[Dixielandjazz] Thread-- Charlie Suhor's post "New Rules for Jazz Bands"--Charlie Suhor sums up

[Norman Vickers]

To: DJML & Musicians and Jazzfans
From: Norman

Thanks to Joan McGinnis, here's follow up story on Alouette LeBlanc-- below.
DJML won't transmit pix, so if you want to see photo, Joan has included the
link. I've posted the story at bottom.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joan McGinnis [mailto:SraJMcGin at aol.com] 
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2012 4:20 PM
To: Norman Vickers
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Thread-- Charlie Suhor's post "New Rules for
Jazz Bands"--Charlie Suhor sums up

For Charles, if it's Alouette LeBlanc, here's a photo and a bit about her
death:
http://blog.nola.com/living/2009/04/aloutte_leblanc_americas_great.html
Joán
On Jun 3, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Norman Vickers wrote:

> To: DJML and Musicians and Jazzfans list
> 
> From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Charlie's other post about the International Association of Jazz Record
> Collectors ( IAJRC) convention in New Orleans in September intrigues me.
He
> has a talk about famous New Orleans strippers.  When I was a Medical
> Resident in New Orleans ( Charity Hospital, Tulane Service---'59-'61)
there
> was an exotic  tassel dancer( 4 tassels-one on each breast and one on each
> buttock) called "Alouette" who was part of the show at the 500 Club (
> Address, 500 Bourbon Street). Al Hirt played there when he was in town.
She
> always had the same show-she'd find some baldheaded guy sitting near the
> stage-she'd lean down and dust off the top of his scalp with one of her
> breast tassels.  The finale was having all four tassels twirling
> simultaneously while she did the back-bend.
> 
> Understood that Alouette was a good Catholic girl with several kids;
> consequently she didn't travel.  Always wondered what happened to her-did
> the retire and live a quiet life thereafter?  Pete Fountain came back to
New
> Orleans about the time I moved there and I believe he played at the 500
Club
> until he got his own club. Other good musicians passed through the 500
club.
> 
> 
> Likely some New Orleans Jazz history buffs will clarify about the
musicians
> who passed through the 500 club.  Maybe someone knows the later history on
> Alouette.  This would be welcome and interesting data.
>
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Home > Living/Lagniappe > Theater
Aloutte LeBlanc, 'America's Greatest Tassel Dancer,' dies
Published: Wednesday, April 08, 2009, 8:30 AM     Updated: Wednesday, April
08, 2009, 10:26 AM
Ann Maloney, The Times-Picayune By Ann Maloney, The Times-Picayune
Ruth 'Alouette LeBlanc' Corwin

Ruth "Alouette LeBlanc" Corwin, often called "America's Greatest Tassel
Dancer," died recently in Charleston S.C., according to Rick Delaup,
filmmaker and producer of "Bustout Burlesque" in New Orleans.

Ms. LeBlanc had one of the longest running burlesque acts on Bourbon Street
in the hey-day of the entertainment form.

Long before stripper poles cropped up on every corner, Bourbon Street in the
1940s and '50s was a swanky place. Men in dinner jackets and neckties and
women in party dresses and white gloves would fill the smoky dens of the 500
Club, the Sho-Bar, the Casino Royale and the Poodle's Patio.

Beauties with exotic names -- Wild Cherry, Lilly Christine the Cat Girl,
Evangeline the Oyster Girl, Alouette Leblanc the Tassel Twirler -- would
lure in customers with elaborate acts, popping out of oyster shells or
spinning pistols. The shows often included contortionists, magicians and
acrobats, all backed up by live jazz bands.

Ms. LeBlanc was a featured dancer in the 1995 film "Naughty New Orleans,"
about a young girl who works as a stripper in a New Orleans nightclub.

She was among the former dancers featured in a panel discussion presented by
Delaup in 2002 at the Shim Sham club, where a revival of burlesque was under
way.

Speaking on tape, dancer Ms. LeBlanc was blunt: "What killed burlesque was
the drugs, " she said. "The first club owner who convinced the first
drugged-out bimbo to get up and dance for nothing but tips -- that was the
end of burlesque."

(Delaup's "Bustout Burlesque" is a long-running, retro re-creation of 1950s
burlesque with live music, magic and exotic dancers that has had several
homes in the city -- most recently at the House of Blues.)

Peggy Scott-Laborde's 1993 documentary "Bourbon Street: The Neon Strip"
explored the checkered history of Bourbon, with special attention paid to
the bustling burlesque era of the 1920s through 1960s.

"She could do things with a tassle like no one else could, " former club
owner Frank Caracci recalled admiringly of his star stripper Ms. LeBlanc.

In a 1991 Times-Picayune story headlined "Recalling the flavor of old
Bourbon," staff writer Frank Gagnard noted that Ms. LeBlanc was among the
regulars at the 500 Club and "performed in a chaste costume resembling a
one-piece black bathing suit."

He went on to write: "Burlesque eventually went the way of vaudeville and
the brontosaurus, being replaced on Bourbon Street by the T-shirt and
eggroll dispensers. There are a few faded hold-outs, but the glory days are
gone. There probably will be no more stories like the one about the
resourceful transvestite revue in which the drag queens went out on strike
one night and were replaced by real females - who nevertheless were
represented to the customers as female impersonators.

That was Bourbon Street."

Details on services for Ms. LeBlanc were unavailable this morning, April 8.

						--End--