Note from a Music Curator

By: David Kunian | May 1, 2020

Given the realities of the our current situation, I have been thinking of the people that we have lost in recent weeks. Many are elders who cannot possibly be replaced. People like Ronald Lewis, who kept up the best of the African American street vernacular culture traditions with his House of Dance and Feathers museum on Tupelo Street in the Ninth Ward and his decades-long enthusiastic participation in those traditions. Women like Theresa Elloie, whose family has run the Sportsman’s Corner bar on Second and Dryades for decades. That bar has been a community center, second line and Mardi Gras Indian stopping point, and great hang for years. I’ve always had a great time there, and even though she is not there, I know I will continue to.

“Livery Stable Blues,” composed and played by Original Dixieland ‘Jazz’ Band

This is not the first epidemic that has ravaged New Orleans. Almost 8,000 people died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1853, and we lost almost 800 in the influenza pandemic of 1917-1919. Pianist Henry Ragas, born in 1891, fell victim to the latter. Ragas came to fame in 1917, when he and several members of the former Johnny Stein band formed a new musical group. Those musicians took a gig at Reisenweber’s Café in New York under the name of the Original Dixie Land Jass Band. On February 26, 1917, the Victor Talking Machine Company recorded the band playing two songs: “Livery Stable Blues” and “The Original Dixie Land One Step." When the record was issued in May, it became a surprise hit, and the ODJB became the first band to record jazz. On that session and on many others, Ragas played piano, but he could barely be heard due to the limitations of acoustic recording methods at the time. He wrote “Bluin' the Blues” for the band and played on “Clarinet Marmalade” and “Fidgety Feet” and was all set to tour England with the band, but he caught the flu and died in New York on February 18, 1919.

Henry Ragas, right, sits at a piano in 1916. Other members of the Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band (Tony Spargo, Eddie Edwards, Nick LaRocca, "Yellow" Nunez) sit behind him.

Ellis Marsalis playing piano at the Big Easy Awards in 1991, photographed by Sydney Byrd.

And then there is Ellis.

Just like Cher and Fats, he only needs one name. Many people have eulogized him in more eloquent and worthy ways. I am not a real musician by any stretch of anyone's imagination, but I am a writer and documentarian, and I interviewed and interacted with Ellis many times over the years. I learned a lot from talking and listening to him. Ellis had very high standards, and he didn't relax them for anyone in any way. He had been through the ups and downs of playing, promoting, teaching, and raising kids in jazz, and those standards got him, his kids, and all the amazing musicians he mentored, through those times. He expanded my ideas of the music, brought to life the people who did it and how they did it. And he didn't idolize or sensationalize any of it. He did it matter of factly in very Zen way that was both street and erudite. He was one of the cats and he was a sensei at the same time.

“And he had gigs at the Playboy Club when that place was hip, happening, and wild.”

Thank you, Ellis, for leaving us with a legacy of music and lessons. We have so much to learn. And thank you to the others who have left us too soon—but leave us with memories and examples.