The following is a stereo presentation of WYES TV New Orleans.

The music relate obviously is the ultimate fantasy.

the right music can put you over into that realm of fantasy.

I'm Peggy Scott Laborde.

The Music of Mardi Gras.

I can best be described as Cinderella songs, melodies that flourish once a year.

Even go to the ball and then disappear at midnight.

There are waltzes, jazz tunes, rhythm and blues songs, some with silly lyrics.

Forgotten but not gone.

Here he is of Carnival's past and others are real gems.

♪ We owe our Catholic French ancestors a thank you for importing their celebration that combines a pagan salute to spring and Christian feasting before a period of atonement.

This carnival or farewell to the flesh recognize the days of fasting that follow in preparation for Easter.

It's a moveable feast.

In 1699, the Explorer Abbeville happened to be moving around the New world and landed 30 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River on of all days, Mardi Gras.

19 years later, his brother Bienville started the settlement of New Orleans.

Louis, the 14th, issued a decree allowing the new world to celebrate Mardi Gras, and these colonists chose to acknowledge the date with occasional public brawls.

But mostly through masked balls encouraging dance, which was quickly becoming a very popular form of amusement, was the marquee to vawdrey the colonies.

Second provincial governor.

He tried to duplicate the grandeur of the sinkings caught in a swampy city not accustomed to such ideas.

But pomp and circumstance prevailed, for the most part, even beyond the boundaries of the carnival season, which last from January 6th, 12 days after Christmas until Mardi Gras.

These early Orleanians enjoyed kicking up their heels with a special fervor.

Well, you know, there was an Englishman came through here back in the early years of the 19th century named Thomas Ashe.

And Thomas said this is the place where they dance the most.

And Claiborne, William Claiborne, the governor, the first governor of Louisiana, wrote to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson when he was making reports.

He said, these people are very.

He said the Creoles have no education.

He got them all mad, you know.

He said they have no education because they really did have no formal education except those that were sent to Europe to study in Paris.

But he said they have no education.

And the one thing they do best is dance.

In those days, people really danced.

They danced.

They didn't get down like today.

You know, nowadays you don't hardly even dance.

You sort of wiggle around the floors dark and some slime around and you sort of losing smooths and everybody sort of shakes.

But in those days, people knew how to dance several types of dances.

They did the Scottish The polka.

They did the Lancers.

Among the more popular sides for the ball mosks, as they were called, was the Orleans Theater.

Today, the site of the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter.

Costumes were often borrowed from the prop room of the theater.

Music for the dances were provided primarily by orchestras, and the local theaters are ballrooms, be it for private balls or soirees open to the public by fee.

As one early piece of sheet music explained, there were balls for all.

Since the outdoor celebration of Mardi Gras had been banned while the city was under Spanish rule, it was almost three decades under American rule until Maskers took to the streets, primarily in a very disorganized fashion.

Dressed in outlandish headpieces from France, many paraded on foot, horseback and in carriages and were usually on their way to a ball.

Throughout the 1840s and fifties, numerous attempts were made to organize processions on Mardi Gras with mixed success.

But in 1857, the Commerce Parade emerged with the organizational savvy provided by local socialites and a group from Mobile.

The theme was Milton's Paradise Lost.

Members of the Mystic Krewe, as they were known, danced down the street as devils to bands playing marching music.

The ball was held at the Variety's Theater on Gravity between Brown and Carondelet Streets.

Music for the ball was provided by the Myers Orchestra.

Illusion played a major role in the early parades, and in the balls to theaters were modified, often with the orchestra seats covered by a temporary flooring for dancing.

But a theatrical sense remained.

We have two tableaus like the Tableau Roulade, which is the old term for a float rolling tableau.

And then at the at the ball itself, you have what they would call a tableau vivant, which was a living tableau.

You see now where the curtains would open and there would be the crew posed.

So for instance, you did a theme like the Conquest of the Aztecs by who did Cortez.

Okay, So you would have one theme and everybody would be posed.

Say it was the the Aztec Emperor Montezuma meets Cortez.

Well, the curtain would open and the orchestra would play some sort of some sort of Mexican music.

Maybe.

You see, it didn't have to necessarily meet qualify as Aztec music.

But what I would be and the curtain would open and there would be the members of the crew posed in like statues.

Most balls were held at the French Opera House, located on the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse streets today, the site of the landmark Hotel from 1859 until its destruction by fire in 1919.

This elliptical auditorium with four tiers of seats in addition to the Marquette, could see 2300.

It was known for its fine acoustics and the color scheme was white, trimmed with red.

A good time was had no matter what.

There was a fire, you know, the set caught fire, but they put it out.

They they must have brought down the asphalt curtain or something.

But the set caught fire and they went in with fire hoses and put the fire above the ball.

Continue.

The man describes the people still in the ballroom dancing.

I guess they figured, well, we're going to we've paid for this night and we're going to dance, you know, And it's just there's a newspaper account that actually describes the people still dancing in the puddles of water on the dance floor.

♪ Playing for the balls would be the Opera House Orchestra.

Emile Tasso conducted and also led a band that played outdoor concerts at the West End amusement park.

In the orchestra was George Poletti, who became a popular orchestra leader in his own right during the carnival season.

Dance was king.

There were very formal dances.

You know, other men and women were lined up on either side.

They crossed each other and made all these figures and patterns.

The music that they played most at the balls was the quadrille and the waltz.

Of course, the waltz in those days was considered to be very sinful, and it was denounced in the pulpit by every denomination because those were dances in which two bodies actually touched.

And that was not approved by polite society.

But nevertheless, it was it was carried on anyway.

But by the late 1830s, New Orleans had become a center for the sheet music publishing business.

Music was a real barometer of the city.

It had a lot to say about those things which were unique to New Orleans and especially New Orleans more than other places, because music played such an integral part in the city's culture.

Local composers were willing to write songs for just about anything and publish them at the drop of a hat, and they would roll off the presses in time for any event.

So for Christmas, for Valentine's Day, for any of the major holidays, you had special music.

But especially at Mardi Gras.

And year after year, the local composers kept cranking out songs that honored different aspects of carnival or individual different crews.

♪ Fortunately, thanks to historian such as Al Rose, who have collected sheet music over the years, we have a chance to hear the songs of Carnival from almost a century ago.

This is the moment spoke of written by August Davis in 1878.

It was written for the Crew of Moments, which is one of the oldest carnival organizations.

This piece is written in a true European polka style and could probably be played in any German beer garden.

♪ And this is the Kickapoo Waltz, written by J.W.

Eckerd, the Kickapoo, with the title given to one of the important officers of the carnival club, the Funny 40 Fellows.

This was a satirical carnival club, but this music is dedicated respectfully to the funny, funny fellows.

♪ This is the carnival march, written in 1894 for the Society of the Atlanteans.

It was written by Betsy Shearer, one of New Orleans many women composers.

♪ But the song from that period, which has become the anthem of Mardi Gras, wasn't home grown.

It was borrowed, as were the costumes to properly entertain royalty during the carnival of 1872.

If Ever I Cease To Love was actually adapted from a play called Bluebeard, which was a popular Victorian entertainment Broadway show in the 1870s when the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia came to New Orleans in 1872.

He was apparently much enamored of Lydia Thompson, who was the star of that show.

Consequently, when a group of Orleanians got together and organized a mardi Gras parade in his honor, they called it Rex, of course.

And it's been Rex ever since.

They used that song.

One historian maintains that while the song may have been played by the parade bands to chide His Highness, there's a possibility that it wasn't played for him as the bands passed the reviewing stand at City Hall.

Somewhere along the line they got the idea this thing was played for the year and you know, you perpetuate an era long enough.

It becomes the strictest truth.

So it wasn't played for the Grand Duke.

It was no Russian national anthem.

It would have been an international crisis if you hadn't greeted the grand Duke of Russia with his own tune.

Other sites for early carnival balls include the Second Variety Theater, later called the Grand Opera House, which was located in part of the land occupied by the Maison Blanche building on Canal Street.

Combs made his home here after the original varieties was destroyed by fire.

The Rex organization used the Washington Artillery Hall on Saint Charles Avenue between Girard and Julius Streets.

Another popular site for Mardi Gras festivities was the Atheneum, which provided a home for bars, especially after the destruction of the French Opera House.

It was located on the corner of St Charles Avenue and Quiet Street.

Today, the site of the Orleanian Apartments, conductor Leslie George and his orchestra presided.

He was succeeded by Rene Lua, who played for society balls up until his death in 1987.

The Atheneum burned in 1937.

Since then, most balls are held in the municipal auditorium in Armstrong Park.

While the music of today's balls leans more towards current popular themes, there are those among us who yearn for ballads of a bygone era.

Luckily, Carnival is a product of the romantic age, so there's tons of you know, there's there was tons of music to play.

I doubt if the carnival would survive the latter part of the 20th century, because what would you be dancing to the theme to 2000?

Well, I shouldn't say that.

You know, the themes to any number of Steven Spielberg films, you know.

But but because of French opera and Italian opera, we have a legacy of music, beautiful theatrical music.

May we never cease to remember ♪ that Mardi Gras, just about every musician in the city, was usually busy.

And the big the the black bands of the 1900s.

The Excelsior was a big popular band.

Onward Brass Band.

And there'd be country bands would come in, I think a St Joseph Parish band or plantation bands would come in.

There were jobs for everybody, and a lot of bands were just made up on the spot.

Papa Jack Lane, a blacksmith turned drummer, was known as the father of white jazz.

He had as many as six bands working on Mardi Gras.

Lane operated bands under the name New Alliance from 1896 until 1913.

And it seems that being relied on was very important to this bandleader.

And it's interesting, Leon talks about being hired for to play in a dance before the Rex Parade than to play the Rex Parade into the play someplace else.

After five different jobs these men would be running by, all these bands would be crisscrossing the city of New Orleans again to these different places, and they'd be up at the crack of dawn.

They wouldn't go to bed till midnight.

So, I mean, they really worked and they must have played.

You know, people ask what they played, etc..

They played ragtime music and they played March music and some of that.

You said some of the men didn't even know how to read music.

They just played it, you know?

So you get this idea.

It must have been a sort of an interesting sound that they were creating.

Ever since the Mexican military band came in 1884 for the World's Fair, they provided new inspiration for New Orleans musicians because they were so good.

And when they left, they sold their instruments here in 1885.

And Jack Lane, who was known as Papa Lane, and Dave Perkins, a black drummer, went and bought most of the instruments.

And that was the basis of Jack Lane's band.

♪ Black bands, like the Excelsior, Eureka and Onward helped create a fertile atmosphere for the birth of jazz.

Though some of the early music played was by Sousa.

It was an evolving music, loosely played, and for it, Rose has a strict definition.

Jazz is any known melody performed by two or more musical voices, improvising collectively in two for four for a time, and syncopated.

It was inevitable that the music of Mardi Gras would get jazzed up.

It got dressed up for the bars, but now it spilled out into the streets, helping make jazz acceptable to an uptown audience was cornet player Johnny Wiggs.

Johnny starts out as one of the first examples of established uptown New Orleans Society becoming involved in jazz.

And this dates back to the very early twenties, at a time when when he was playing with Norman Brownlee's Orchestra.

The music was perceived like a variety of other things in the turn of the century period as something that had arisen from the street world.

It took the better part of a decade, and maybe even a little bit more than a decade for accepted society, not just in New Orleans, but throughout the country, to to accept it, which was the composer of King Zulu Parade in honor of the only Black Parade of Carnival on banjo for King Zulu Parade is Edmond Doc Swan, who enjoy practicing medicine by day and the banjo and guitar by night to the New Orleans music scene.

He was more than just a musician.

He sort of led to lives are very influential and in Mardi Gras and as an officer of the jazz club as well as being a physician, he did all these other had all these social activities and did a lot to help promote music that way.

A lot of the bands since he has passed on have found that they're missing a lot of work that almost cause bands to break up.

he was a tremendous personality and a lot of fun and he he sang.

He made a record of if ever I Cease to love and it's the most gravel throated thing you have in your life and that maybe added to its charm.

♪ If ever scease to love God help me, ♪ If ever scease to love ♪ if the moon may turn to green cream cheese, ♪ If ever scease to love on drums for this version is Paul Barber, whose parade experience with the onboard Brass band provided him with many music filled.

Mardi Gras was his own composition.

Bourbon Street Parade has become another Shrove Tuesday Standard, ♪ though the words Mardi Gras may not be in the title of every Carnival song.

There are those songs that seem to be played more during the season.

High Society is one of them, and trumpeter Shawky Bonano had quite a few high notes locally and nationally.

♪ Shawky and his kings of Dixieland played a rendition of Buzzards Parade, written by a fondly remembered local pianist ♪ in 1958.

A little earlier, Ahmed had decided to write about his experience growing up around Coliseum Square and living in that neighborhood, seeing all these parades go by, all these clubs.

And so he he wrote it about the buzzards.

The marching club tradition continues today with groups such as the Buzzards and renown clarinetist Pete Fountain's half fast marching club.

Early in his career, recorded March of the Bobcats, accompanied by many of the local members of the nationally famous Bobcats group ♪ Al Hirt.

Rendition of Why We Danced at the Mardi Gras has a hometown ring to it, but was actually written by a definite outsider, Johnny Mercer, who hailed from Savannah, Georgia.

Like New Orleans and New Orleans musicians, thanks to him, our Mardi Gras music list grows ♪ by His Majesty.

Rex said, Let there be more music.

And Rex.

This royal bandwagon proved the suitable solution since 1960.

Whigs, This group in such groups as the Last Straws and the Crawford Ferguson Night Owls have performed on the 1966 bandwagon.

Al Rose served as band master on foot or on Wheels.

The music, which started in the streets, just keeps rolling along ♪ the custom among some New Orleans blacks of dressing up as an Indian has a long and complex heritage, a heritage that goes back to the 1720s, when slaves who gathered to dance and carry on their African cultural traditions at Congo Plains.

What we know is from Regard Square, there was a great respect between the blacks and the Indians.

The Indians were the only people in the new world that were treating them as human beings, and they gave the blacks the new world herbal medicines and knowledge about the sicknesses that are here, that are not there in Africa.

♪ Songs popping up during Mardi Gras that have poured from the chants and response calls of the Indians over the years include New Suit by the Wild Magnolias Tribe.

The song focuses on the annual and costly process of creating a new costume each year, like the efforts of Larry Banach, chief of the Golden Star Hunters ♪ Every year for carnival time ♪ we make a new suit.

♪ Red yellow green, ♪ purple and blue, ♪ we make a new suit.

♪ ♪ Hey, hey hey ♪ Hey pocky a-way The Meters with lead singer Art Neville.

recorded Hey pocky a-way, regarded as the Indian anthem, its lyrics are an outgrowth of Creole, French and other languages.

One theory has it that Pocky a-way is an Indian cry, meaning Get out of the way ♪ Hey pocky a-way ♪ associated with the Indians.

But a rather indirect outgrowth of the culture is the song Big Chief.

It was written by Earl King.

The song was made famous by the late New Orleans pianist Henry Roland Byrd, known as Professor Longhair, or just plain “Fess ” Long Hair's career had mixed success until a renewed appreciation for him took place in the 1970s.

In 1964, Joe A Suto of the One-Stop Record Shop, where Longhair worked, asking for a song for the professor Jealous fantasies.

To me.

Zero.

We're going to track you on the tape.

You sing the lyrics easier, faster than light.

And in the time is running out in the studio and it's costing us You just sing and we'll come back and overdub this later on another track, which never happened.

King's name doesn't appear on the record because he was under contract to Motown at the time ♪ in this 1974 performance on the public television music series Soundstage, a now historic blending of the best of New Orleans rhythm and blues took place.

Dr. John, Professor Longhair, Art Neville in The Meters and Earl King performed, Big Chief ♪ Professor Longhair made his mark on Mardi Gras music as early as 1949, with his composition Mardi Gras in New Orleans, also known as Go to the Mardi Gras.

The song went through numerous versions, including one by Fats Domino until the 1959 version by Long Hair solidify the song's hold on the local music scene.

The unique thing about the sessions we did with him earlier was we use an upright piano and he used an upright piano.

And when he got in the studio to play at a Grand, he had a habit of kicking with his foot against the bottom part of the piano.

So we had a clamp, a board on the two front legs of the grand piano.

So we'd have something to do the tap with his foot, you know.

But he was pretty much a natural performer in those sessions, like many sessions I did, were just putting down what people did.

There wasn't a lot of production involved, and production values, in fact, was simple.

♪ On a rare and little known record is a song Longhair did with the same music but with different lyrics.

No one knows the origin of that record is Saint Louis baby, but apparently it was recorded around 1953, so it was after the Mardi Gras record with the same tune.

But the same same music was just different lyrics.

Now the theory goes that it was probably recorded at a club, a club date, so it was actually a bootleg.

What some regard as the song that epitomizes Carnival is Carnival Time by cab driver Al Johnson.

Well, those were two clubs, you see, And.

Well, I was just visualizing, you know, during carnival time, those clubs are always jam and pack, and they, you know, they just, you know, they just jump in as they were calling it.

Then you see.

So I just say, well throw my baby, baby out the window.

Let those don't burn down.

You know, all because it's carnival time.

♪ Mardi Gras, mambo, mambo.

One of the most enduring songs of the Mardi Gras season is the 1954 version of Mardi Gras Mambo.

It started as a country Western tune by Jody Levins and Lou Welsh.

♪ Mardi Gras Mambo the song here of a disc jockey named Ken Elliot, who was working in a WWE, WWE Eazy Radio.

And Ken was a very popular disc jockey who was known as Air name was Jack the Cat.

And Ken decided that it was possible to do a R&B or black version of the song, but he would have to change the lyrics.

And so Ken took a young group called the Hawk Arts, which consisted of Art Neville and drummer named Johnny Boudreaux.

And he took this young group from Joseph Clark High School into the studio at WBEZ, and they recorded Mardi Gras Mambo, and it was was the lyric.

They changed the lyrics a good deal from the original version.

And there are plenty of other songs perhaps forgotten, but not gone from Carnival's past.

Whether we dance at the Mardi Gras or just listen to music ♪ Carnival Day... ♪ Oh what a big affair.

♪ Carnival day.

♪ Oh what a big affair.

♪ People find New Orleans.

♪ Almost from everwhere.

♪ My poor head is aching.

♪ My two hands are shaking.

♪ The day after Mardi Gras.

♪ Well, I love that Fat Tuesday.

♪ That Wednesday is blues day ♪ or the day after Mardi Gras.

♪ My carnival queen.

♪ She danced and played ♪ and sang The pretty lies and ♪ today she can even bring it al ♪ Roll those bloodshot eyes.

♪ now I'm almost dead here.

♪ But I'll be back next year.

♪ The day after Mardi Gras,