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Curated by
The Ponderosa Stomp Foundation

Swing Out: Great Depression and World War II Tour

Images

While the Great Depression limited the number of concerts New Orleanians could support, the Astoria Hotel with its Tick Tock Tavern, the Gypsy Tea Room, and the Rhythm Club featured the city’s and the country’s finest big bands in the 1930s and early 40s.

Black benevolent societies continued to sponsor traditional brass band parades, and the San Jacinto Club and Autocrat Club hosted events with bands playing the latest swing arrangements. Young musicians in the neighborhood, including Dooky Chase and Earl Palmer, would incorporate these sounds into their own playing.

South Rampart Street’s heyday was earlier in the century, but in the 30s: piano professors still played in honky tonks, Morris Music blasted jazz records on the street, and legendary music teacher Osceola Blanchet conducted generations of students at McDongh No. 35 High School.

Some local young women made names for themselves as artists in this period: the Boswell Sisters took their rhythmic sensibility from New Orleans to the national airwaves, and their former classmate, clarinetist Dixie Fasnacht, opened the first location of her groundbreaking gay-friendly nightclub. Others hustled through the Depression earning pennies per dance at halls like the Alamo.

The City of New Orleans opened the Municipal Auditorium in 1930, with money allocated just before the economy crashed. The federal government’s Works Progress Administration added a new concert venue, City Park Stadium, in 1937.

A few years later, New Orleans opened some of the first federally-funded housing developments in the country, including the Magnolia, Lafitte, Calliope, and St. Bernard, which would influence the city’s music for generations to come.

When World War II brought servicemen and contractors to the French Quarter with cash in their pockets, nightclubs like the Famous Door and the Paddock Lounge helped build Bourbon Street’s reputation as a must-see for tourists.

 

Read more about developments in New Orleans music during the Great Depression and World War II.

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Places in this Tour

  1. The Boswell Sisters' house
  2. Magnolia (C.J. Peete) Public Housing Development
  3. Rhythm Club/Club Rocket
  4. Calliope (B.W. Cooper) Public Housing Development
  5. McDonogh #35 High School
  6. Astoria Hotel
  7. Morris Music
  8. Junius Hart Piano House and Alamo Dance Hall
  9. Paddock Lounge
  10. Famous Door
  11. Dixie's Bar of Music
  12. Municipal Auditorium
  13. Gypsy Tea Room
  14. San Jacinto Club
  15. Lafitte Public Housing Development
  16. Earl Palmer's House
  17. Dooky Chase Restaurant
  18. The Autocrat Club
  19. St. Bernard Public Housing Development
  20. City Park Stadium/Tad Gormley Stadium

Images

The Municipal Auditorium ca. 1930, when it opened as the premiere concert and event venue of New Orleans' establishment.
Courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection. Photo by Charles L. Franck Photographers.
New Orleans' Rhythm Boys at the Rhythm Club ca. 1938, a tour stop for the country's best big bands of the swing era.
Henry C. “Kildee” Holloway, tp, Waldren “Frog” Joseph, tb, John "Turk/Turkey” Girard, tp, Dennis Guichard, sb, Eugene Ware, tp, Joan Lunceford [Lunsford], vo, Willie O’connell, g, [Freddie Kohlman ?], d, [Neliska “Baby” Briscoe ?; no, according to Al Jackson, godson of Baby Briscoe, 6/2/98], Joe Robichaux, p, leader, [Cyril August ?], as, Maurice Geston, s, and Sam Dutrey Jr., ts., Hogan Jazz Archive Photography Collection, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University Special Collections, New Orleans, LA. Photo from Magnolia Studio.
The Gypsy Tea Room ca. 1937. This corner barroom was adjacent to a high-end nightclub that featured floor shows and A-list talent in the 1930s and 40s.
Courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection. Photo by Charles Genella.
One page of a spread on the Astoria's Tick Tock Tavern, one of Black New Orleans' top swing band venues, in Spot magazine in 1940.
Posted by Darwination
The Dooky Chase Orchestra in the 1940s. Its leader and namesake would leave his big band to run his now-legendary restaurant.
Laborers’ Union Hall, Iberville St., New Orleans. First row: Warren Bell Sr., saxophone; Larry Smith, saxophone; Charlie Gaspard, saxophone; Sterling White, saxophone; Hilton Carter, saxophone; and Curtis Trevigne, guitar; Second row: Awood Johnson, trombone; Benjamin Powell, trombone; Edgar “Dooky” Chase (standing), trumpet, leader; John “Pickey” Brunious, piano; Doris Chase; and Andrew Smith (also used surname of Brown); Third row: Anthony Moret, trumpet; Theodore Riley, trumpet; Arnold Depass, trumpet; Vernel Fournier, drums; and LeRoy “Batman” Rankins, bass. Hogan Jazz Archive Photography Collection, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University Special Collections, New Orleans, LA.
Black Masking Indians in the Gypsy Tea Room in 1940, showing that the city's masking traditions persisted through the Depression.
Courtesy of the New Orleans Public Library. Photo by Robert Tallant.
The introduction of public housing to New Orleans in the early 1940s, including the Magnolia development seen here, would affect the city's music scene for generations.
Courtesy of the New Orleans Public Library.
The Famous Door on Bourbon Street in 1945, when the strip emerged as an entertainment destination for out-of-towners.
Famous Door. Bourbon Street, 1944-1952. Hogan Archive, Tulane University Special Collections, New Orleans, LA.