![]() A trip north would have to be based on more than just vague hopes and would have to be discussed, planned, worked out. Music has got to travel, man! How about coming north with us?"įor the moment, at least, that seemed pretty far-fetched. ![]() "What do you boys call this music?" "New Orleans music," Lopez replied, unable to think of anything more original. Music, y'hear me?" Mack called out to the band. Then we'd go to the club where the fights wereīeing held and play between fights and get five dollars for the ballyhooing and fight, which wasn't bad in those days."Īt the corner of Canal and Royal streets, at the edge of the French Quarter, they ran smack into fate, in the form of vaudeville performers Johnny Swor and Charlie Mack. Of town and start playing," he said in a memoir published in 1976. "We'd stop at different corners in the heart A job in Chicago? A miracle, no less.Īs Lopez recalled it, the band was doing a "ballyhoo" job, riding around downtown New Orleans on the back of a wagon, advertising a prizefight. His enthusiasm and ambition would make him naturally curious about the wide world beyond the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. As Steve Brown (1890-1965) later put it, not unkindly, Lopez became a professional musician because "he wanted to sleep in the daytime."Ĭolleagues remembered Ray as forever hustling work, and photos of him in these years indeed show a young man on the go: handsome and alert, hair carefully slicked, he faces the camera with a confidence bordering As he explained it, he'd made a dollar a day as a shop worker for the Southern Pacific Railroad and found heĬould earn up to three times that for much shorter hours playing the cornet. Ray Lopez was the only one in his immediate circle who depended on music for a livelihood. Instituted its "Great Northern Drive," to attract southern blacks to the city, When, in 1917, the black weekly Chicago Defender Of the North were the new Meccas, offering myriad opportunities for both For thousands of laborers, the industrial cities ![]() Losing out to Biloxi, Mississippi, and even up-and-coming Miami, Florida, jobsĭwindling almost by the day. World attention in the nineteenth century, had long since peaked. The boom economyīuilt on cotton and other trade, which had made the Louisiana city a focus of "Great War" was coming face to face at last with reality. New Orleans in the years just before America's entry into the European They were young, unmarried, and footloose, children of a new century. Clarinetist Gus Mueller (1890-1965) made much of his income as a plumber ĭrummer Bill Lambert (1893-1969) tended bar. The trombonist and his bass-playing younger brother Ted (known to friends as Steve) were tinsmiths. Musicians, with little or no professional training. It's therefore not surprising that Tom Brown and most of his band members and friends were basically avocational The best of times, dance music in New Orleans could hardly be depended on for a steady, reliable living. But it was always a short-term feast: the arrival of Lent invariably brought such activity to a halt. Mardi Gras was always especially busy, providing up to three jobs a day when times were good. ![]() Men's Gymnastic Club they played regularly for picnics and parties out at Lake Pontchartrain-and even the occasional evening down in "the District," known to posterity as Storyville, home of bars, brothels, Lopez and Brown (1888-1958) had done pretty well at home, providing music for dances at Tulane University, at the stately homes of the New Orleans Garden District, at such prestigious locations as the Young They would open May 17 at Lamb's Café, in the basement of the Olympic Theater building at Randolph and Clark, for six weeks at $105 per week for the band, renewable at the end The odyssey of Ray Lopez (1889-1970) had begun some weeks before, when, as cornetist and de facto manager of trombonist Tom Brown's five-piece "ragtime" band, he'd signed a contract with Gorham Thus, on May 13, 1915, did white New Orleans music officially arrive in Chicago. This damn weather would be the death of him, he later recalled thinking. Like? He shook his head, picked up his cornet case and grip. But the cold-if this was May, what must December be Windy city, eh? Why the hell had he and his four companions ever come to this God-forsaken place? Sure, it was work: a job offer too good to turn down. As a kid growing up in New Orleans he'd known some nippy days, but never anything White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945Ĭlimbing off the train at La Salle Street Station, Ray Lopez couldn't help shivering as the Lake Michigan wind sliced easily through his light overcoat and suit.
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