sausage maker.

So when you think of them arriving in Louisiana and bringing with them all of the knowledge of sausage making, the boudin as the red bananas, the white bull that has the undoing sausages, all especially the heavy smoke on the sausages.

We thank the Germans for it.

So we going to add that right in the pot.

A young German pianist named Louis Moreau Gottschalk gained prominence in the mid 1800s.

He was a teenage prodigy who moved from New Orleans to Paris.

Upon hearing him perform, the great Frederic Chopin rushed to his side, saying, give me your hand, child.

I predict that you will become king of pianists.

Gottschalk did become one of the first pianists to tour Europe.

The third and most populous wave of European immigration were the Sicilians drawn by the Three Seas?

Climate, cuisine and Catholicism.

Louisiana's warm climate was akin to that of the Mediterranean region.

These early Sicilians were citrus growers, primarily lemons, and the bustling port of New Orleans created easy transport throughout the United States.

Sicilians became farmers and roadside vendors of produce in Orleans and Jefferson parishes, and ultimately embedded themselves in the French market.

We're outside to one of the entrances to the open French market, which started when rich 1780s, during Spanish colonial times.

This being on the francophone Creole side of town, people just generically referred to it as the French market, the Creole market.

And it was a hotspot for ethnic diversity.

And so it's fascinating to see how the French market, which is essentially an ethnic identity associated with an emporium, becomes this Sicilian market.

And people call it the Italian market.

Little Palermo became an identifiable section of the lower French Quarter, and by 1850 there were more Sicilians in New Orleans than any other city in America.

Wait, James and James, imagine the difficulty of a French or English speaking clerk attempting to document these new immigrants, given their multi syllabic, unpronounceable names with dozens of vowels.

Oh, it's twins!

Twins!

It's always twins and identical.

No, this.

He looked at the ship's manifest and noted new arrivals based on their origin of departure.

What result?

Pappalardo.

Rachel.

Ragusa.

So the unpronounceable last name is replaced by the name of a town in Sicily.

But in the Catalan.

Name marks a blue welcoming islands.

Oh yeah.

The significance of Sicilians in Louisiana truly extends from farm to table and all parts in between.

So I've already added the three kinds of meats that I use veal, ground beef, and pork in my meatballs.

And I don't like them any other way.

And I like I like a lot of cheese in mine, but I like freshly grated.

And you have to have not just parmesan, but parmesan Reggiano.

The grandparents of my longtime colleague Kathy Berry, were named DiMaggio and Cleaver.

Oh, we loved taking the trains to Chicago.

They were very elegant back then.

And, white tablecloths, waiters, the whole works.

Don't you know me?

I'm a little bit more.

One never hurt.

I'm a train wreck on the city of New Orleans.

I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

And we went back and forth all the time like you were taking a taxi somewhere.

I can still see my grandmother handing me my lunch to eat on the train.

And it always was the same thing.

She would fried chicken for me, and it was in a little box and a lot of hard boiled eggs.

And, she'd put me on the train in Chicago and, either my mother or my aunt, who was in New Orleans, would meet me and get me and I think I wrote it by myself, but I'm sure there was somebody watching me.

I think I was in the five, maybe four, five year old.

Nothing you would do today was back then, it was pretty common.

Okay.

I've never made this one before.

So when this.

The Italians had a huge influence on the restaurant industry in New Orleans.

I don't even think they had one before the Italians.

They started with the little grocery stores, and then they began making sandwiches and serving in the back of the grocery.

That kind of morphed into lunches and then dinners and then making the pasta.

And pretty soon they had a restaurant.

I guess it could have started with the fruit stand.

They, of course, lived right by the French market, and it all just grew.

Okay, Manji.

Sicilians were the first European immigrants to have an impact on music, contributing to the rise of jazz.

A uniquely new Orleans art form.

What do you call that music?

Well, that's the kind of a swinging music.

Swinging music, What's the name of your band?

Dixieland Jazz band.

In the early 1900s, Nicola Rocca, the son of a Sicilian immigrant, formed the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

He composed that famous and oft recorded tune that eventually became part of the musical repertoire associated with our beloved LSU Tigers.

Then came Louis Prima donna, saying, I think it is time to say good night to Napoli, who in the 1930s combined elements of jazz, swing, big band and jump music.

He also had a long standing lounge act in Las Vegas, he teamed with Keely Smith, one of his five wives, for a Grammy winning version of That Old Black Magic.

And that was Cosmo MacArthur.

He ran the famed jam recording studio at the corner of Rampart and Domain from the 1940s until the 1970s.

The soul queen of New Orleans, Irma Thomas, worked with Cosmo.

Cosmo was what I call a genius when it comes to recording, because oftentimes in the studio, musicians will be playing around and they'll come up with melodies and songs that they just kind of jam in together.

And he had the sense enough to keep the recording machine on, and he captured a lot of things.

Very quiet, laidback gentleman.

But he was very smart.

It took the biggest real estate deal in U.S. history to introduce the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, the Wasp, to the human gumbo that is Louisiana.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson envisioned the westward expansion of America that meant controlling the Mississippi River and New Orleans.

Jefferson sent his minister, Robert Livingston and James Monroe to France.

They were authorized to offer $10 million to Napoleon to buy New Orleans.

Napoleon had other ideas.

Napoleon, we have been authorized by Thomas Jefferson and the United States of America to offer France $10 million in exchange for New Orleans and West Florida.

I see it's a generous offer.

How much for all of Louisiana?

What the entire territory.

Let's say I wanted to, unload it.

You interested, Mr. Bonaparte?

Can I call you Mr. Bonaparte?

No.

Okay, Napoleon, but we're here to make a small purchase.

Small, tiny.

Tiny.

And no offense.

Why would I be offended?

No reason.

Gentlemen, let's make a deal.

828,000mi² of prime land up and down some mighty Mississippi River.

How much to take it off of my, normal sized hands?

What about $15 million?

We're talking about 530 million acres from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.

And you want to offer France $0.03 per acre.

We take it.

This is not the deal we're supposed to make.

Congress hasn't approved 15 million.

When you ask a Frenchman for crumbs and he gives you a baguette, you don't ask questions.

You got yourself a giant deal.

Giant no fence.

Why would I be offended?

No reason.

The new world is very brutal.

Yellow fever, slave uprisings.

Suck.

Is soccer.

I have given England a rhino.

The land would eventually become 15 states, doubling the size of the country.

New Orleans immediately became the fifth largest city in the country.

The sale occurred on April 30th, 1803, but the actual transfer took place right here in the Cabildo a few months later.

Now, we don't call this the American Purchase or the Jefferson Purchase.

We call it the Louisiana Purchase.

That's what America wanted.

That's what America needed.

That's what America got.

Care is all right, all right.

Oh.

And what a town.

New Orleans exploded as the westward expansion of America began in earnest.

Pauline, I think it's more like a news.

News orderly.

Whatever it is, it's French.

Right?

Yeah.

Wasps arrived in search of cheap land.

Loving the Euro vibe.

They're little, hairy, burly, unkempt Americans landed in the lap of sophisticated French, Spanish and Creole residents.

A clear dividing line existed.

Yeah.

Let's stick around here for a while.

All right?

I'm standing in the middle of Canal Street, which was originally intended, of course, to be a canal.

But what we Louisianans call the land between the private property and the public property is this strip that we call the neutral ground, originally name, because it was the dividing line between the Creoles, the Europeans who lived on the French Quarter side of canal, and these new folks, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who lived on what is now called the American sector of the downtown and uptown side of New Orleans.

Well, the inevitable followed.

A little Johnnie Brown, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

Got a look at Little Miss Mary Charmaine, a beautiful Creole girl romance followed, marriage followed, and the human gumbo really begins to boil as the newcomers marry those who had been here for decades.

Since there had been no property description in the Louisiana Purchase, a part of what is now Louisiana for a period of time became no man's land.

Because no one knew the location of the western boundary.

Every bad guy was safe from the law in no man's land until Colonel Zachary Taylor built Fort Jesup, and in 1822 brought law and order for three days and nights.

With this kind of rebel background, it's no wonder that the country's most famous outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde, would one day be ambushed and killed in Louisiana.

The Wasps in Louisiana settle largely in the less fertile but available land in north Louisiana, the geographic area of the state known as the Piney Woods, which encompasses all of north Louisiana and the North Shore bordering Mississippi.

It's marching in the Piney Woods, are known for three piece pine trees, poor people, and Protestants.

I'm gonna live where the green grass grows.

Watch my corn pop up in Rose every night.

Beat to the piney woods, cover.

More than 50% of the land in Louisiana was timber, actually being the state's largest crop in North Louisiana, there must be something in the pine trees that produces world class athletes.

The impact of the Louisianans on the sports world is equally disproportionate to everything else.

More NFL players per capita coming out of Louisiana, alternating some with Mississippi, the legacy of quarterbacks that have come out of Shreveport, Louisiana.

Terry Bradshaw, Joe Ferguson, David Woodley and Stan Humphries.

And Dak Prescott is from Horton.

And from right down the road in Arcadia and Bonneville Parish came Doug Jones, who is still tied for the NFL record of six touchdowns in one game, taking it in stride and racking up his six touchdowns, and holds the distinction of quarterback in both the LSU Tigers before World War two and the Tulane Green Wave.

Afterwards.

Just down the way in Lincoln Parish came his son, the Ruston rifle Bert Jones, the premier quarterback in LSU football history that had to be Ruston virtually.

It was three years of competition at that point to record and grab one other, an NFL MVP and one half of one of the most memorable plays in LSU history.

We ran two plays and I think four seconds, the last play of the game, consisting of a touchdown or go back to throw the ball.

And South Louisiana certainly isn't admitted from the quarterback.

Pool for Native Sons led teams to Super Bowl appearances Doug Williams, Jake Delhomme, Peyton Manning and Eli Manning.

There are 12 Louisiana born NFL players in the Hall of Fame.

The Heisman Award went to Texas A&M All-America halfback Johnny Crowell at the college level, Louisiana's first Heisman Trophy winner was John David Crowe, who played at Texas A&M and hailed from Spring Hill.

He won the award in 1957.

It is my privilege to present to you the Heisman Trophy for 1959.

He was followed two years later by Billy Cannon of Baton Rouge.

Billy Cannon watches it bounce.

He takes it on his own.

11.

He comes back up, feeling the 15 stumbles momentarily at the 20.

Running hard at the 25 is way for the 1 to 25.

He kind of.

Really caught on some 89 yards for a touchdown.

That's another cheer for Billy Cannon as he comes off the field.

And 60 years later, Joe Burrow.

Burrow launches to the end zone.

Touchdown!

Chase, an Ohio transplant, won the Heisman and quarterback, perhaps the greatest team ever in college football, and route to an undefeated season and national championship for LSU as they say in the bayou legend gone Tom Rooney.

Louisiana claims Joe as an adopted son.

We even temporarily change the spelling of his last name.

I thought it would just be just be an awesome tribute to the state, to the to the university.

And, you know, I think it was great.

The next year, DeVante Smith of Amy City won the award.

And some might agree that Louisiana's three Heisman runner ups through the years should also have won New Orleans.

Thank Laura Cella, a Tennessee volunteer running back in 1952.

West Monroe's Jerry Stovall at LSU in 1962, and Peyton Manning of Tennessee in 1997.

But Louisiana isn't just about football.

The legacy of baseball and Louisiana in terms of Hall of Famers were tied for 17th in the country in terms of the numbers than just the sheer number of Hall of Famers born in a population.

It's like 2426.

Exactly.

Bill Dickey, umbrella Millard, who brought from outside of Monroe, Willard Brown, was a star player in the Negro League from Shreveport.

He played very briefly in the majors, was the first black day at a home run in the American League, and if you from free from the Hall of Fame and this ball is crushed all the way into the right field, baseball history of Louisiana is completely not appreciated.

People don't realize this.

This is the only place where people at the airport will gather the opportunity to watch a college baseball game, and LSU completes the comeback.

Oh, a century.

And then there's basketball.

The LSU Lady Tigers will open the Kim Mulkey era, the Hall of Fame coach and her 22nd year overall, and of course, her first here at LSU.

Coach Kim Mulkey is an Olympic gold medalist, the only person, male or female, to win national championships as a head coach, an assistant coach and a player, multiple coach of the year awards.

Hall of Fame and she won four state championships at Hammond High School, where she grew up.

Well well, well, wait a minute now, I didn't grow up just in Hammond.

Look, the entire parish over there claims me, so I knew that coming.

Yeah, but you got to get it right.

Look, you need to go get on the line.

Darden.

Okay?

Pick it up, buddy.

Let's go.

Oh, that's all you got.

Surely you got more in the tank than that.

Let's go over here.

Let's go.

Higher.

What are you going to do with my time?

I'm going to go from here.

Okay, coach, everybody, Louisiana's excited that you're back.

What's it like coming back home after all those years outside of Louisiana?

You almost feel like you've never left.

The only difference is, we're a lot older.

We're a lot fatter.

We're a lot grayer.

We have more wrinkles.

I see people I haven't seen in 40 or 50 years, but it's just like going back in time, but in a good way.

All right.

Okay.

Thank y'all.

Coach.

If a WNBA had been around in the 80s, you'd have been Sue bird before.

Sue bird was Sue bird.

Well, that's that's a compliment, but it's meant to be a little bit.

You know what?

They might have paid you almost as much as LSU is paying you to coach back on the line.

Darden.

On the next gear, let's go.

Let's go.

That's all you got.

Surely you got more in your tank than that.

Let's go.

More.

One more.

Let's go.

You can do it.

So North Louisiana is a hotbed for basketball as well.

I'll tell you what.

I will pick my all time born in Louisiana team and put it on the floor against any state in America.

You pick your best five.

I'll pick my best five.

Let me tell you something.

Now, that's a pretty tough challenge.

If you don't start with North Louisiana, you have to start with Robert Parish.

Woodlawn, Shreveport.

People forget.

Oh, bill Russell was born in Monroe West.

Don't forget.

Oh, Willis Reed, Elvin Hayes.

Karl Malone went to school with me.

Those are some pretty, pretty good lineup.

Those are Hall of Famer spring Joe Dumas off the bench if you need a Natchitoches boy and sweet Lou Dunbar succeeded.

Meadowlark Lemon as the clown prince of basketball, grew up in Mendon.

And the little skinny white guy from Baton Rouge named, was it pet shop caterpillar?

Something like that.

Yeah, that's a pretty good team.

The women in Louisiana have their own all star roster.

In addition to Coach Mulkey, there's Pam Kelly from Columbia, Angela Turner from Shady Grove, Alana Beard from Shreveport, Simone Augustus from Baton Rouge, and Kalani Brown from Slidell.

Hey, people forget the state's pretty well known when it comes to athletes.

If you're looking for coaches, how about the gentlemen for whom the National Football Coach of the year award is named?

Eddie Robinson?

Born in Baton Rouge, he has the distinction of winning 408 games at Grambling State University, where he sent more than 200 players to the NFL, including the first HBCU player, Grambling Zone Tank younger.

I love the game of football, but I love the boys who play.

I love the people who play the game of football more than I love football.

Eddie Robinson's legacy will never be repeated.

He had one job for one employer while married to one woman for 56 years.

Then there's Edna Tiny Tar Budden, who coached Baskin High's girls basketball team to an incredible 218 game winning streak, a mark that still stands as a national record for organized sports.

Though incredibly rich in athletic prowess, the Piney Wood parishes have always been relatively poor, going back to Civil War times.

They were farmers, not plantation owners, and they faced a dilemma when the Civil War fractured the nation.

The war began in late 1860, when an aptly named Louisianan general, Pierre Gustave to Tom Beauregard from Saint Bernard Parish, ordered the first shot fired at Fort Sumter.

When the Union Army began its occupation of New Orleans, one of the most despised figures of the war arrived in the Crescent City.

He had not one, but two nicknames bestowed upon him Benjamin Beast Butler and Benjamin Spoons Butler, the latter nickname because he confiscated all the silver belonging to the residents of New Orleans, and the former because of his heavy handed treatment of the citizenry, particularly the women of New Orleans.

The other was Southern Belle.

Charm of New Orleans women was not evident during the Union occupancy of the city.

The women showed much disdain for Union soldiers, so much so that General Butler issued an infamous proclamation in 1862 that drew worldwide attention.

The woman's order, as it came to be known, charged that any woman caught disrespecting one of Butler's men be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.

The general was basically referring to the women of New Orleans as prostitutes.

There was such a worldwide outcry that he was forced to recall the order, but his concession did nothing to improve his reputation.

When the war ended and the reunification of the country began, Louisiana was poised to play a prominent role.

Louisiana is an outlier during reconstruction because there's a preexisting, educated black class here who are already prepared to participate in government when reconstruction occurs.

In 1868, Pierre Landry became the first African-American mayor in America when he was elected by the citizens of Donaldsonville.

In 1872, Louisiana became the first state in the union with a black governor.

Welcome back.

Louisiana.

The year is 1873.

As you know, our carpet bagging governor, Henry Clay Warmoth, has been impeached.

Live in studio now is his replacement, the first governor of African descent in American history.

PBS points back, governor, thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

It was a pleasure being governor of Louisiana.

How long were you governor?

35 days.

But it felt like a lifetime.

You know, a lot of people don't realize that in addition to being the first black governor of Louisiana, I was lieutenant governor.

I was elected to the U.S. Senate, and I founded Southern University.

I see that nice mug.

It feels to me like people should know more about your contribution to Louisiana history.

I couldn't agree more.

I'm kind of a big deal.

We're getting breaking news right now from former Governor Warmoth.

We may have to cut this interview short.

Governor, it's quite all right.

I'm used to impossible moments of transcendence and in tiny increments.

Thanks for having me.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

The legislature has dropped its impeachment charges.

That's the news.

It looks like we may have Mr. Warmoth coming in on tape.

His reaction?

Maybe it's an apology.

Maybe it's kind words for his temporary replacement.

Governor Pinchbeck.

All right, settle down, settle down.

Now, I don't pretend to be honest.

I pretend to be as honest as anyone else in politics.

And that ain't very honest, is it?

But you don't mind?

You'd vote for a nap sack of crawfish if he did what you told him.

Those words from Governor Warmoth.

Governor pence back.

Any thoughts?

The arc of the moral universe.

As long and it bends away from that man.

And that's Louisiana for you know, the successes of reconstruction were short lived.

However, in the late 1870s, Jim Crow laws that enforced strict racial segregation are passed and enforced all the way through the 1950s.

Irma Thomas remembers all too well what it was like to travel during that era.

You started performing during the segregated South?

Yes, and the world has evolved a lot.

But what was it like performing in those early days?

We had to really travel with everything because none of the stations would let you pull in.

There are few of them.

All they would do is sell you gas.

You couldn't use the bathrooms, you couldn't buy anything from the restaurants.

So you had to be prepared.

And I think some of my habits are still with me because I still travel with toilet paper in the car.

Paper towels.

I keep soap and that's out of habit.

But you had to be on guard constantly during those times because of the segregation and the mindset of the folk during that time.

It's raining so hard.

The irony of the whole thing was my audience became all white after getting into the business professionally, maybe three years to predominantly black audiences.

And When It's Raining came out, it was like all of a sudden I had a wide audience.

You.

I watched The tonight with Hurry Up!

Louisiana played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement.

In 1892, a light skinned Creole New Orleanian, Homer Plessy, boarded a train for the singular purpose of sitting in a whites only section and getting arrested on a trip to his hometown.

The challenge to his conviction became the landmark Plessy v Ferguson case, which enshrined the separate but equal doctrine in American jurisprudence.

Earl Warren, the Chief Justice until it was overturned in the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision.

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

From.

I'm here with the great grandson of the first cousin of a very familiar name in Louisiana history, Homer Plessy.

And he was a light skinned black man who was called upon, I guess, or chose to ride that train for the sole purpose of getting arrested.

Yes, his complexion played a big part in it because he caused no confusion at the ticket office.

But the biggest ticket is that it was a it was it wasn't a random act of civil disobedience.

You didn't just step on a train and decide he was going to change things.

The train station knew it was coming when he purchased that ticket right down the street a couple of blocks away.

The conductor made sure he identified Plessy as a colored man, so he asked him, are you a colored man?

And he said yes.

And immediately the arresting officer steps in and arrests him.

But at that time, everybody on the train knows he is a colored person.

So a mob could have formed within that time and hung him.

But what happened was that if arresting officer was like his bodyguard, he hurried him off to jail to make sure you got to central lockup.

And he was booked in Criminal District Court quickly.

So it was all part of the plan so that he could challenge the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court is where they really wanted to go.

And the hope, of course, was that it was the ultimate decision of the courts would be that he had every right to ride the train wherever he wanted to sit.

But that's not the way it turned out when that decision was rendered.

Right.

But I'm proud to say that when they attempted to accomplish their mission, they actually created a blueprint for civil rights activism throughout the 20th century because it was repeated over and over and over.

Reverend TJ Jemison, who pastored Mount Zion Baptist Church in Baton Rouge for more than 60 years, organized the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott, seeking integration of the bus system.

When the busses show up, all the black riders simply turn their backs to the busses and refuse to get off.

They also importantly organize a carpool of black people, own cars to pick up bus riders and take them to their jobs for days in the bus company is willing to concede they're going to go broke.

They cannot survive without the Black Riders.

All of these things set precedent for the later Alabama bus boycott, because a lot of these tactics are copied.

The successes of the civil rights movement pave the way for Ernest Dutch Morial to become the first black member of the Louisiana legislature, and the first African-American mayor of New Orleans.

More recently, Baker native Linda Thomas-Greenfield was named ambassador to the United Nations.

And she added a Louisiana touch.

And in my 35 years in the Foreign Service across four continents, I put a Cajun spin on it.

I called it Gumbo Diplomacy.

Wherever I was posted around the world, I'd invite people of different backgrounds and beliefs to help me make a roux and chop onions for the Holy Trinity.

In spite of these important contributions to the civil rights movement nationally.

I want to.

Right now, Louisiana is more often known for its tolerance of political shenanigans.

Playing in my life, I'm playing now.

The only difference that I have found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership was that one up was stealing from the globe, and the other from the era when I got the ball.

One small, sparsely populated geographic area in north Louisiana became the cradle of governors for most of the 20th century.

Louisiana elected five Protestant governors from North Louisiana John Jay McKesson from Caldwell Parish, Jimmy Davis from Jackson Parish, and Huey Long, Earl Kay Long, and okay Allen from Winn Parish.

We will bring up House Bill 2 to 2.

Jimmy Davis served as governor twice, from 1944 to 48 and again from 1960 to 64.

He was a country western and gospel singer, a performer.

When he gave speeches, they sounded more like homilies or sermons, and then he'd start singing you are My Sunshine and everyone would rush to the polls to vote for him.

And I sang in my own shine.

You are my Sunshine is said to be the second most recognizable song in the world, trailing only.

Happy birthday.

You never know.

The song was apparently a tribute to Davis, his horse sunshine, which he actually rode up the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol.

But Davis's nemesis, Earl Kay Long, didn't exactly make people feel the same way.

They knew that Louisiana is the highest ranked state in the nation.

Okay, so crazy things.

Earl Allen was governor of Louisiana three times.

He succeeded Jimmie Davis for the first time and preceded Jimmy Davis the second time.

In fact, he ran for governor or lieutenant governor seven times between 1932 and 1960.

He won four times and lost three times.

And when he lost, he made certain the reform candidate won so he could come back and beat him in the next election.

Governor Earl Long of Louisiana got committed to a mental clinic while governor in 1959.

Earl Long was sent to two different mental institutions, only to be released and declare that he was not crazy and he had the papers to prove it.

And then, as many of you see me and see, I'm living now, not much if I'm not the business of my life.

Thank you and God bless you.

One of his opponents was the mayor of New Orleans, Della Shep Morrison, a handsome, elegant, single and balding man.

Earl had a lot of fun with him.

Go a blue devil, said Kevin Morris.

And he wears a little wig.

He gets on television.

He paints up a little bit.

He uses roots.

Lipstick.

And if you want to get on it, you, me, that old flip, a little bit of powder, a little bit of paint.

Make it look like what you ain't letting go dancing.

Sing about the battle of New Orleans.

Never were the divisions between the city of New Orleans and rural Louisiana more evident than when uncle Earl took on ship.

Our Congressman Hale Boggs.

Boggs had been a member of a left wing organization during his days at Tulane University.

We had a kind of a red scare after World War Two, and the charge was that Hale Boggs was a Congress, and Earl said, you know, I'm going to.

Hail!

Hail!

Boggs is not a continuous Hale Boggs.

He was sent off again.

We said, of course, and very important.

There was a North Louisiana thought it was an author.

Yeah.

He said, I'm just wrong.

The scurrilous.

There's no way in hell Boggs can be a communist because he's too good a Catholic to be a communist again.

Hey, hey, hey.

Earl spent most of his life in the shadow of his big brother, Huey Long.

And it was a mighty big shadow.

Huey long burst on the political scene in the late 19 teens.

He was elected to the Railroad Commission, the precursor to the Public Service Commission.

He ran for governor unsuccessfully in 1924, but came back with a vengeance and won in 1928.

From the moment of his election, Louisiana no longer had Republicans and Democrats, blacks and whites, northerners and Southerners, rich and poor.

We had long's and anti long's.

You were with him or you were against him.

You were rewarded or you were punished.

We say to America 125.

Two years later, he was elected to the United States Senate, but didn't take the oath of office until 1932.

No one should work too much during that time frame.

His letterhead literally said Huey Long, governor and senator elect, in an early special session of the legislature that he called a representative who had the audacity to oppose him through a copy of the state constitution at him.

Huey, have you read this?

Huey looked at it, tossed it aside, and said, from now on, I am the Constitution.

And that's the way things went for about a year.

8000 miles of roads were paved in Louisiana.

Dozens of bridges began construction.

Most still bear his name and free textbooks for every child in Louisiana.

Before Huey, if you wanted your children educated, you had to buy their textbooks.

You're not going to.

How?

New Orleans now.

Louisiana.

Run by the thieves, the vandals and the criminals.

Huey long did more good and more harm than any governor in United States history.

He completely dominated the state legislature.

He gerrymandered his opponents out of office.

He made the legislature pass bills that he rattled off the top of his head.

That increased his power, destroyed its enemies, and stretched constitutionalism.

23 of his immediate family members were on the state payroll, and he was deducting 10% from the paychecks of all state employees to aid his political supporters.

He explained it by saying, we make them pay it voluntarily.

The House of Representatives considered 19 charges of impeachment.

Nine were referred to the Senate.

Huey long was not impeached, but he was so soured on that experience that he decided right then that Louisiana needed a new state capitol.

There was nothing wrong with the old state Capitol, but in 1932, the new state Capitol was built.

It stands 34 storeys high.

It was, and still is, the tallest state capitol in America.

It's also the tallest tombstone because Huey is buried right there in the front lawn, overlooking the actions of every governor and legislator since.

One cannot underestimate the venom and rancor that existed in Louisiana during the Huey Long era.

Quite an honor for Mr. Harold.

Huey authored two books, including his autobiography, Every Man a King, which was also his campaign theme song.

I want you to play it over.

These people, and if you like it, I want you to put it out.

Good.

That's right.

With every man I king.

Every man I came from to the Louisiana state capital, an overflowing with a hundred thousand people here to attend the funeral of Senator Huey Long and the victim at 42, when his song Huey second book was published months after his death.

And presumptuously entitled My First Days in the white House.

Huey is assassinated in 1935.

He's a United States Senator at the time, but he's still running Louisiana politics.

Would he have run for president in 1936?

Sure.

But once somebody understand what somebody wants to be president, they always do.

No wonder that there's this itch that don't go away without a scratch.

Coming on the heels of the depression, I mean, history could have really been changed if he'd have been in that race against FDR.

The long legacy lasted for 72 years, from 1948 to 2020.

A long family member has served in state or federal elective office.

You.

I stand for someone seeking an education in politics.

The late U.S.

Senator Tom Connally from Texas, who served with Huey Long, said it best.

I advise anyone who thinks he knows something about politics to go down to Louisiana and take a post-graduate course.

If you need to play my man and all the way down in the end of it, no matter.

Your brain is just too many letters.

So now we just going to get that stock, that soulful flavored.

And I'm going to put just enough for this stock to absorb the roux and that brown stock in the Mississippi River itself.

And it looks like we just dip this in the Almighty.

Right.

Chef, when the world thinks about gumbo, they think it's a Cajun dish or a Creole dish.

It's really a dish that's representative of everybody who's come to the New World through Louisiana.

Well, and that's why we kind of call a Louisiana population our gumbo, because they represent all of the nations that have, sacrificed in many ways, suffered but came to these shores and found a homeland that is unlike any other.

Love of people, love of food, love of sharing.

It's incredible to be Louisiana and everybody's flavors differently.

So we got a little Creole spice.

You can throw a little bunch of that in there.

Nothing is more quintessential to Louisiana's culture than our gumbo of ethnic diversity.

To bring that gumbo to a boil, we need a dash of this, pinch of that and several teaspoons, a little lagniappe.

About 15,000 Louisianans are Jewish.

That's less than one half of 1% breaking the state 38.

And overall Jewish population.

The first elected Jewish senator to serve in the United States Congress was from Louisiana.

His name was Judah Benjamin.

New Orleans is home to the oldest synagogue outside of the 13 Colonies.

Touro synagogue is named for its primary benefactor, Judah Touro.

He was the first of many generous Jewish New Orleanians whose contributions are memorialized in the city.

Malcolm Wallenberg, Isaac Delgado, Isidore Newman, and Samuel Murray the legacy of the Jewish people in the American South is no different in Louisiana than in other states.

The families were typically merchants who owned and operated dry goods stores.

Those growing up in Louisiana in the 40s and 50s and 60s, and some even today, did Back-To-School shopping at stores named Dreyfus Godchild, Goldring, Coleman, Gus, Meyer, Handelman, Haspel, Hyman, Kaplan, Kaufman.

Lemon.

Levi.

Lipsey.

Rosenfield.

Rubenstein.

Steinberg.

Stern.

Sternberg.

While Whelan and Wormser all Jewish surnames.

Louisiana's connection to Yugoslavia dates as early as 1820, when seafarers from the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia settled in Plaquemines Parish.

Here they founded the fishing communities of Olga, Empire, Buras and Port Sulfur.

For generations, these Croatian families have thrived in the oyster industry.

The Santana family established the now famous Drago's in New Orleans.

Other families had an itch to settle in Plaquemines and remain there today, with names like barrel rich siblings, Tillich, Slavic, Vidal, Kovic, Madonna, Vick, Djokovic, Juris, Sir, Kovic, and Voinovich.

For generations, vicious and sons of bitches have been oyster growers plying the brackish waters of Plaquemines, Saint Bernard and Jefferson parishes.

Greeks began living in New Orleans in 1766.

In 1864, they established the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity, the first Greek Orthodox church in the Western Hemisphere.

With financial support from Greece, Syria, the Balkans and Slavs, many were cotton and sugar merchants, small business owners, real estate and insurance agents, fishermen and maritime workers.

Then, at a dash of the Dutch who came to Louisiana to build the Kansas City Southern Railroad and settled along the way in towns like the Quincy, De Ridder and Swahili.

Famous for the Holy Tamale Festival.

We may be a small town, but where there were friendly whaler visitors, we have absolutely some of the best people here.

I would vouch for any place in America.

That's how good there are there.

It comes right here.

Oh.

Oh, there's a hint of Hungary in the gumbo.

At the turn of the 20th century, lumber companies recruited Hungarians to harvest timber in the piney woods of the Louisiana boot.

And consider, too, the huge, disproportionate impact the Lebanese population has had on Louisiana politics.

The Lebanese influence in Bavaria is significant.

And don't forget the influence, particularly in southwest Louisiana.

Think about the most technical standpoint.

I you Boustany Eckel.

Right.

Hike.

All these Lebanese names that for a relatively small population in Louisiana have had a disproportionate impact at a statewide level.

Absolutely.

All of these little contributors to the human gumbo that is Louisiana have an identifiable contribution.

And it's it's significant.

And that's just what you don't find in a lot of other places.

It's like to dig deep.

The more you find that you there's a Honduran flavor in the gumbo as well.

What brought them here?

Bananas.

The Standard Fruit Company, which is now Dole, and United Fruit Company, which is now Chiquita, or headquartered in New Orleans.

Today, Louisiana is the number one state with exports to Cuba.

And Cuba had a role in events leading to the assassination of President John F Kennedy, and one Louisiana son, Richard Lipsey played an important role in the aftermath of JFK's death.

After growing up in Baton Rouge and graduating from LSU, Lipsey enlisted in the Army in 1962.

While stationed at Fort Polk for two years.

He accepted a job as an aide for General Phillip Weal.

That job eventually landed him in Washington, D.C. and the Oval Office, with President Kennedy giving him an unintended front row seat to one of America's most infamous historical moments.

Several thousand enthusiastic Texans were on hand to give the President and Mrs. Kennedy a warm welcome.

We had a typical day picked up General Wheel in the morning at 630, and I'm standing outside the car just waiting because the general is always prompt.

Car is now turning off the camera.

We're listening to the radio and it comes over the radio.

The president has been shot, has gone shooting for the hospital, has been advised of them by their gun shot.

But we jump in the car and there were two telephones in the car, Black phone, which is a regular telephone, and a red phone, which you picked it up, went directly to the white House and the red phone rings.

The general picked it up.

It was Mrs. Lincoln, in hysterics.

Tell in general, will please come to the white House immediately?

Well, we were already on the way.

Traffic was stopped.

People were standing outside of their cars.

The radios were on.

Some people were crying just standing there in this belief.

There's only one word to describe this picture here, and that's for you.

And we're here.

The president is dead.

It's official as of yesterday.

Moments ago, the president of the United States is dead.

Of course, we're in shock, too.

We get to the white House, and of course, everybody is crying there in hysterics and holding on to each other, comforting each other.

We go into General Will's office, and he opens a drawer and he takes up two pistol bill, and he puts one pistol belt on and another one is an old Army 45, fully loaded.

And he hands up to me, says, you put this on.

He says, when we get that body off their plane, he says, you will stay with it.

And nobody comes near it.

It was Jackie's choice to go to Bethesda Naval Hospital for the autopsy, because the president had been in the Navy.

It was myself and a couple of technicians in the room.

I had never seen a dead man before.

Much less.

Here I am, picking up the body of the president of the United States and laying him on the table and helping get dried blood off of him.

And then that's when the doctors came in and started the autopsy, which is a pretty gruesome thing in itself to watch an autopsy down this avenue of sadness.

They bring President John F Kennedy Martin, a hero, to lie in state under the great dome of the Capitol.

The next day, when we marched, we had the same horse and carriage, the same case on it was used for Abraham Lincoln's funeral a hundred years before.

It was surreal.

President Kennedy is accused assassin had shot down himself during a jail transfer.

It's a 24 year old pro Castro Texan who once sought Soviet citizenship.

The Louisiana connections to the assassination have provided endless fodder for conspiracy theories.

New Orleans native Lee Harvey Oswald passed out Pedro Castro leaflets just days before the assassination, leading some to believe Cuba was behind it.

Another theory is that Carlos Marcello and the Mafia are behind it.

However, Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs served on the Warren Commission, which ultimately concluded that Oswald was a lone gunman.

I can tell you first.

I didn't watch it from afar.

I'm six feet from it.

When the Nazis in doing the autopsy.

The president was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from a distance of approximately 50, 60 yards from that six story window in the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

It's no question the Warren report is very accurate.

Back to our gumbo.

There's still more flavors.

By the late 1880s, Chinese families established laundries to serve a significant demand in the society conscious life of New Orleans.

One was operated by Lee Bing, whose son, Harry Lee, became the first Chinese American sheriff in America in 1979.

And then there are the Vietnamese, who began arriving by boat in the mid 1970s after the fall of Saigon.

And the Catholic Church sponsored many refugees from Vietnam.

Louisiana also elected America's first and only Vietnamese Congressman Joseph Gao.

We're going to really add the good stuff.

Oh, wow.

Look at this.

Now, when we call these the pearls of bayou country, you're not going to find Jumbo Lump crabmeat like this anywhere other than the Gulf of Mexico.

Take a look at that.

And that's what's going to go in to be sacrificed into more flavor.

So.

And I got the friends.

The shrimp.

Oh my God.

Up.

So, chef, some of the newer residents of Louisiana say new growth in the past, 25 to 50 years, like the Vietnamese.

Oh, come on, shrimpers and fishermen in the southern part of the state.

Well, they arrived in our state and they brought with them a great knowledge of fishing.

I mean, they were fishermen, and they came here in the immediately assimilated into the fishing community and enhanced our fishing community like no other.

And coming in and working in our restaurants would come in some of our great chefs.

What a contribution to Louisiana from all over the world.

I'm just happy they found us, you know so well.

And speaking of which, one of the last ingredients here, I mean, we can thank the Croatians for this.

They are our oyster growers all across south Louisiana.

And this is the this is the last little touch these oysters were in the shell in the Gulf yesterday.

We just kind of put them in and we normally put about half of them in right now and wait for the last five minutes of cooking and right before serving, we throw them in that way.

They just about fresh.

And then a little bit more of that green onions and parsley.

And Jay, I'm going to tell you, we have a gumbo that I think we probably would have a line of about 500 people trying to get into our pot if we open the gate.

Immigrants from India have also had an increasing presence in Louisiana over the past several decades.

In 2008, Bobby Jindal became the first Indian-American governor in the nation's history.

The final spice to our gumbo comes from the military.

Here at the Bently Hotel in Alexandria.

The guest registry had names like Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George Marshall, George Patton.

The general stayed in this hotel when they came to inspect the troops at Fort Polk in Leesville.

This is the room where the Army brass sat with maps on the wall behind me and in front of me, planning the strategy for World War Two.

The terrain of Louisiana, the ag forest in this area, were the perfect training ground for the battleground that our soldiers would find in Europe.

Louisiana maneuvers were held at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and Leadville, not too far from here.

On Saturday night, those soldiers would go out to Lafayette, Lake Charles, Leadville, or here in Alexandria.

They'd made a Louisiana girl and get married if they were fortunate enough to come home from the war.

They had to decide where to live and mama made it very clear they were going to live right here in Louisiana.

Thus, non-native born sons became the fathers of generations of new Louisianans, making the gumbo even richer.

The gumbo of Louisiana is not just the people, the culture, or the food.

It's the rhythm.

Literally.

The music of Louisiana is its heartbeat.

It's a lullaby to life.

And much of it started in Shreveport.

That's Hank Williams, who, like many other young superstars to be, got his start at the Louisiana Hayride.

Just singing it for the folks.

Johnny Horton I'm a honky tonk man.

And I can't seem to stop.

This is the magnificent Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana, where from 1948 to 1960, it was transformed to the cradle of the stars.

Quick radio transmitted to thousands of American homes on Saturday nights, and they were entertained by the likes of Johnny Horton, Louisiana natives Webb Pierce and Faron Young, and countless of other musicians who made their start right here in Shreveport, Louisiana.

He's only 19 years old.

He has a new, distinctive style.

Elvis Presley, let's give him a nice hand.

We've been singing this song.

X marks the spot right here where on October 16th, 1954, a young man was.

Welcome to the stage of the Louisiana Hayride that forever changed the world of music.

Horace Logan introduced a young man named Elvis Presley.

What's all right, mom?

And a couple of years later, not too far from here at the Shreveport Fairgrounds, an immortal phrase was born.

It's all right.

That's all right.

I, Elvis has left the building.

You want me to go with you?

I told you absolutely straight up to this point.

You know that he has left the building.

He left the stage and went out the back with the policeman.

And he is now gone from the building.

An old painting.

James Burton, one of the world's most celebrated guitarists, played with Elvis and many others during his amazing career.

James, where are we?

James Burton Foundation, music for little kids and recording studio.

I want to start by asking you, how is a 13 year old kid from Double-A wind up that next year performing on the Louisiana Hayride?

Well, you know, when I was a little kid, my mother always said, well, he's music born in him.

And, just started playing guitar to age of 13.

I was actually playing on Louisiana Hayride at the age of 14.

So it started real fast for me.

I know at some point you wound up with, Elvis and, How did that happen?

Elvis called me for the comeback special.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do that.

But, in 69, he called me back and asked me to put a band together.

The band you put together was with Elvis from 68, 69, 69 to lead.

Who wrote Suzy Q?

I wrote a Q when I was 13.

The music was a little guitar lick, and, I was working in a blues band.

Dale Hawkins and Dale said, I need to get into this song.

And he's for sure he writes letters and we're the writers to L wrote it up to kill.

There's so much stuff.

I mean, it's, But, you know, the great thing, the foundation we were able to get music in schools was a little kids and teachers came to play, and, it was fantastic.

Any idea how many guitars you've given away through the foundation?

It's been thousands.

Thousands.

I mean, you're the legacy of music that you helped create.

Is it going to live on for generations?

Well, you know, it's a blessing to be able to help the little kids because that's our new generation.

I gotta get ready, make everything right.

But all my rowdy friends are coming over tonight.

Shreveport is home to many other musicians, including the iconic Hank Williams Jr. Hey, do you wanna party?

Although his father wasn't a Louisiana native, he is winning multiple country music awards.

When I'm sitting at home, it's the best seat in the land.

You know how long I've been on Monday night, man.

And topping the charts with 11 number one hits, the most famous of which perhaps was written to introduce the NFL's Monday Night Football game.

All my rowdy friends are here on Monday night.

That's right.

The 1988 Shreveport native Kix Brooks teamed up with Ronnie Dunn to form one of country music's most successful duos.

You might remember their fourth consecutive number one hit, which sparked a renewed interest in Texas line dancing.

You go.

Go see.

No.

Come on, baby, let's go for it.

And it's not just country music.

Shreveport also gave birth to the brilliant concert pianist Van Cliburn.

Now, just down the road from Shreveport, the small town of Mendon turned out two widely renowned talents.

I hurried to my new, for starters, Jane Austen, one of the most famous stars of the 1920s.

Who comes from Linden, was also the birthplace of Percy Mayfield, who wrote one of Ray Charles most memorable songs.

What's your sign?

I come back here for no more.

No work, no food.

And just 25 miles outside of Mendon, the tiny community of Sarepta made a large contribution in six foot six, 240 pound country music performer and actor Trace Adkins.

I'm just here.

I just.

We're done.

That's why we do what we do.

Monroe gave birth to Hunter Hayes.

He then the device.

Now he didn't deal out.

While West Monroe produced an early superstar of country music, Webb Pierce.

He had more hits than anyone in the 1950s.

And no, it's not dedicated to Louisiana's politicians, though, given our checkered history, I guess it could be nice.

We're in the deep.

From Tiny start Louisiana in Richland Parish comes little Timmy Smith.

When he was 11 years old, he learned that his father was the great left handed pitcher for the New York Mets.

Tug McGraw.

And as he grew older, he took his father's name.

And we now know him, of course, is Mr.

Faith Hill.

No, no, we actually know him is Tim McGraw.

He's had more than two dozen number one country hits.

My son, like.

Oak Grove is the parish seat of West Carroll and home to Tony Joe White, who wrote Rainy Night in Georgia.

He also wrote and performed a top ten hit in 1969.

That may be the only song ever written about a leafy green vegetable salad.

For the salad Lady, Polk Salad is cooked greens made of pokey, which grows wild near the cotton fields of north Louisiana.

When I'm working on a change, the be a.

Another North Louisiana native, Richard Berry of Tiny Extension in Franklin Parish, wrote what was alleged to be the dirtiest song of the 1960s.

Go to do it.

Berry wrote and recorded that song with his group The Pharaohs in 1957, and calypso style, seeking to take advantage of the craze introduced by Harry Belafonte.

You know, I oh no, I, I, I, I yeah, that's why it got no attention until recorded by the Kingsmen in 1963, and it then rose to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

But things really got hot when Attorney General Bobby Kennedy began an investigation, prompted by a letter from an irate parent alleging that the undecipherable lyrics were actually obscene.

Not so.

A year long FBI investigation followed.

Seriously, it proved to be inconclusive, but the song has remained the stuff of musical legend.

So who would complain about this song?

This song is perfect.

I play this in my campaign rallies.

Of course, gospel music has been a huge part of religious life in the Protestant dominated Bible Belt in north and central Louisiana.

The Cox family from Webster Parish won a Grammy in 1995.

Their rendition of the classic I Am Weary can be heard on the 2002 Grammy winning album of the year.

The soundtrack of a movie, Oh Brother, where Art thou?

The film also featured Baton Rouge and Chris Thomas, son of blues legend Tammy Thomas, as the young blues guitarist who sells his soul to the devil.

I am we heading out of North Louisiana and going south.

We reached the Bible Belt where there's a whole lot of shakin going on.

Come on, open the door and keep going.

I ain't faking I got a whole lotta shakin goin on up and.

How would you like to be growing up in Ferriday in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

With these three first cousins roaming the streets, Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Leroy Gilley and Jimmy Lee swaggered, all sharing in the same piano the Lewis family bought for little Jerry Lee, and all being torn between the lure of rock n roll and the teachings of the Assembly of God church.

My mother and dad were both musicians.

My dad played a violin, my mother played a rhythm guitar, and, Jerry Lee and, would go with them, constantly to the meetings, a stretch, a tent, and one of the tent revivals and people would come from miles around.

My dad was a preacher, the minister and Jerry Lee and, provided the music I could get on the turnpike, and I'm gonna rock and roll.

We started playing music when we were about ten years old.

I remember the first rock n roll shows ever put on.

We didn't know what it was.

When we played that crowd that night went, Christ, they just went, wow.

I suppose some other person don't like to have cups of kosher Israel.

That was when we played in church.

We played in church constantly.

Every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night.

And it's over.

Time to think of a I've never been on that old turnpike.

And I know Jerry Lee.

He and his dad went to Memphis because they heard Sam Phillips, who owned son Recording Studios.

This is the man that started Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins and whoever.

And when Jerry Lee shut down to the piano and started playing, Sam Phillips said, my Lord, I never heard anything like this in my life.

And the first song he put up went to Number one in the Nation and the greatest is Great Balls of Fire.

I love what I thought of this morning.

From then on, one must build.

This would be number one, Jerry Lee would be number two, and next month it would be vice versa.

You tell this world that you are my favorite.

I will relax, I'm gonna show em all you.

Oh, baby, there's just the right.

It's just great balls of fire.

Mickey came to me.

He said, I want to learn to play the piano.

He played guitar and played it very well.

And I showed him all the chords on you and say, go to it.

And he did.

It did well, he really did.

Mickey had 17 number one country western hits.

Mickey helped start the country music rage in the 1980s when his nightclub Gilley's in Pasadena, Texas, was the backdrop for the movie Urban Cowboy.

And he was the right guy to answer the question, when did the girls get prettier girls?

And pretty early girls aged nine.

I want to say, you don't say he played, but the movie remains of the Angel on the Backstreet Boys.

I talked to him just before he hits that and, in a sense, we were very close.

Jerry Lee, myself and I thought got out.

Bye bye, black belt.

You never think of another a winner.

That's what keep us better.

No, I didn't approve of all the music to Jerry Lee played on Mickey, but I didn't knock him in the head either.

Had tremendous talent, great talent.

Jerry Lee is still probably only behind Elvis Presley.

More than likely as it regards fame around the world.

Cousin Jimmy became a well known evangelist and remains one of America's favorite gospel music.

Performed by the fire.

Pray for me.

I Love you.

Well, I remember being in Nashville one day, walking down the aisle and the studio, and we were.

I was cutting an album and a man stopped me, said, you're genius working.

I said, well, yes.

He said, everywhere I go I see your records.

And who is your distributor?

I said, The Holy Spirit.

And he said, The Holy.

And and, But the Lord did what he said.

He distributed them all over the world.

All will be paid.

For I'm in the heart of the Bible Belt on highway 71, south of Alexandria in Lake County, Louisiana, home of Lee's lunchroom.

Since 1928, they served a variety of delicious pies, including my favorite chocolate.

Bon appetit.

Lee's lunchroom in LA County, just off I-49, has sold more than 75,000 pies in a single year.

It's still worth a stop now.

On your way to Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge today is an amalgamation of all the cultures indigenous to Louisiana.

It is neither WASPy nor Cajun.

It is religiously and racially diverse.

Its old state capitol, built in the 1850s, has been home to much history.

That building has been called a place of great men, magnificent gestures, political intrigue and war.

It was the site of the Louisiana Secession Convention in 1861, and the Huey Long impeachment trial in 1929.

After the Civil War, Baton Rouge became the permanent capital city and also home of the LSU Fighting Tigers.

The Tigers took their nickname from a battalion so named during the Civil War.

Appropriately, it included 24 different nationalities.

They were known as wharf rats, cutthroats, and bad characters, and were one of the most feared soldiers of the Confederacy.

LSU's memorial tower, the Campanile, is now a military museum paying tribute to the LSU graduates who served in sacrificed.

LSU actually opened in 1860 and Pikeville before the war as Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy.

Its first president, actually superintendent, was William Tecumseh Sherman, who resigned to join the Union Army.

LSU has long been known as the Old War School, and said to have produced more officers than any other university in America except the military academies and perhaps Texas A&M.

In fact, 19 of its students rose to the rank of brigadier general or greater during the World War Two era.

A future president of LSU, General Troy Middleton, played a key role in the battle of the bulge and the liberation of concentration camps.

Two LSU students, whose hometowns are separated by the Mississippi River, became common Dean of the United States Marine Corps, General Robert H. Barrow from Saint Francis Ville, and General John Archer Luzerne from New Rhodes.

It was a New Orleanian, Andrew Higgins, whom General Dwight Eisenhower credited as the man who won World War Two.

For us, this is the famous Higgins boat, you know, the military designation is LCV Landing Craft Vehicle personnel, but that Higgins name just stuck and was spread all over the world.

It's an extension of almost, you could say, Louisiana swamp culture.

It's a vessel that Higgins had designed from the Eureka, which could crawl through swamps, could run up on banks, run over logs.

It was then pretty soon, he sees that his unique boats have an application in helping the US Navy land over an open beach.

So this is where about a platoon of 36 men and or 8,000 pounds of cargo or a small vehicle can fit in.

Did Andrew Higgins come up with the concept of using this boat for the military?

Did they come to him?

Higgins, kind of for CSU, you know, he knew that the Navy was looking for a surf landing boat, and he knew he had the right product.

Navy wasn't necessarily interested in listening to him, but his determination and his capability proved that what he had created was exactly what they needed.

But it isn't just, you know, Josh, this exhibit, it does a tribute, really, to General Claire Shenault from waterproof, Louisiana, who led the Flying Tigers.

Yeah.

Shenault.

We saw with Higgins that Louisiana had the sea covered.

And so with Shenault, we have the air covered as well.

He's, really an aviation pioneer in tactics.

And he leaves Army service to become Shane Kai shek's aviation advisor.

And with American entry into the war, he forms the Avg, or American Volunteer Group and famously defends Chinese cities with volunteer pilots and the Flying Tigers.

That's the name of his outfit.

Yep.

They are, very famous for their P-40 war hawks with their shark's teeth on them, a big, ferocious looking aircraft.

And it really carried their reputation quite well.

And Baton Rouge is also home to Southern University, one of the nation's most prominent historically black universities, with one of the most well known and beloved marching bands, the Human Jukebox began.

And musically, there's no singular sound identified with Louisiana's capital city yet.

Baton Rouge is memorialized in song by one of country music's most legendary performers.

I have to ask you, Baton Rouge, is it time?

When Garth Brooks played it live in 2022 at Tiger Stadium, it registered on the Richter scale, rolling.

Now, once for me, all three got a song.

I love that about Blue Child.

If could have been with you.

Better Than Ezra rocketed from playing at fraternity parties on Campus Is Good to the multi-platinum album deluxe that featured a number one hit on Billboard's Modern Rock tracks chart.

It was good.

The, before them was John, Fred, Gloria, John, Fred and his Playboy band hit number one in early 1968 with one of the decade's most memorable songs, Judy in the Sky, this I Want You, Mom.

I don't.

Two blues greats born across the river from Baton Rouge also reached stardom.

Slim Harpo from Lobdell, was a master of the harmonica.

Baby Scratch My Back hit number one on Billboard's R&B chart in 1966.

And buddy Guy, a native of Lead Sauce in Point Copy, perish took the blues sound he nurtured in Louisiana to Chicago and ultimately became, according to Eric Clapton, the best guitar player alive.

He won 11 Grammys and a lifetime achievement award.

Are.

You're damn right I got the Blues people for my hair.

Down, down to my shoe.

Just a dream, just a dream.

A Baton Rouge High boy Jimmy Clinton topped the R&B charts in the late 1950s.

Trainers in blue jeans and speaking of Venus in blue jeans, I think that that's Kentwood Britney Spears, the first pop icon of the late 90s and the biggest star of the early 2000.

And I know that you one minute she went from a mouseketeer on the Mickey Mouse Club.

What I did in this game to your mom, to the Princess of Pop in this new location of in Louisiana, musicians created another distinctive blend of pop music.

Swamp pop, as it's known, is a blend of early rock n roll, R&B, and country with a Cajun influence.

As we near the end of our travels around the state, let's head back to where it all began with art icons and a British paper.

Come in there was not as many as there was a while ago.

That song, though factually inaccurate, was the number one song in America in 1959.

It's sung by Johnny Horton, another of the great talents that debuted on the Louisiana Hayride.

They began to run and went down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Battle of New Orleans actually took place in Chalmette in Saint Bernard Parish.

It's arguably the most significant battle on American soil ever fought against a foreign aggressor, and it was helped by Louisiana's favorite Rogue One.

So, hey, Jean, the feet you're Louisiana's most famous pirate.

Oh, pirate.

I, I'm a privateer and, entrepreneur.

You smuggled people and contraband and.

Quite well, you clashed with our governor, William C.C.

Claiborne.

Not affair.

Well, he he put up signs here in the corner offering $500 for your capture.

And I showed him some say without you, America would have lost the battle of New Orleans.

I hate the word hero, but, yeah, it was kind of old.

Me.

The British don't think it gets on the feet to help with the invasion worlds.

Well, the fed knew the value of commodities paled in comparison to the value of information.

So he approached General Jackson with an offer he just couldn't refuse.

Technically, the Treaty of Ghent had already ended the War of 1812, but since both sides were yet to formally ratify the decision, the Brits, still scorned from the American Revolution decades before, believed they could dramatically smash the port of New Orleans and gain a foothold in the New World.

They were wrong.

How did they know we'd be here?

I don't know.

The battle commenced in the early morning hours of January 8th, 1815, lasted less than 30 minutes.

It's shown on the beach, but try to.

Lafitte's ragtag group of misfits repelled the British Empire, taking minimal casualties and inflicting major damage.

The Crescent City and the nation were saved.

If it weren't for me, you'd be speaking English right now.

We do speak English.

You get what I'm saying?

New Orleans, not so much.

A melting pot is a boiling pot where this human gumbo began simmering centuries ago and remains a delicious mixture even today.

It's a place in love with life, said Tennessee Williams, who called the French Quarter home while writing Streetcar Named Desire.

Where else said Walt Disney?

Can you find iniquity and antiquity so close together?

Indeed, where else would a bordello be the birthplace of a unique American form of music?

There is us in New Orleans from 1897 to 1917, the Big Easy created perhaps the most famous red light district in America.

Storyville was adjacent to the French Quarter, and it was a legal red light district that New Orleans City Council was by the name of.

Story thought that look like bordellos and because they were purple velvet walls and like chandeliers, apparently, you know, we tore it down and it just makes every time I go about it, I just like, God, why did we do that?

With the Jazz Museum in the old U.S. mint and Dave, we know jazz got its start in New Orleans.

And really, Storyville was a big part of that story.

Storyville was a big part of it.

I mean, the music started all over town.

But Storyville was a big part because there were many music venues in there, such as the big 25 and Pete La LA's all along Iberville Street, where a lot of the early greats got started, such as King Oliver, Kid Ory, and Jelly Roll.

Morton started playing literally when he was a teen in the brothels along Basin Street.

If Storyville wasn't the birthplace of jazz, it certainly was the nursery, and Louis Armstrong became the most famous of all New Orleans musician.

I see trees of green.

A child of poverty who traveled a rocky road of rags to riches, from scorns to horns.

Sent to the poor waifs home for juvenile delinquents.

And I think to myself.

Armstrong was taken in by a Jewish family named Chernoff Sky, who hired him for menial jobs.

The family also helped purchase the instrument, a cornet that would propel him to become perhaps the most recognized and beloved New Orleanian ever.

He got his nickname Satchmo because his mouth was so big it was said to resemble a satchel head.

And when it comes to female performers, this amateur man, no one has had the staying power of Irma Thomas.

Could Irma Thomas have happened anywhere but New Orleans?

No.

Why is that?

Because my early beginnings was right here in New Orleans, in the neighborhoods that I grew up in, was surrounded by music, and I never had a clue that I would actually be in the business.

But I was enjoying life because I've always loved music.

And as a small child, when my mother couldn't find me, she knew where to come.

She was firm in the nearest bar room, listening to the jukebox.

I wish, I wish it was who?

Shit.

Do you remember when you were given the name the soul Queen of New Orleans?

Yes, I do, because my drummer at that time, he didn't want to call me to sing.

And grandmother.

So he came up with the soul queen of New Orleans, and in 1989, they made it official.

The young lady you're about to meet, a distinctively different singer.

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Irma Thomas.

You can't blame me.

Tried to shame me and still can't believe you.

When was the first time you ever sang?

Well, the very first time I ever sang was.

I was about 5 or 6 years old.

That's when I recognized I had a voice in church in New Orleans.

Yes and no.

I think a lot of you got your start singing in the church, I guess.

Always.

Well, wait, when you when you grew up in Louisiana, especially in the South, you you belong to somebody's church because it was it was a given.

You went to Sunday school and you went to church on Sundays.

Oh, you didn't go anywhere else.

You didn't go to the movies.

You couldn't go to the playground.

You know, you had to sit on the steps all day long.

So you went to church.

And singing in the church was fun to me because being an only child, I got attention like that.

The traces of gospel continue throughout all forms of New Orleans music.

Oh yes, I would say 90% of the local musicians from that era were brought up in some church of some county, the Catholic church, Baptist church, sanctified church.

But music was a part of their upbringing in the church.

So it kind of gleaned over into their their lifestyle of performing when they got into the business.

Well, let's have a splendid ovation for Mahalia Jackson.

In the 1940s, Mahalia Jackson was bringing prominence to an entirely different genre gospel Willie crew C fog I.

Long rooted in the black churches of New Orleans, her rendition of Move On Up a Little Higher was the first gospel song to reach the top of the charts.

She later became the first female vocalist to ever win a Grammy, got You Got Your B, and later joined Satchmo as Louisiana's first two recipients of a Lifetime Grammy Award.

Incidentally, the Grammy Award itself was named by a New Orleanian, J. Dana, who in 1958 won a naming contest sponsored by the Recording Industry of America.

In the 50 years since then, at least one and usually more native Louisianans was nominated at least every year except two.

Satchmo recorded a gospel classic that would come to define Louisiana.

It took on even more significant meaning for the Crescent City.

When the NFL awarded a franchise to New Orleans, and the Saints literally came marching in.

Rock n roll, pop and rhythm and blues all developed nationally in the 1950s and 60s.

Antoine Fats Domino was at the forefront of each, from Blueberry Hill to Ain't That a Shame, you better Shake That 1011 top ten hits from 1955 to 1960.

You could never say that Fats Domino was underappreciated, but both the Beatles and Elvis revered loved him.

Everybody loves fat.

What you up there on the stand?

Fats kind of started this R&B, rock and roll thing, and another example of a louisianan who shaped the course of music history, exactly how he shaped music in general.

I'm looking to New Orleans.

I met his agent and he said, James, I could never get fat to move on you.

I think Irma Thomas might be the most underappreciated vocalist.

I mean, she's really appreciated down here, but she would show God you guys how my husband got.

Please don't mess with my name.

You can hear me.

Please don't mess with my name when you can hear.

My husband was recorded when I actually recorded you could have my husband in late 1959, and I think they released it early.

60 is, believe it or not, it's one of my most requested songs that have shaken Mama and It's Raining, a three of my most requested songs and ironically, hip shaking.

Mom and Gentlemen always asked me to sing that one, and a gentleman always asked me to sing.

You could have my husband, too.

Well that's interesting.

Well, when the when they don't understand that your husband is also your man, then they'll figure it out.

Oh, you.

Jazz and soul are not the only two musical genres on which New Orleans has left an indelible mark on them.

Over in 1859, the French opera house opened at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse streets.

It was believed to be the oldest opera house in America, and stood until 1919 when destroyed by fire.

Until in New Orleans, music is a family affair.

Three surnames in particular stand out the patriarch of the Marsalis family was Ellis Marsalis Jr, a jazz musician and educator.

The musical gene he passed to his sons was supercharged.

Branford.

Wynton.

Delfino and Jason.

And there's the Baptiste family, the most famous of whom is John.

A six time Grammy Award winner and, of course, the Neville family.

The Neville brothers are Charles, Aaron and Cyril.

Aaron's distinctive voice eventually led to a solo career.

Tell It Like It Is.

Art Neville founded the inimitable band The Meters, known down to the Audubon juke, the oh, I can't think of any genre of music that New Orleans has an influence in some way or another, mainly because of the different cultures that have migrated to the state of Louisiana and specifically to New Orleans in general.

We have to realize in our history, back in the day, New Orleans was the only port city that connected America to the rest of the world.

So a lot of people moved here in hopes of better their condition.

And instead of just better in their condition, they all put together the music, the food, and we became a city that's very unique to the world.

And there's so many world famous musicians who call New Orleans home, but they're probably an equal number of not so well known musicians who are extremely talented, who who call New Orleans home.

True, true.

I think they come here to to to kind of glean some of the atmosphere, to see what it is that we do that makes it so different.

But it's an ingrown thing.

You have to live it.

It's not something that you learn.

You have to actually live it.

And once you've lived it, then you understand what's going on.

The Neville Brothers came together to perform in a recording session for the Wild Chop Atlas, a mardi Gras Indian group led by their uncle.

He dance in the yard.

The Mardi Gras Indians are one of New Orleans most unique traditions.

My name is Irving Honey Bannister.

I have been promoted to the chief of the crew of Wild West, which is the oldest documented gang.

When I say gang, I mean term the tribe.

Well, we may as Native Americans to pay homage to the Native Americans down here in Louisiana who help the slaves will run away.

This was our way of saying thank you.

The Mardi Gras battles among gangs originally were violent confrontations, but over the years this evolved into a competition as to whose dress and artwork is the most elaborate and beautiful.

This wealth of musical talent exists in no small part thanks to the powerhouse that is the New Orleans second line.

For over a century, the sounds of brass bands parading through the neighborhood every Sunday have inspired many a young New Orleans musician to pick up an instrument.

The past three decades have seen the rise of new genres rap, hip hop and bounce.

One pioneer of rap and hip hop is Percy Miller, aka master P, the founder of No Limit Records, set up for Dwayne Michael Carter Jr, known professionally as Lil Wayne, is recognized as one of the greatest rappers of all time to make me like.

Like what?

I say, I like that she like me like the three iconic New Orleans musicians defy labels Al Hirt and Pete Fountain, whose soulful clarinet landed him on The Johnny Carson Show 59 times.

Would you welcome the one and only Pete Funk and Kenny?

And Harry Connick Jr with one of America's most beautiful and recognizable voices.

Do you know what it me?

The Miss New Orleans?

No.

Where else in the world can you find the juxtaposition of revelry and reverence, sanctity and insanity, prayer and perversity as exists in New Orleans, and nothing speaks of New Orleans and perhaps the entire state more than Mardi Gras.

It's a frenzy of frivolity and consumption sandwiched between the two holiest days on the Christian calendar.

And that, my friends, is why Louisiana, Mississippi, or any place else.

She spreads her Bountiful bayous to the Gulf of Mexico and welcomes southbound waters of the Mississippi flow.

She shelters wildlife creatures in the basins murky mist and harbor ships with foreign flags and varied cargo lists.

Her southern half is dotted with tall rigs that find black gold amidst the knobby cypress knees and Cajun towns of old, the northern half is likewise blessed with miles of fertile soil where farmers work their acreage and drillers pump the oil.

Her festivals are feisty, and her roots reach France and Spain.

Her capital stretches high above, as does her sugar cane.

I want to her politics are action packed, like an autumn Saturday night, when all eyes rest on grassy fields where padded players fight.

She revels in the merriment which gave birth to the blues.

She hears the streetcar clanging and sees the steamer cruise.

She's known for nature laced with law and home to a happy blend of appetizing delicacies and fun that knows no end.

She's a haven for the sportsman.

She's a friendly southern smile.

She's a River road plantation in antebellum style.

She's an oyster on the half shell.

She's a lonely lover's oak.

She's joie de viel.

Soul party and a funny Cajun joke.

She's a cypress stand and a jazzy band.

She's a peppery meat pie.

She's a powdery treat and a parish seat.

She's a staple in the sky.

She's zydeco, she's the hayride.

She's the blessing of the fleet.

She's a fishing troll and a boudin ball.

She's a stroll down Bourbon Street.

She's a placid lake.

She's a piney wood.

She's a cricket in the night.

She's a fado doe.

She's an old pyro and a soaring duck in flight.

She's a bright doubloon and a fiddlers ten.

And a pasture land of green.

She's a mighty dome and a rural home.

I mean row after row of bean.

She's a boiler full of crawfish and the pelicans long beak.

She is Louisiana, and her beauty is unique.

Oh, how do we do?

Just let me eat.

We.

That says it all the gumbo ready for the day we bring the girls.

I'm gonna be late.

Gumbo.

Hurry up before they hit spring.

For some of the feeling.

Gumbo.

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