Change Comes To Bourbon St.

THINGS CHANGE ON BOURBON ST.
“Anger is the hardest emotion to control. Greed is the illness that has no end.” Buddhist saying. Greed got to Bourbon St in the form of complaints and bad press. The new District Attorney Jim Garrison was told to clean up that mess down on Bourbon St. and in 1963 the clean up and raids started and places were shut down and padlocked. The city council passed new laws making “B-Drinking” illegal. Liquor license were made more difficult to obtain and the pinball and other gambling machines were outlawed. By the fall of 1964 when I first came to New Orleans, many places were still padlocked and actually had large heavy chains and big sturdy padlocks on the front doors or gate making it impossible for anyone to enter the business. ( some may have had back doors but The Mustache only had a fire exit that was hard to get too and get out off and impossible to get into from the outside.)
The morals of the day was changing, the birth control pill brought about the women’s liberation movement and broke the fear of pregnancy for the woman. The popular music of the time was also making a huge shift to “Folk Music” from Rock and Roll. The Kennedy Presidency had created a new patriotism the “New Frontier” wanted to play the music of the old frontier and “The Kingston Trio” and Joan Baez . TV had the “Hootin-nanny”, and the serendipity singers and everyone wanted to join the Peace Core and go save the world. “ Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”, JFK told us and we believed him, This was the “New Frontier” .
As the society changed the popularity of the strip shows begin to fade. Club owners looking to cut down on there overhead went more and more to playing 45’s (single song on each side vinyl or plastic record that rotated at 45 rpm ) for music for the dancer to strip by. With the crack down on B-drinking the small clubs were hard pressed to pay the girls, and folk music and piano bars, took over many of the small clubs that had featured strippers.
During this time Bourbon St. was very much a small community and a self aware entity. The lyrics to Bourbon St Parade says it all.

“Come Fly down or drive down to New Orleans.
That city is pretty, historic scenes .
“I’ll take you, Parade you,
Down Bourbon St.
You’ll see all the hot spots
You’ll met all the Big Shots,
Down on Bourbon St.
”
The Hot Spots and the Big shots were on Bourbon St and the strip took care of it own. Every one knew the people in the other clubs and after hours clubs and key clubs were always coming and going. The Dungeon still doesn’t open its doors until midnight but in the sixties it was a key club where you had to pay for a membership and buy a key were going to come into the club.
There were many small restaurants on the street that made their living from the people working on Bourbon St. The “Bun” in the 400 block of Bourbon St. the mainstay to the dancers, doormen and musicians of the French Quarter. The “Spot” in the 200 block of bourbon offered home cooked lunches and Jonny at Peoples Grocery took care of your shopping needs.
The famous “Papa Joes” jam session didn’t start until 4:00 Am because everyone had to get off of work. With no closing hours the jam would go until 9 or 10 in the morning when the place would close down. At the same time other clubs like Pat O’s would open their doors at 10:00 AM after closing at 6:00
This was the Bourbon St that I came into in the fall of 1964. I had graduated from high school in KC in 1962 and had gone to college for a yr and worked for another and had moved to New Orleans in the fall of “64” to attend UNO the following is a narrative of my first experiences and impressions of Bourbon St in the fall of 1964.

FALL OF ‘64 FIRST IMPRESSIONS
In the summer or ‘64 I had attended Southeast Mo. State in Springfield Mo. And was part of the :Summer Tent Theatre” program which still goes on today from what I understand. My brother was attending the Baptist Syminary in New Orleans and my mother was living with him. My father had died in Jan of ‘62 at the age of 86 ( he was 30yrs older than my mother) and I had pretty much been on my own since high school. My mother wanted me to come to New Orleans to live and since she had lived there long enough for me to claim residency and get into UNO at a cheap rate. She had sent me some money to travel to New Orleans ( I believe it was $20.00) and I had taken the 36 hr bus ride and had gotten enrolled in school that Sept.
“Lets drive down Bourbon St. so Fred can see what is like.” Lela told my brother John. Lela (my sister -in- law) my brother and mother and myself had been to church since it was Sunday night. I had been in New Orleans only about a week or so and this was my first time seeing Bourbon St.
As we got to Canal street and made the U-turn to get to Bourbon we joined a long line of cars waiting to drive down Bourbon St. The first block off canal, the 100 block was nothing. The stores from Canal filled this block and they were all closed on Sunday. Starting with the 200 block from Iberville on down was music, traffic and lots and lots of neon lights. As we slowly cruised down the street it was hard to take it all in, club after club with a scattering of restaurants and a few hotels filled the next five blocks. The right side of the street was bumper to bumper with parked cars. Bourbon St and all the streets of the French Quarter are one way since they are too narrow to allow two way traffic. With parked cars taking up the right side the line of cars slowly inched down with one lane and no chance of passing or going around anyone. The side walks were crowded with people and even on a Sunday it was difficult for all the people to stay on the sidewalk and not spill into the street. The traffic was so slow that there was little chance of someone getting hurt however.
Music didn’t fill the air it was blasted from the clubs. Speakers on the streets pushed the music into your face as you went down the street. This was one of the low points of music on the street. Pete Fountain was way down at 8OO Bourbon. Al Hirt was going strong at 501 Bourbon and Chris Owens was across the street in her club 500 Bourbon. The 500 Club was on the upriver, lake side of that intersection ( the 500 club address was something like 435 Bourbon but Nick Karno was too smart and too street wise to let the facts stand in the way of a good name) and the 500 club was at that time the top strip club on Bourbon St with a live band playing music for the strippers. The Bayou Club was the main folk music spot and there were a lot of small strip clubs and piano bars. Then there were the “Barkers”.
THE BARKERS
Bourbon St has created may “characters” the stripper, the musician, the tap dancer, the club owner, but of all the “Barker” is perhaps most colorful.
This time is the hay-day of the Barker and they dominated the street. Above it all, above the sound of loud speakers and the noise of crowd, above the noise from the never ending stream off traffic, above the music that flowed from the clubs; there was the sound of the Barkers.
“SHOW TIME ON THE INSIDE’
“ BUY ONE DRINK SEE THE ENTIRE SHOW”
“CONTINUOUS SHOW ON THE INSIDE’
“ WORLD FAMOUS ACT”
“SHOW TIME”
The Barkers had a society of there own on Bourbon St. and a good Barker was in high demand. Many of course were drunks that lived from day to day on the money they made each night ( Barkers were often paid cash out of the till at the end of the night). Many of them worked the carnival or fair and circus, circuits in the summer when it was slow on the street and would work Bourbon St in the winter when the street was jumping.
The Barkers would work their door as a musician works his instrument or a machinist runs his lathe. The good ones would hold the door open enough to get the crowd stopped on the street.
RULE ONE ON BOURBON ST STOP THE CROWD AND MAKE THEM NOTICE YOU.
When that was done they would work the crowd with their lines about the act and what a good deal the club was offering and would find the individual or group most likely to come in and then shut the door and focus on their “mark” to get them in the door. Over and over the night long the Barker would ply his trade and fill the club.
Bourbon St. brings the crowds, the hard part is to get them in the door. If you go to Bourbon St tonight you will see the modern “Barker” these are club employees that work the street to get people inside. The Barkers were outlawed in the big clean up of Bourbon St in the 70’s . It was illegal to have employees outside of your business. This like most of the laws of this nature is pretty much ignored unless the powers that be want to give you a hard time for one reason on another. The present day doorman or “street person” as they are now called, are usually regular employees that take a turn to get people in. There is nothing like the Barkers today but while the Barker is gone the need to have some on the street getting people into your place is still a night to night reality of all Bourbon St operations.
The Barkers had a grape vine. Bourbon St in the sixties was pretty wild and the Barkers were a big part of the “muscle”. Most clubs did not have “bouncers” at that time but rather had a combination of Barkers and police contacts. With everyone knowing each other one Barker would help out the next. The grape vine worked like this; if a fight started at a club the Barker would tell the Barker next door that there was a fight before going to the fight. The next door Barker would in turn tell the Barker next to him about the fight and then would go help out and on down the street the word spread.
“ Fight at the Hotsi-totsy” down the street the word would go and Barkers from all over the street would converge on the Hotsi-totsy and the poor drunk businessman or college student didn’t stand a chance. The Barkers all knew each other so they would come in and ask no questions but just jump on the guys fighting that they didn’t know. Most of the fights took place on the street since the first thing the club owner wanted was to get it outside where his club would be damaged.
I of course knew none of this as I looked out the car window that Sunday night in ‘64. It just looked so wild and crazy and so much energy. I didn’t know about all these things and I didn’t know that I would be spending the most part of 40 years working on Bourbon St. but I did know this…. Bourbon St. was were the action was.
The next time I went to Bourbon St. was a few weeks later I had met my life long friend Dalton Diamond at the St Charles Av Baptist Church where my brother was Youth Minister and Lela was church sect. Dalton was from northern Ms. Dalton had seen a little more of the world than I had at that point but we were both pretty young and dumb, We had met two girls at church that were student nurses. Lynette was to become a friend for many years till we lost track of each other in Calf in ‘68. The four of us went to Bourbon St and as we were walking down the street the sound of Banjo’s stood out from the other music and we look in a club called “Your Fathers Mustache”, where the time of your life is right under your nose.