[Dixielandjazz] The Spirit of "New Orleans" Music

[Steve barbone]

A great story about "Musical Spirit". OKOM? You decide.

Cheers,
Steve


Renewing Spirits, Mostly His Own
By DAVID CARR - September 23, 2005 - NY TIMES

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 22 - In the list of necessary figures required for the
near-term recovery of New Orleans, a cabaret performer would seem to rank
low.

Philip Melancon, a piano player at the historic Pontchartrain Hotel on St.
Charles Avenue, did not stay because the city needed him, but because he
needed the city. He is less of a holdout than a stay-put, a guy who hung in
because he wanted to. It turned out to be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

In the weeks after the hurricane, he spent the days minding the apartment
building he manages all the way in the Uptown neighborhood at the end of
Magazine Street, and in the evening, he would sit at his grand piano,
amusing himself and the crickets in the dark.

Two weeks after the hurricane, some military police from the Puerto Rican
National Guard stopped by to check on his well-being and stayed for the
music. One thing led to another, and they eventually loaded his piano and
hauled it onto the bandstand in Audubon Park, where they were stationed. He
told some bad jokes and played some of his own tunes, gorgeous miniature
reflections on the city, and in the more recent ones, on its abasement.

The soldiers found him a comfort, something the city continues to be a
little short on, and word got around. He has since played five shows at high
schools and community centers, mostly for the soldiers who are here to
secure the city.

"It's my own little U.S.O. tour," he said, sitting in his apartment on
Wednesday with his feet propped up on a cinder block.

There are many heroic narratives in this city, but this would not be one.
Mr. Melancon, 53, a courtly man with white hair and a pressed white oxford
shirt, is a Cajun not given to hyperbole, one who found a place to stand
during the storm and after. Simple as that. There is no phone here, no
power, no e-mail, no nothing, no fuss. He likes it just fine. Sitting in the
midday heat, slapping flies that use the open door to the first-floor
apartment to snoop around, he said he would like to play more, but the
soldiers have left New Orleans, along with everyone else, because of the
hurricane approaching Texas. He will stay.

"My experience with the hurricane, and I am ashamed to say it, has been
beautiful," Mr. Melancon (pronounced may-LAWN-son) said. "There is no rumble
of trucks on Magazine, I have seen stars above New Orleans for the first
time in a while - God's freckled face, and everyone who is still here is
wonderful. I'm very comfortable." The way he said comfortable - COME-te-bul
- made his isolation seem a blessing, but the circumstances would be
frightful to most. 

For many blocks around his apartment near the zoo and Tulane University,
there is only the tangle of trees, gutters and detritus, some of it blowing
in a hot wind. His grand piano is on wheels in the hallway in front, a book
on a shelf waiting to be pulled down, but he has run out of audiences.

"I'd like to play, he said. "Maybe this weekend."

On a normal weekend, something that might not happen here for some time, he
would be in the Bayou Bar at the Pontchartrain, at a piano Cole Porter once
sat at. He has played there every weekend, give or take, for 12 years. Frank
Sinatra once drank there, but now it's mostly locals and a few tourists who
take their ease in Mr. Melancon's seasoned voice and delicate playing. A
former public school teacher, Mr. Melancon knows his way around a story and
can serviceably play just about any instrument that lands on him.

When he isn't playing, he walks over to see Marie, an elderly woman who
stayed put and lives across Magazine Street. They are very different people.
Marie is old, proper New Orleans, fond of Robert E. Lee and dedicated to her
tony social clubs. Mr. Melancon is a working musician in New Orleans, a
barfly with portfolio. They met after she got tangled up in the leashes of
some dogs she was walking and fell down. After Mr. Melancon helped bandage
her arm, they sat on the porch, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes, just
talking. They have come together every night since. The song he wrote about
it, "Our Affair," is one of a dozen he has written since the storm.

>From this time, this place, we satisfied every care, evermore, will we
share, our affair.

Mr. Melancon played the song on a guitar and sang with a voice marinated in
the saloons of New Orleans. He owns a coffeehouse, the Neutral Ground -
"It's a nonprofit not on purpose," he said - in Uptown, and was able to grab
the soundboard from there and dragoon some of the musicians who play there
for his ad hoc gigs. On Tuesday, after checking on some friends, he found a
note on his door.

"Phil, the I-186 will be getting a hot meal at 19:00. If you could, would
love to have you perform for us around sometime around 19:30. Commander
Major Striley."

Three hours later, he was at Delgado Community College with a banjo player
and a drummer playing for members of the Oregon National Guard, a great gig,
not counting the money and the fact that only one of the speakers worked.
The soldiers did not seem to mind.

He explains his continued presence in a deserted city by saying he had to
look after the apartment building he manages, which had been in the midst of
being reroofed. After the hurricane took out a window upstairs, he stood for
hours holding up a tarp to prevent debris from blowing in. But that really
explains only part of why he is here.

In this new place, he barbecues potatoes in a pit out back, writes songs,
checks on Marie. The tempo and the quiet suit him. He would just like
another gig to go with it.