[Dixielandjazz] PC Basin Street

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

There is a great book called "Storyville"  that spends a lot of time on who 
did what to who in that era.  Only one chapter on the music and musicians. 
I got my copy on Amazon (very) used for $8
Larry
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James O'Briant" <jobriant at garlic.com>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] PC Basin Street


> Rebecca Thompson wrote:
>
>> I get a real chuckle out of listening to the lyrics to Basin
>> Street after learning the history of the street.  It was near
>> the boat docks where the brothels were located.
>
> If by "near the boat docks" you mean adjacent to the levee -- the slanted
> bank where steamboats landed with their noses up against the shore --  
> that's
> not correct.  Some of the present land and seawall between Decatur Street
> and the river is more recent fill and construction, but it's still more 
> than
> 6 blocks from Decatur Street to Basin Street.  And the steamboat levee
> itself stretched much farther up and down the river than the 21-block 
> width
> of the French Quarter.
>
> The red-light district, Storyville, was just inland from Rampart Street, 
> the
> now-accepted inland boundary of the French Quarter.  The next street 
> inland
> from Rampart, running parallel to it, is Basin Street.  Basin Street is 
> only
> a few blocks long, from Canal Street to Louis Armstrong Park (which today
> includes what was once Congo Square).
>
> In other words, Basin St. was part of Storyville -- the part where the 
> most
> beautiful (and expensive) houses were located -- but it wasn't adjacent to
> the Mississippi River.
>
>> Also the "working girls" were either black or white, (but
>> always light) ...
>
> I think not always...
>
>> but the clientele was primarily the upper crust white
>> folk.
>
> Though the city ordinance that created this legalized prostitution 
> district
> specified that the customers could be white only, I doubt that they were
> always upper crust.  While the price could be $10 or more (a lot more 
> money
> 100 years ago than it is today) in the fancier places, there were also
> "cribs" (originally a San Francisco term) where the going rate was fifty
> cents.
>
>> There was another area in New Orleans designated
>> for the black customers.
>
> It wasn't designated or legalized the way Storyville was, but it existed.
>
> Jim O'Briant, tuba
> Gilroy, CA
>
>
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