Little Freddie King (Fread Martin) is “undeniably the monarch of the Crescent City blues scene,” to borrow the words of musicologist Dr. Ira Padnos. Coming up on his 82nd birthday, the much-decorated Delta blues guitarist is still spry, cutting records and packing bars in New Orleans and beyond. (He’s an icon, but he’s not a relic.) It was a real honor getting the chance to talk to him and his longtime drummer/manager “Wacko” Wade Wright about their d.b.a residency, their travels abroad, and their thoughts on Frenchmen’s development. Their four-piece band also features Robert Snow, Sr. (bass) and Robert Louis diTullio, Jr. (harmonica).
A FEW QUICK Q’s TO START…
When did you start playing on Frenchmen?
“Wacko” Wade: We got there in the ’90s, recording a live CD at the Dream Palace. The door opened from then on. We consider it home base now, with the DBA welcoming us throughout the year. The younger crowd that was on Bourbon years ago, in the ’80s and all, they moved over to the real music scene: Frenchmen. The music they started playing on Bourbon, and the prices—well, everyone found out it was less expensive to jump over to Frenchmen Street.
Do you remember hearing about Frenchmen even before you played there?
WW: I knew about Frenchmen Street from the Cafe Brasil bringing in bands. Brazilian bands, exotic bands, brass bands… And from Snug Harbor. Snug Harbor’s been there a long time. I performed there with other bands in the ’80s.
What year do you feel like Frenchmen Street was the best?
Little Freddie King: The past sixteen years that me and Wacko have played it, I mean, it’s been great, really great. Every time we come in, it’s greater. Greater every day, until we got the lockdown coming.
What do you think makes Frenchmen Street better than other music areas around town?
LFK: What makes it better? Because I plays there! [Laughter]
SOME CONVERSATION:
Early Frenchmen/ Pre-Frenchmen Gigs
“Wacko” Wade: You were the last guy to record at the Dream Palace, right Freddie?
Little Freddie King: Yes. That’s ’99 I believe we recorded the album. Sing Sang Sung.
WW: They shut the Dream Palace down that year, I think. That was the millennium year, going into 2000. We cut the album in ‘99, for Orleans Records, and then we went to Paris to perform for the millenium over a one-week period.
We played the opening of the Balcony Music Club even before that. ’97, ’96. We’d just started to get drawn into the vibe around Frenchmen Street. We never used to play down there, because of the hassle to get parked and unload equipment.
[Interviewer: Where did y’all play before Frenchmen?]
WW: We used to play at Margaritaville a lot and the House of Blues when they first opened and said it would be a club for hiring local bands. Which never happened, like we were led to believe.
LFK: And Tipitina’s.
WW: Yes, Tipitina’s back in the day whe Adam Shipley used to book. He dug the blues. And we would play the riverboat, the Creole Queen. The Music Factory record store that was on Decatur, we’d play a show in there occasionally to promote our records. We played for the Royal Sonesta later for a while; that was on Bourbon Street.
Bourbon vs. Frenchmen
WW: Bourbon Street. You don’t want to hear me talk about that. [Laughter] When they started karaoke and the rap stuff and all that…
LFK: Bourbon used to be the dynamite. But after Frenchmen just started taking over, well, Frenchmen was really what was happening. Every year it would get better, better, and better. Bourbon is way low now.
And really, Frenchmen was always having the latest stuff. That short few blocks, from Esplanade to North Rampart? It was the fuse of the dynamite.
WW: All moved from Bourbon Street because Bourbon was a bad paying gig. They don’t pay nothing, man. It was low wages for musicians to play Bourbon Street. When the club owners on Frenchmen came around, they at least let you put a tip jar out, give you a percent of the bar ring, so you could make drinking and gas money.
Frenchmen Street developed more of an ambiance. The club feel, the dancers…. People wanted to hear plenty of jazz, street bands, brass bands, whatever. You have a more diversified group of clubs on Frenchmen Street.
LFK: And d.b.a is the hottest thing on the block.
DBA
WW: The World-Famous DBA Music Club. We played there twice a month [before the pandemic]. We’ve been playing there for… what?
LFK: Sixteen years.
[Int: Wow. And real quick—how long have you two been playing together?]
LFK: Twenty-seven years. Wack’s a wonderful drummer, and he’s a wonderful manager, and a wonderful booking agent. He’s great.
WW: Management at the DBA, he’s been really considerate the the musicians that perform there. You can put whatever price you want on the door, whatever you think you can draw. When we play Saturday, we charge more than weekdays, but still a reasonable weekend fee to hear a legendary blues master. When we play during the week, we reduce it so locals can hear the blues. we charged five.
The club wants to sell drinks and we want to entertain the people drinking them. We get the door fee there. Other clubs give you a percent of the bat ring. Of course, every business has its own combination of paying the band. If you have notoriety, you will draw fans and they’ll support you.
We have a loyalty to DBA because of the way management operates. I told the owner, “I have a loyalty to you because you have a loyalty to us.” I don’t want to dilute the music, you know? Like, “You can see Freddie over here for free but over here, you have to pay ten.” I can’t get into that back-and-forth struggle over payday, you know what I’m saying?
My philosophy with Freddie is we don’t play too many clubs no more in our older years! And I always told him, “Don’t go play free. Don’t go play for chump change. You’re Lit’ Freddie King. You’ve paid your dues since 1970.” We’re no Irma Thomas band or any big-time deal like that, but he does deserve recognition and appreciation. He’s a charter member of Jazz Fest, you know. He started in 1970 playing with Percy “Brother” Randolph.
LFK: I deserve a little higher of a step! A little up-step, instead of a down-step. [Laughter]
The Three Muses
WW: We’ve don’t really play Frenchmen Street clubs other than DBA. We get requests, but I blow them off.The one exception was the Three Muses. I love the place and the real nice lady that owns it, Sophie. And it’s a different kind of club—small—so we don’t have the whole band in there. Me and Freddie used to do a three-piece … or a two-piece?
LFK: Three-piece.
WW: Three-piece. We did a three-piece in there. She’s very nice—Sophie, is her name who owns it.
It’s funny, the reason we started playing for her was that David, the chef that works the kitchen, he got married and he had us come play at his wedding. I think he and his wife met at the d.b.a, listening to us play.
LFK: That’s right, they did.
WW: He calls me up, he says, “Hey man, would y’all play?” So we played at Muses—she closed the place for the wedding party and we played over there.
After that, I struck up a friendship with her. She’d give me once a month to come in, and we played a few months over there. But that’s the only place besides d.b.a I really enjoyed playing.
Filming Treme
LFK: On Frenchmen Street, Treme filmed me there. Wacko come and pick me up, and I always grab my guitar and put it in the case and get ready to go.
Wacko said, “You don’t need that guitar.”
I said, “What?” I said, “I ain’t never made a film without my guitar.”
He said, “You don’t need it today.”
I said, “What am I going to do?”
He said, “Don’t worry about it. When we get to the door, they’re going to give you your part.”
I said, “Alright then.” When I got there, what I had to do was tip my hat to a lady and then pull her off the stool and dance all over the floor with her.
Lord, I had never done nothing like that before! I was dancing all day. That was at the Blue Nile.
WW: We were in an earlier episode, right, then they called you back to do that dancing scene?
LFK: Yes.
WW: We played as a band early in the series; we did the “Chicken Dance.” So, for the last finale of the show, at the Blue Nile, they had him sitting at the bar, and when the camera went to him and he tips his hat, everyone watching knew who he was from playing the “Chicken Dance”.
So they start rolling, and Freddie starts dancing with her, and then the director says, “Cut, cut.”
Freddie keeps on dancing and spinning her around.
The guy says, “Cut!” again. Freddie spins around dancing.
The girl goes, “I think we finished, I think we finished,” and he keeps dancing! They got in his face, said, “Stop, Mr. King, stop!”
And Freddie says, “I thought you meant ‘Cut the rug’!” [Laughter]
LFK: When they said cut, I got fast. I thought they wanted me to speed up! I didn’t know they meant ‘cut and stop’!
Post-Covid Outlook
[Int: How do you think Frenchmen will fare coming off the pandemic?]
LFK: It’ll come back naturally.
WW: It’ll come back, once the air flights and all that start, when people are traveling again. It’ll come back. As long as Frenchmen is a music mecca, it will—that’s why I’m disappointed with the hot dog joint and shit.
LFK: It’ll come back. After the storm, we really came back good. The good Lord’s gonna bring it back soon.
[Int: I hope so. It’s been a long year.]
Commercialization
WW: The thing I don’t like about Frenchmen Street right now is Dat Dog. The hotdog shit? Why did they put that there?
LFK: Yeah, that ain’t the place for it.
WW: Make a a little cozy club or something there, I don’t know. This commercialism of the street, we lose that ambiance, of us, the New Orleanian type flavor. Man, that joint just blows my mind. Why did they do that to that place?
[Int: Because it used to be an empty lot…]
WW: Now this two-story, $6 dollars for a hotdog—
[Int: More than that…]
WW: I’d rather see a damn hot dog truck outside. [Laughter]
[Int: Now they get that Willie’s Chicken Shack there, too.]
WW: They’re really starting to trash it up now.
[Int: This is what we’re trying to figure out is, it’s been changing over time, how do we keep the good stuff?]
WW: They’re flushing the good stuff out. Commercialism is moving in, and they’re flushing them people out.
[Int: Then that’s the question: Where do they go? Where does the music scene go?]
WW: I’ll tell you where they headin’. They’re heading to Arabi.
Arabi
WW: Where has the music scene gone, I have no freakin’ idea, other than Kelly’s got a good thing with her club [Pirogue’s Whiskey Bayou, in Arabi] and I could see a couple more clubs opening up out there. I know a lot of musicians that moved to Arabi because of the rent.
The tax structures are better there, too, for opening a music venue. There’s a lot of barriers to opening a venue; a lot of music fees. You’ve gotta pay $10,000 to get a license to have loud music. I think Arabi’s a little behind the times. Which is a good thing!
But as it starts to grow, like everything—the way I’m telling this story, as things grow, then people start thinking they can make money. And then they screw everybody, and then everybody moves.
St. Claude
WW: They’re also going to St. Claude Avenue. The hip crown moved from Bourbon to Frenchmen, and now they going to St. Claude, because tourism pushed them out. The hotels started saying “Frenchmen Street,” then the clubs got wise and said, “Well, we got to put a cover charge and all, because of the tourists.” You know, “Hey, I got that tourist dollar.”
They increased the cost at the bars and the working people said, “See you later,” and they went to the Siberia and the All Ways joint.
[Int: I’ve always wondered why the Frenchmen venues don’t do a local drink discount. Like, show your New Orleans library card and pay a price where you can actually come out and enjoy some music and feel comfortable inviting your friends. Nothing crazy, like, just match the price of the neighborhood bars, which are already marked up, for domestic beers or a couple of the liquors or something. Even just a few hours on weekdays, do a local happy hour, get more foot traffic for the afternoon shows. That wouldn’t even be displacing the precious tourists. Plus, tourists like drinking ‘where the locals drink’!’ And locals tip out the ass.]
Blues Fans
While this section is not strictly Frenchmen-related, the intersection of race and music is always relevant in New Orleans, and it’s always valuable to hear different people’s takes on some of its nuances.
WW: You know, it’s interesting that—I’ve been with Freddie a long time, but the black community here with the blues and all? They don’t seem to relate to it. Way more middle-aged white people support Freddie’s blues.
LFK: They do like a crawfish when we want them to support us: they throw their claws up and they run back! Instead of putting together, helping each other, they’re backing up from each other like crawfish.
WW: I was amazed. I thought the black community—the juke joints and all that you see these video… And man, they don’t come out at all. They never have.
But me and Freddie were talking one day about how maybe they don’t want to be reminded of shit. They don’t want to be reminded of blues and all that. They want to move on, make different kinds of music about their generation.
You see that that picture up there? There’s 30,000 people in Lugano, Switzerland. I bet you, they had ten black folks there. May have been less than ten.
LFK: Europeans, they love the blues.
Europe / Culture / Detention Centers
This isn’t very Frenchmen-related either, but the rendition was too lively to leave out. (Print doesn’t do it justice.) And it gets into some of the ways other countries actively cultivate culture, which relates to our investigation of Frenchmen as a music incubator…
WW: When we played the tours in France, we used to take an advance. The French government pays for the music. They’re culturally aware, and they bring over these jazz bands from New Orleans. They always bring New Orleans bands to France. They’ll get some Arabian guy, say, that’ll put in an application and get a million dollars and all of a sudden, he’s got a concert. Then he hires a band from New Orleans. The French government is culturally inclined.
They have this big art deparment, like a training program, and in order to play the different towns in France, you have to play at the prison, the reform school… you play these places where people don’t get to see cultural music.
One time we played at a prison, in the gym with all the prisoners.
LFK: I said, “They’re going to have a riot once I start playing!” Lord have mercy. I said, “Wack, we ain’t gonna ever get back home!” Because once you get to the prison, they take your passport, take your watch, take your belt, take everything. I said, “We ain’t ever gonna ever get back to the US, man.” My heart was going WOOP! WOOP! WOOP!
WW: Freddie started doing Johnny B. Goode, and they started jumping. The warden came up and said, “Stop it! Stop it!” They were jumping, but they all got chains on their legs; I said, “Well, they ain’t going nowhere.”
LFK: Lord have mercy. We played, and they all acted nice and everything. We did a good show, and afterwards he said, “Y’all did a good show, so y’all can go.”
I was so glad to get off the stage, I was ahead of everybody trying to get out!
Then the lieutenant or the captain, whoever he was—the overseer of the prison—he said, “Hold on, hold on. We can’t let you go.” My heart said WOOP! WOOP! again.
He said, “You can’t go back to the US.” Just like I told Wacko!
He said, “You play so good,” he said, “I keep you right here. You play for me from now on. Me gonna pay you good, like me pay you now.”
I said, “Oh,” I said, “Look, I thank you for you giving me the job.” I said, “I have a little input”—I lied about that—I said, “I have a wife back home.” Now that was the truth there, I did have a wife, but I said, ”and she’s real sick. I also have a regular job there waiting for me.”
He said, “Look, let me tell you something. If you didn’t have that little input, me keep you here,” said, “But alright, me let you go back to the US if you promise me you will come every year and play for me.”
I said, “Okay, I sure will! I’ll be glad to do it! Come play for you every year!”
Lord, have mercy. I said to myself, “When I get out of here, I don’t want to see that prison ever again!”
[Laughter]
LFK: Now, see that picture over there?
[Int: That giant piece of art? I was just admiring it. Who made it?]
LFK: The guy who drew that picture—we’re over in France, and we had to do a workshop. [Part of the same cultural initiative, playing in some sort of reform school or juvenile detention center.]
When we got there, they had it up on the wall. I told my wife, I said, “Man, these kids are good. They ain’t got no business being here, but I know they did something to be here.”
I told them, “Y’all did good work.”
They said, “We made that for you.”
And oh! I was just—man, I said, “You did?”
They said, “We knew you was coming and we made it for you. You take it with you.” So I bring that back; they were so nice, they tubed it up and shipped it to me and everything.
See, my house is not a house. I made a museum out of it.
