Rhythm of Storyville
Storyville was filled with cabarets, dance halls, saloons, and honky-tonks—all of which required music on an almost nightly basis. The ubiquitous nature of music within the District is apparent in Storyville’s guidebooks. Madams’ advertisements regularly emphasized the musical offerings of their establishments, and the last known edition of Blue Book, the most famous of the District’s guidebooks, includes a list of nine cabarets.
Musicians stood to make more money in Storyville than in other musical hot spots around the city. The District’s clubs, such as Funky Butt Hall, the Entertainers (also known as the 101 and 102 Ranch), the Big 25, Pete Lala’s, and the Frenchman’s, gave musicians ample opportunity to work, challenge each other, and experiment with new sounds. Artists such as Buddy Bolden, Freddie Keppard, Manuel “Fess” Manetta, Clarence Williams, Oscar “Papa” Celestin, Edward “Kid” Ory, Joe “King” Oliver, Johnny Dodds, and youngsters Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet found plentiful work and abundant inspiration. These performers used their gigs and cutting contests (competitions between musicians) to refine new styles, contributing to the development of the jazz sound emerging from New Orleans. Of the many musicians who played in the District, all but a few (the piano player Kid Ross being the most well-known exception) were of African descent.
The music played in the clubs ran the gamut from slow blues to ragtime, but was almost exclusively designed for dancing. The one-step, two-step, and the more risqué tango and slow drag were a few of the many popular dances evolving alongside the emerging new music.
The Club Scene
Approximately two hundred musicians have been identified as having performed in Storyville, the majority in brass bands and dance orchestras. Female musicians (including Lizzie Miles, Ann Cook, Rosalind Johnson, and Mamie Desdunes) were among those performing regularly. The District’s musical offerings contributed to the neighborhood’s allure as an entertainment mecca. Visitors could choose nightly from a range of establishments based on the sounds, dances, prices, and clientele they preferred. Many of the clubs operated as “black and tans”—some run by African Americans—where integrated audiences were tolerated by law enforcement and many whites eagerly consumed black culture. These establishments served as the unofficial hangouts for prostitutes and pimps.
Band Leaders & Performers
Charles “Buddy” Bolden (1877–1931) led one of the most popular dance bands at the turn of the century. His unique playing style, characterized by his loud, brash tone and his regular use of syncopation and blue notes, distinguished him from many of his contemporaries and made him the king of cornet players. Bolden’s band often played at saloons in Uptown Storyville, including Funky Butt Hall. The hall was officially named Union Sons Hall and was also known as Kenna’s, or Kinney’s, Hall, but it was popularly referred to as the Funky Butt, after lyrics from one of Bolden’s most popular songs, “Buddy Bolden’s Blues.” The hall served as a Baptist church on Sundays and later was solely used for this purpose. Bolden’s career was cut short by the decline of his mental health, which led to his commitment to the state mental asylum in 1907.
A number of cornet players followed in Bolden’s footsteps, vying for recognition as the best, most innovative, and most popular. Freddie Keppard (1890–1933) and Joe “King” Oliver (1885–1938) were known as two of the premier cornet players and band leaders in the District. Keppard led his band at the Tuxedo Dance Hall and Pete Lala’s, while Oliver played engagements at the Big 25, the 102 Ranch, Abadie’s Cabaret, and Pete Lala’s.
Around 1914–15, Oliver took notice of a young cornet player living in Uptown Storyville by the name of Louis Armstrong. During the waning days of Storyville, Oliver nurtured the young musician with familial affection, bringing him home for meals and teaching him the nuances of musical performance and adulthood.
Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) moved into Uptown Storyville at the age of six with his mother, May Ann, and sister, Beatrice. Through his mother, he was exposed to the world of prostitution and the music of the spiritualist churches, both of which would later shape his entry into the music business. Growing up only a few blocks from Funky Butt Hall, as well as many other clubs in and around the Uptown district and Storyville proper, Armstrong was surrounded by music. As an adolescent, he began playing blues on his cornet to prostitutes and hustlers in the gritty honky-tonks of his neighborhood. With practice and lessons from King Oliver, Armstrong’s musical skills improved, and he was soon leading his own band in Storyville, mimicking the repertoire and style of the Ory and Oliver Band.
The career of Johnny Dodds (1892–1940) took off in Storyville, where he played with the Eagle Band and as a member of the front line of the band led by Edward “Kid” Ory and Joe “King” Oliver. Dodds eventually left New Orleans for Chicago, where he was an integral member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and later Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five.
Popular Sheet Music
While the nascent recording industry was still developing, sheet music remained the most popular way of distributing music through the turn of the century. The women who did sex work in Storyville were known to shop at Werlein’s on Canal Street and other music stores to purchase sheet music for practicing in their off-hours and making requests of professors at night. Though New Orleans had a number of music publishing houses, the majority of the most popular songs came from northern publishers. Stark and Son out of St. Louis, a leading distributor of ragtime, and the various publishing houses of New York’s Tin Pan Alley were particularly prominent during this period. Southern themes and stereotypical depictions of African Americans were popular advertising mechanisms employed on sheet music covers, as were the musical types of the songs (blues, rag, stomp) and the dances for which the songs were appropriate (one-step, two-step, foxtrot), though neither was always correctly identified. The sheet music covers reproduced here represent popular songs from Storyville’s existence.
Dance Music
The music performed in Storyville was almost uniformly designed to get people moving on the dance floor. The more traditional steps of the quadrille, waltz, and polka dominated the early years and high-end establishments, though many of the most successful bands and musicians also played newer styles to suit the desires of their audiences. Bolden’s band, for example, was known to start the evening playing polkas only and to end the night performing the more salacious and intimate slow drag, as the more liberally minded arrived. By the 1910s, new, easy-to-learn dance steps like the one-step and foxtrot took over, as a younger generation of dancers wanted easier steps that allowed for more personal variation.
Dance Videos
A simplified two-step, the one-step, composed of a basic walking pattern, became popular in the late 1890s. The simplicity of the step made the dance accessible to a wider audience and provided dancers with room to experiment with personal touches and flourishes that were often considered risqué. Music: Kid Ory. "High Society," by Armand Piron and Clarence Williams. Recorded 1946. Kid Ory, 1944–1946. American Music, 1994. Originally released by Folklyric in 1975.
Born in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires, the tango reached New Orleans after the turn of the century and by 1910 was one of the most popular dances in the city. The steps are built around the habanera rhythm, an element of the Spanish tinge which was appearing in contemporary New Orleans music. Music: Fess Manetta. "Anita," author unknown. Recorded 1957. Fess Manetta: Whorehouse Piano. American Music, 2011. Originally released by Jazzology in 1985.
Perhaps the best remembered of the many animal dances (such as the turkey trot and grizzly bear), the foxtrot rose to popularity around 1915. The dance was a composite of the one- and two-steps and was characterized by its variable nature, which encouraged improvisation and interaction among dance partners. Music: Original Dixieland Jazz Band. "Livery Stable Blues." Recorded 1917. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band: The First Recordings, 1917–1921. Timeless, 1998. Originally released by Victor in 1917.