Reknowned jazz guitarist Sidney Snow has played with such New Orleans bands as Doctor Guitar & The Franklin Underpass, Banda Logun, The Melatauns (with his son Robert Snow), and others. He’s also played with Lou Rawls, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Ames, Trini Lopez, Johnny Mathews, Lucien Barbarin, Wallace Davenport, Teddy Riley, Thomas Jefferson … the list goes on. We were delighted to be able to sit down with him in June, 2021 to pick his brain about the history of Frenchmen and his own favorite memories of it.
SOME QUICK Q’S:
When was Frenchmen Street the best?
Sid Snow: When it really started popping? I’d say the early 90s.
Who’s been your favorite band to go see on Frenchmen over the years?
SS: I was mostly working so I didn’t go out and see too many bands, but a Frenchmen Street band that I really liked was the Jazz Vipers. They were a swinging little band. Every now and then I would replace Robert [Snow] when he couldn’t make it; I’d play bass. I loved going to see the Vipers. And the Cottonmouth Kings too—they were a jumping band.
Frenchmen Street has been a musical incubator for a lot of bands—do you have any lessons you think we can learn in terms of how to nurture other music spots in town?
SS: I don’t know, just do it. You know, like in that baseball movie: “Build it and they will come.” That’s what we did with Banda Logun [see “Banda Logun” section]. Thursday nights, nobody in town—especially nobody on Frenchmen—and by the second set, we were packed. It was some magic to the music. It creates the right vibe.
Now that Frenchmen has gotten so busy, do you think there are any other areas of town that have some of that vibe?
SS: Well, they’re moving us farther downtown. First, they ran us out of the Quarter and sent us to Frenchmen. Now that Bourbon Street has taken over Frenchmen, Franklin Avenue is gonna happen. You know, you got Flora Cafe, which I’m gonna do Monday nights—a guitar solo. And we got Mardi Gras Zone and everything; the whole corner is busy.
So yeah, I think that what’s going to happen. It’s already happening for the more local folks. It’s going to be Franklin and down. All the way to Old Arabi, even—that’s starting to jump with music places. But then of course the yuppies start moving in with their noise complaints… Iif you live in the middle of the universe, you gotta expect a little noise.
AND NOW FOR SOME HISTORY …
Sid Snow: When I was a kid, I used to go shine shoes and play ukulele on Frenchmen.
That was ‘59, ‘58. There was nothing really in terms of music venues. There might have been, like, a bar where the Apple Barrel used to be, but it wasn’t even the Barrel back then. People were just out socializing. The square was popular—Washington Park. People at weekends went to the Washington Park. You know, had little parties with bands and singles.
But venues. Where should we start? Let’s talk about Café Brasil and Adé.
Café Brasil & Adé
SS: There was a place called Until Waiting Fills, a coffee house. It was in the Quarter on Saint Philip and Chartres. It was a garage before it was Waiting Fills, and it’s a garage now. But at one time Waiting Fills was so popular the corner started buzzing, and neighbors complained, and they had to move. So, the owner Diane, a redheaded lady, gave up and sold the business to Adé [Salgado]. He rented for a couple of weeks and then they evicted him.
Flipper the clarinet player—that’s Jerry Meldrum—and me, well, we were watching the spot where Café Brasil is now. It was a foreign car show place, and we told Adé about it. Said, ”It’s for rent—they’ve moved the cars out.” Adé went over there … and that was that. It became Café Brasil.
I had a band called the Franklin Avenue Underpass and Doctor Guitar, and we started playing there. We kind of put the place on the map. We had it jumpin’. I had [Tuba Fats] in Cafe Brasil a couple of times when I had The Underpass [the band, Dr. Guitar & the Franklin Avenue Underpass.] Late ‘80s, into the ‘90s. He was the only guy I know who could sleep on a gig and play. It wasn’t really good playing, but he could hit it right on time. We’d have to nudge him if we wanted him to play a solo.
Adé, he lived down the street on Kerlerec and Chartres, that big house, and at first he would just stand on the porch and watch it all, and when it was all over, he would come get his money. He never really wanted it to work [laughter]. But it did!
But he wound up buying that whole corner. The artist Jim Merrill, and Kim, the piano player from Pat O’Brien’s, they all lived in that building above Judy’s Collage. And there was also Bibi [sic], another piano player at Pat O’Briens; changed her name to Anne something.
It seems like everybody wanted that corner. The Torres’, City Hall … When they tried to city-code Adé out of it, he just closed it up. Did nothing with it, but wouldn’t sell it. I think it was maybe in the early 2000s when he actually closed it down. The city closed it down. It was empty for years. Now he’s leasing it—I think he’s leasing it—to the Favela Chic people.
Anyway, that’s the story of Café Brasil.
Banda Logun
[Alt. spelling “Banda L’Ogun”]
SS: A few years after I started there, along came the Brazilian band, Banda Logun. With Angela Patois, and Kenny Claiborne, and a bunch of other people. Mani, the Venezuelan Mani. We had maybe twelve percussionists, a guitar—Angela played rhythm guitar and I played lead—and a flute. And Angela… she had that Holy Ghost in her singing, you know? Like, it made your hair stand up. Without a microphone. Kenny´s got some tapes of that. Banda Logun.
[Int: Why did you decide on that name?]
SS: I don’t know exactly—it was Angela’s baby—but Logun is a deity in Brazil. Like a revered saint.
Thursdays were our nights. There’d be nobody in the place and nobody on the street, but we’d just start playing and the joint would fill up… It was powerful. The Neville Brothers came to hear us—they wanted us to open for them in Japan—and they came, and they said, “That’s too much, we don’t want to have to top that.” We didn’t get the gig ’cause were too good!
We did a couple of the Latino festivals in City Park, the Cinco de Mayo, and we played quite a bit in what used to be the Muddy Waters up on Oak. And we recorded at Daniel Lanois’ studio, which was on Esplanade right by Frenchmen. The Kingsway. We recorded some weird stuff, some weird, voodoo-sounding music there.
I remember one night, we emptied out Café Brasil because Adé had a fight with Angela or Dou-Dou [sic], who was the band leader really. He fired us, so we all went with our marching band, the Mystical Herd of Nutria [see “Laborde” section], and we marched past Cafe Brasil, and we emptied his place. They all followed us!
Then Angela quit and we started bottoming out. Her husband was a teacher and he got a job in Florida. We tried a couple of girl singers but they didn’t quite cut it. I kept saying let’s do no singers, we could do it with the power we got here, you know? But they insisted on the singer or they didn’t want to play.
[Find Ben Schenk’s memories of Sid, Angela, and Banga Logun at the end of this segment.]
The Dream Palace, the Apple Barrel, and Ready Teddy
SS: So now: the Dream Palace. When they were building the place, my drummer Larry was the foreman on the job, and I was helping him, so he booked us a gig for when it opened. First gig I had on Frenchmen was the Dream Palace. And the Apple Barrel.
We started out at Dream Palace right after Rayne—did you know Rayne? The artist? He did the mural that was on the wall where Dat Dog is now. That was an empty lot for years. There’s a big mural of a man excavating the whole world, with little people. And he did the mural that I think is still in the Blue Nile. [Formerly the Dream Palace.]
And I was with Ready Teddy at the Apple Barrel. He could stand on his head and sing the blues! One time when we were in Memphis, we played at the Ground Zero Blues Club. He jumped offstage—I mean a big stage, not a bandstand—and he did a flip and landed with his hands on top of the chair. The place went crazy. I mean, the paparazzi and all them guys started like pop! pop! pop! [mimics camera clicking] and then the lights went out. They pulled the plug on us! People were getting too wild, and Buddy Guy was the next act, and he said, he says, “Look, I just didn’t want to work that hard. Y’all were just too much! My producer pulled your plug.”
We were supposed to do an hour show and they cut us off in twenty minutes.
Judy’s Collage
SS: Let’s see, then there was Judy’s Collage, of course. That was a biiiig junk shop. Thrift store. Judy was great; if you didn’t have the money, you could owe her. And then she’d forgive you if you couldn’t pay her. She was great.
That was all next to the Michalopolous building, where the artist Jamie Mitchell is, right on Chartres. Right next door it’s the back door to the Cafe Favela; they call it the Taco Wagon or something.
Judy’s daughter had a junk shop as well, called Flash From The Past, across the street where the little store is. That little store [The Frenchmen Deli] was somewhere else, I think.
KISS & Coors Underground*
[*Possibly “Chords Underground”? Depends on who you ask, and I can’t find a record of it online.]
SS: What else then? Coors Underground. Was it in ‘71, ‘2 or ‘3—I forget. I heard KISS play there. It became the empty lot after, where Dat Dog is now.
[Int: Was that a venue?]
SS: Yeah. Music, bands. It caught on fire and burned down in the early ‘70s. The owner was out there on the news saying it was a gas fire—that a gas heater exploded—but come to find out, the place was all electric! He went to jail.
KISS was good. I mean, they didn’t have all that costume and all back then; they were just regular guys trying to make a living, you know? But they were really good, and they fell in love with the New Orleans sound. They started looking up and interviewing all kinds of New Orleans musicians through the Musicians’ Union to try to capture some of their sound. I think Coors Underground was a union house, too.
The Laborde Printing Shop & the Faubourg Center
SS: And where else can we go? There was the Laborde Printing Shop; that’s where 30/90 is now. Mr. Laborde, he was a great guy, but he finally retired, and the sons didn’t want to continue the business.
He had the building that’s now the Maison, too. He didn’t really do anything with the place, but he displayed antique bottles in the windows for years. Maybe somebody’s got some pictures of that. Maybe Kenny. There were all kinds of antique bottles that were on the shelves in the window there.
After the bottles, François, Adelita, and Zoe, they opened a place called the Faubourg Center. That was the headquarters for our group, the marching group called the Mystical Herd of Nutria. With drums and parading—kind of like a samba club, but the New Orleans version.
[Int.: Was the Faubourg Center kind of like a hostel? Was that the place or am I thinking of something else?]
SS: Yeah, it was, kind of. There were people crashing, and little apartments that people rented for art and stuff. Studio space. That went on for three or four years. François was a Chalmettian, and Adelita was a New Orleans Cuban lady, and Zoe—I don’t know her story but I remember Zoe. Zoe and Adelita were Francois’ girlfriends. It became Ray’s Boom Boom Room afterwards, and now it’s the Maison.
Ray’s Boom Boom Room & The Houma Indians
SS: Ray’s really put a boost to Frenchmen. He was only around for two or three years, and then he moved over on Claiborne. Now I think he’s on St. Bernard.
[Int: Yeah, Ray’s was open when I first came here to visit in 2007. And then I think the Maison was opened by 2010. That’s one of the things we’ve been doing is collecting all of the dates that different things happened—the dates different places opened and closed—but it is hard to find some of them!]
SS: Well, as far as stories about the Boom Boom Room go, after Katrina, FEMA and the government cut off the Houma Indian people. They cut them off because they were trying to become their own tribe and they won’t recognize them. They cut them off, and they forbade anyone to bring supplies down, too.
[Int: What the fuck? And cut off supplies to where—where exactly are they based?]
SS: Dulac, around Houma, down there. Houma means red, so Oklahoma means red people. It’s a Choctaw Muskogee language. Choctaw dialect. I have some of the Choctaw blood.
They wanted to culture-cide the Houma Indians. They wanted to get rid of them. So I did a benefit at Ray’s Boom Boom Room. It didn’t go over as great as we thought it would, but we still made like $5000, which she used to redo her computers that were ruined. The chief, Brenda Robichaux. She’s not the chief anymore, but she was the chief back then.
[Note: Although the Houma are recognized by the State of Louisiana, they’re still unrecognized by the federal government. This article on FacingSouth.org details their ongoing fight for official status, a fight that that’s complicated by the fact that their historic lands lie on rich oil reserves. This article on Southerly.Org discusses the devasation of Hurricane Ida, illustrating that the lack of federal recognition continues to impede coastal tribes from receiving much-needed FEMA aid today.]
The Spotted Cat & the Praline Connection
SS: The Spotted Cat. This lady Oliver, was her name. Did you know Oliver? Always on her bike? Oliver opened the Spotted Cat as a tearoom. It wasn’t a bar: it was a tearoom, where she sold little clothesies and things people made. And before it was Spotted Cat, it was an oyster house.
[I: I think I’d heard that. A wholesale place, right?]
SS: Right. It was the distributor. For when you need a lot of oysters. Now, the Praline Connection, which is now the pizza place [Willie’s Chicken Shack]—that was a billiards supply. They made pool tables.
In the back, it was Perrone and Sons. That was the people with Progress Grocery. They used to be down on Decatur by Sidney’s Newsstand, which is Sidney’s Wine Cellar now. They were always in competition with Central Grocery [currently located right next to Sidney’s] but Progress had the best muffulettas. I heard they opened in Metairie. But that’s not Frenchmen, so leave that out!
A DISCUSSION ON ECONOMICS AND GETTING PAID ….
Then vs. now / Frenchmen vs. Bourbon / Reagan vs. the Unions
[Int: How does Frenchmen stand out in your mind from other gigs in town, paywise? Is it different? Are Frenchmen gigs better than, say, Bourbon gigs, or other gigs around the city? Or nothing special?]
SS: Frenchmen was a little better. Bourbon wasn’t paying but $10.00 an hour after Reagan came and broke all the unions, all the union bands. Because you know, at one time on Bourbon—like in the ‘70s—every block of that Bourbon strip, six or seven blocks, employed at least thirty union musicians a day.
Then Reagan came along. First he broke the AT&T and Bell merger, and that broke the communications union. [The union] was the reason for that merger. I don’t know if y’all remember Ma Bell? Ma Bell was the phone company, AT&T was the telegraph lines. And then Reagan himself broke the air traffic controllers. It all fizzled down to our little musicians’ union, which is like—it’s not even worth talking to them people anymore.
But they did give me a pension, which I didn’t expect. Not much, but it’s something. I can enjoy my upper poverty. [Laughter.]
[Int: So you’re a member?]
SS: Yeah, a lifer. I joined one—the hall was on Bourbon Street—when I was 16 years old.
Bourbon is a different scene now. Bourbon is like classic rock. Or, I don’t know what they call it—“Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On,” “Mr Magic,” the same old give-us-a-break music.
In terms of Frenchmen, Snug Harbor always did pay union scale, which was maybe eighteen an hour back then. The rest of Frenchmen was tips. Like, they’d pay a little something, but most of your money came from tips. Café Brasil, Adé, he hardly paid anything until we got Banda Logun and then we started drawing. We filled up the whole block, you know.
[Int: Were you able to take home a decent amount with tips on Frenchmen?]
SS: Well, decent. A living, you know.
This one time, though, we got a thing for NCIS … and we made $1400 for two three-hour days of work. We were on the porch right near Kenny’s house [just off Frenchmen] and a fight was supposed to break out. We were supposed go cling! [makes noise like someone banging on a cymbal] and stop the fight.
I waited for it to come on, and the night I thought it was going on, I called all my friends, I said, “It’s coming on! It’s coming on! I’m going to be on!”
It didn’t come on [laughter]. It was the next week, and then when they did show me it was for a split second. They just went right past us!
But they bought our music. We had a song in one of their previous series that every time they played it, we got sixty bucks each. For three seconds of music!
