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A History of the Maple Leaf Bar University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2017 Native Music And Regular Gigs: A History Of The Maple Leaf Bar Pieter Frank Kossen University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Kossen, Pieter Frank, "Native Music And Regular Gigs: A History Of The Maple Leaf Bar" (2017). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 873. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/873 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NATIVE MUSIC AND REGULAR GIGS: A HISTORY OF THE MAPLE LEAF BAR A Thesis Presented for the Master of Arts Southern Studies Degree University of Mississippi Pieter Frank Kossen December 2017 ©Copyright Pieter Frank Kossen December 1, 2017 All Rights Reserved Abstract The purpose of this work is to construct a history of the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana in order to determine its place and establish its importance in the musical history of New Orleans. Opened in early 1974, the Maple Leaf Bar is the oldest continually- functioning music club in the city of New Orleans outside of the French Quarter, and is accorded a share of the credit for the current popularity in New Orleans of the roots music of New Orleans and Louisiana. This will be accomplished by identifying and examining common traits the Maple Leaf Bar shares with prominent clubs from New Orleans’s history, and also by identifying traits that make the Maple Leaf Bar exceptional in this history. This work will utilize several oral history interviews of patrons and employees of the Maple Leaf Bar, as well as musicians who have performed there, along with extensive newspaper and magazine accounts and listings. This work will establish the significance of the Maple Leaf Bar as it relates to the musical history of New Orleans, Louisiana, and make a case for the importance of bars and nightclubs in the history of popular music. ii This work is dedicated to my wife, Blair, and my parents, Tom and Connie. Thank you for standing by me and putting up with me. iii Table of Contents ABSTRACT……………………………………………ii DEDICATION………………………………………..iii Ch. 1- INTRODUCTION…………………………….……….……1 Ch. 2- SELLING A BAD IDEA……..……………….……….....30 Ch. 3- FIRST NOTES…………..…………………………….……51 Ch. 4 THE HONEYDRIPPER & THE PIANO PRINCE...66 Ch. 5 NEIGHBORS…………….…………………………….……..84 Ch. 6 MUSICAL IDENTITY……………………………………..91 Ch. 7 MAKE WAY FOR THE REBIRTH………….………114 Ch. 8 HANK’S STAMP …………………………………………124 Ch. 9 “WE ARE STILL HERE!”………………………………139 Ch. 10 FREEDOM TO EXPERIMENT…………………….155 Ch. 11 CONCLUSION…………………………………………..167 BIBLIOGRAPHY………….177 VITA……………….195 vi Ch. 1- INTRODUCTION On Sunday February 12, 2012, Rebirth Brass Band won the Grammy award for “Best Regional Roots Music Album” for their 2011 release Rebirth of New Orleans . They were the first New Orleans brass band to win the prestigious award from the Recording Academy and are still, to date, the only one that has. The band flew home to New Orleans the day after the ceremony and was greeted by an impromptu victory party in the baggage claim area of the Louis Armstrong International Airport. It was a triumphant and touching role-reversal for the band members. For years, Rebirth had themselves been one of the bands hired to perform at the airport for recently landed visitors to the Crescent City. This time it was their arrival that was serenaded. Band alumni Kermit Ruffins and Kenneth Terry were on hand with both the Baby Boyz and Kinfolk brass bands in tow. A few dozen other friends and fans were also there. Rebirth sousaphone player and co-leader Philip Fraizer was exuberant. “I never thought we’d have a band waiting for us!” he said to a reporter. “It was a big surprise, a big surprise!” 1 1 Geraldine Wyckoff, “And The Winners Are…,” Louisiana Weekly , Feb. 20, 2002, http://www.louisianaweekly.com/and-the-winners-are%E2%80%A6/ . 1 Rebirth Brass Band formed in 1983 when its members were all still students at Joseph S. Clark High School in New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood. They were one of the earliest groups to update the traditional brass band sound for contemporary audiences by adding a heavy dose of funk and elements of hip hop. 2 Over the years, “Rebirth has gained an international reputation as the primary innovators of the brass band tradition,” according to anthropologist Matt Sakakeeny. 3 In New Orleans, they are regarded simply as “an institution.” They earned this designation through years of relentless gigging all over the city, playing countless parades, second lines, and parties. It is also due, in no small part, to their nearly three decades-long relationship with a small music club located on Oak Street in the uptown neighborhood of Carrollton called the Maple Leaf Bar. The Maple Leaf was opened in 1974 by six people who had no intention of opening a music club. Mostly academics and writers, they just wanted to open a bar where they could drink with their friends. But they decided to have a traditional jazz band play the opening night party. When the fledgling bar owners saw how much the crowd enjoyed the music, they decided to make it a regular feature. By the time the Rebirth Brass Band stepped on to the bar’s small stage, the Maple Leaf was the oldest music club in Uptown. It was also one of the very few that featured live music with a cover charge seven nights a week. Rebirth Brass Band played their first gig at 2 Jay Mazza, Up Front and Center: New Orleans Music at The End of The 20 th Century (New Orleans: Threadhead Press, 2012), 93. 3 Matt Sakakeeny, Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 22. 2 the Maple Leaf on Tuesday, August 7, 1990. 4 With a few exceptions, they have been there every Tuesday night since. It’s hard to overstate the significance of Rebirth’s Tuesday night gig at the Maple Leaf to the musical history of New Orleans. Sakakeeny says it is “the most renowned weekly gig on the New Orleans musical calendar.” 5 The Times-Picayune , New Orleans’s leading newspaper, proclaimed it to be “a New Orleans musical touchstone,” 6 and The New York Times once labeled it “one of the essentials of New Orleans music.” 7 To some New Orleanians, this weekly ritual is much more than simply another estimable musical tradition in a city renowned for them. “Long before Katrina,” reflected Pulitzer Prize-winning Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, “the Rebirth shows at Maple Leaf were where I'd drop in from time to time to remind myself why I live here, why I love here. Why I am here.” 8 So, the day after Rebirth Brass Band returned to New Orleans with their shiny new Grammy statuette, they did what they always do on Tuesdays. They grabbed their horns and headed Uptown, this time taking along their little gilded gramophone with them. Oak Street welcomed them like conquering heroes. The 4 John Swenson, “The Life of Rebirth Brass Band,” Offbeat , May 1, 2014, http://www.offbeat.com/articles/the-life-rebirth/. 5 Sakakeeny, Roll With It , 22. 6 Doug MacCash, “Rebirth Brass Band Blasts The Maple Leaf on Tuesday Nights,” The Times-Picayune , May 23, 2013, http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2013/05/the_rebirth_brass_band_turns_3.h tml . 7 Pableaux Johnson, “Sounds of Vitality for New Orleans,” The New York Times , Nov. 26, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/travel/26music.html . 8 Chris Rose, “Rebirth a The Maple Leaf,” The Times-Picayune , Aug. 25, 2006, http://www.nola.com/rose/index.ssf/2006/08/rebirth_at_the_maple_leaf.html . 3 street in front of the Maple Leaf was closed down for a block party. 9 Hundreds of people gathered in front of the club to celebrate with the band. Playing the most reliable gig in the city for more than twenty years means that a whole lot of people have spent a whole lot of Tuesday nights inside the tiny bar on Oak Street watching Rebirth Brass Band do their thing. For reasons that will be discussed shortly, that kind of prolonged exposure drenched in joy and sweat can’t help but form a powerful and cherished bond. The intimacy of the tiny Maple Leaf only reinforces this connection. Rebirth Tuesdays feel more like a party than a performance, a party that happens to be led by the guys with the horns. The Maple Leaf Bar is housed in a two-story frame townhouse built in the late nineteenth century. It has a second-floor balcony overlooking Oak Street. On the night of the party, a banner was hung on across the front of the balcony that read: Congratulations To Rebirth Brass Band 2012 Grammy Winners New Orleans Best Once they had all arrived, Rebirth went up on the balcony of the Maple Leaf. After basking in the adulation for a moment, they put their horns up to their lips and blasted out the first notes ever played in the city of New Orleans by a Grammy- winning brass band. They played a few songs, then went back downstairs to mingle with friends and fans before the show inside was due to start. Fans lined up to take 9 Jan Ramsey, “Oak Street Block Party Honoring Grammy Winners Rebirth Brass Band Tonight,” Offbeat , Feb.
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