Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 53)

father was a fisherman and a trapper, and we went back didn’t want him to play, she thought he’d get in trouble. “If there and found his father’s old cabin, which was you start playing that jazz those women are gonna eat you abandoned. It was a very emotional experience. I had a up!” She didn’t want him to play. He told me a remarkable clarinet that I’d brought and George asked me if he could story about how he was attacked by some white fraternity borrow my clarinet and he sat on the porch and he played a boys one night. He was on the way home from work and tune, “The Old Rugged Cross.” He wanted to play it for his that’s in my book, Song for My Fathers, word for word the dad. That was a very moving moment. George Lewis was way he told it to me, because I had it on tape. It’s a chilling really my idol and the center of my attention musically for story of being harassed and threatened and finally he all the years that I was down here, until I went off to college pulled out a razor and slashed this boy’s midsection open in 1967. He died in 1969, actually the end of ’68, and I came and the boy died. That was 40, 50 years earlier. I just sat back for his funeral, and I played in his funeral. Clive and there in his living room with my mouth open, thinking how Lars, if I’m not mistaken, also did. That was a very incredible it is, this story he’s telling me, and thinking memorable and moving moment. about that boy and the boy’s mother and again, these were You mentioned some other musicians. Creole George stories that had nothing to do with jazz but it has to do with Guesnon was a very proud tenor banjo player who was a learning lessons about life in this city and life in different Creole from a French-Spanish-Negro background, and very communities and the kinds of conditions people live in. proud of his heritage, like most Creoles. I went to him for Again, very different from what I grew up in, in the lessons as well. He didn’t sheltered background. I could go on teach me the banjo but he with a hundred examples, but the would teach me music. In Chester Zardis story, I think, is “In my generation, I was fact, I think Clive also at emblematic of some of the things I one point went and had was learning from this experience the only local white kid some lessons with him. that went far beyond simply the trying to learn this He’d teach everybody the notes that people were playing. music. I still don’t know same solos. The first thing Raeburn: When I was reading the why, but later on others he would tell me was, book that was one of the anecdotes “Young man, you tryin’ to that really caught my attention, did get interested in it. sound a lot like George too, because it revealed so much But at that time it was a Lewis. Don’t copy George about what these musicians had very unusual thing for Lewis!” I’d say, “Where to go through just to survive and will I get a model? How play their music. We only have somebody from my do I know to play?” limited time so I’d say, a little background to be “Listen! Do what I do!” more music before we get back to hanging around Then he’d get me to copy the next topic. Maybe a couple Preservation Hall ” his solos instead of songs back to back. You copying George Lewis! mentioned “The Old He’d say, “Don’t copy Rugged Cross,” I don’t George Lewis! Lewis know if you feel like fakes a tune; he only doing that one, but I’ll knows half the tune.” I leave it up to you. think he was jealous of George Lewis’ celebrity. He was a Sancton: I think I’ll do that second. We’ll do two tunes. very proud man. I think he didn’t have the stardom that he The repertoire we heard at Preservation Hall was quite thought he deserved. I learned many things from him, not varied. There were blues, there were so-called Dixieland only about music but also about race relations and the tunes, standards, there were lots of hymns, spirituals, there Creoles and things that I didn’t really know much about were Creole tunes. This is one tune I guess you’d call it a but he had lots of opinions on many things, including Dixieland tune. It was recorded by the original Dixieland Louisiana politics. For some reason he thought everything Jazz Band that I heard many bands play, including the had been idyllic in Louisiana, really had been perfect, until George Lewis Band. Kid Thomas has done a fantastic the day that those “Cajuns” came in and got control of the version of it, and this is called “That’s A’Plenty.” government and messed everything up. I don’t know [Musical interlude] exactly who he was talking about since Edwin Edwards Sancton: We’ll do a gospel number next. This is called hadn’t shown up yet as governor. But he had theories on “The Old Rugged Cross.” And this was also one of George everything and he was a remarkable person to be exposed Lewis’ specialties that I learned to play by listening and to. You’re 12, 13 years old and you’re sitting at a stool in his watching when George Lewis played this. front room in his half a double shotgun on North Roman [Musical interlude] Street, and listening to him talk. You were being exposed to Raeburn: This was so great! Well that too reminds me of something that is a completely different universe from the the fact that even though you incubated in the Preservation neighborhood you lived in, or the neighborhood I lived in, Hall environment, you didn’t just stay there. Maybe you’d the community I came from. There were so many others: like to talk a little bit about your experience working with The Humphrey brothers, Percy and Willie, and Sweet someone whom we miss terribly, Mr. Harold Dejan, and the Emma. Chester Zardis, the bass player. You mentioned Olympia Band and what it was like to get inside the Chester. I spent a lot of time with Chester. I’d go over to his community, work in the brass bands on the streets, and house and he would talk, tell lots of stories about the old then to hear the musicians talk about it afterwards at Buster days how he started playing bass secretly — his mother Holmes. Summer 2008/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 53

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities George Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Cajuns, Blue Dogs & Beyond Katrina The Historic New Orleans Collection After The Flood Faubourg Marigny: The Creole “Suburb” Preserving New Orleans Jazz, One Generation at a Time: Conversation & Music with Tom Sancton Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Architecture Baton Rouge Photographs, 1863-1910 Jazz Notes The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Louisiana Association of Museums Nature of the “Beast” Louisiana State Museum Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.