Interviewed by HKB & LD July 2021
Edited by HKB
PRALINE CONNECTION 1990
Nita Ketner: Ok, I worked at the Praline Connection in 1990. I lived on Esplanade, 804 Esplanade at the time, it’s in between Bourbon and Dauphine just down from Port of Call, so it was an easy job for me to get to, I could walk to and from work, and… yeah, I met some very cool people there that unbeknownst to me at the time, because I was new in town I met Don B, do you know who Don B is?
Interviewer: Yes, I haven’t heard that name in a minute
NK: He’s Dave Bartholomew’s youngest son. Which is to say he’s a little bit younger than me–I’m in my late ’50s? He might be, yeah, he’s probably 50 by now. He’s a producer–he does a lot of rap and R&B and things like that… He really flies under the radar, but that’s Dave Bartholomew’s youngest son.
Interviewer: Oh Cool
NK: Very handsome, yeah. And then I met Charles Duvernay who, he was a dancer when I met him, not a male dancer but in rap videos and stuff like that. And he happened to get ahold of me last year right at the beginning of the pandemic and he hit me up on Facebook, and he said, “did you happen to work at the praline connection a million years ago,” and I said well yes I did and are you Charles the dancer, and he goes “Oh my god.” Well, it turns out he’s a Mardi Gras Indian now!
Interviewer: Great
NK: Yeah, he lives out in the East, he’s got the eastern tribes, really interesting yeah, but that Chief [Keelian Boyd, Sr.] that just passed away? That was his nephew. So, it’s really weird that all these years later, you just say, “Hey, are you the same Nita that worked at the Praline Connection…?” It makes you realize, wow, that was in my first days here, my first weeks here, you know?
FRENCHMEN DENIZENS
Interviewer: Can you give us all the other names [of local folks who were on the scene]
NK: Kenny Claiborne has lived on that corner longer than I’ve been down here. He was living on that corner in 1990 when I moved down here, so he has had a bird’s eye view–or actually a snail’s view, cause he’s in that lower apartment–but you know, my good friends like Fredy Omar and his wife Debbie Phelps had lived upstairs. I was around there, and I could tell you from sitting on their porch night after night, I mean anytime we had things to do on Frenchmen Street we’ll be running over to Fredy and Debby’s or Kenny’s and there’s always stuff going on.
But he stayed through Katrina and everything, he did not evacuate, he had generators and they were like a little Frenchmen Street posse. Basically, him and Ade’— I even saw Kenny on some TV show, maybe the CBS evening news or something, when I wasn’t in town, just some raw footage of what’s going on in the immediate aftermath after people were able to kind of get on the ground, and Kenny had a generator or something and was playing music off a turn table? And big speakers? I think they befriended some national guardsmen? I would ask him about that stuff.
Interviewer: so who else you said was in that posse, Kenny and Ade and–
NK: I think this guy LJ…
Interviewer: Goldstein?
NK: No, not Goldstein, he’s another LJ. I just saw a picture of him and I’m trying to remember his last name, he hangs out at Vaughan’s all the time… LJ… Kenny will know who I’m talking about, yeah. If he was around, I don’t know if he was around for that, but you know they have their little group, probably Barry Kaiser, the photographer, if he was in town he would have been a part of that group, you know.
HOW NITA GOT TO NEW ORLEANS, CAFE BRASIL
Interviewer: Can we back up on the recording and get your name and when you came to town.
NK: My name is Nita Ketner and I arrived in New Orleans on September 10th, 1990, on an Amtrak train.
Interviewer: Did you know of Frenchmen Street before you got to town?
NK: Absolutely not. I didn’t know anything about New Orleans.
Interviewer: Well, how did you end up here then? What made you choose to take the Amtrak to New Orleans?
NK: I think that it was…well, I was kind of fleeing from a broken heart in Cleveland, that’s where I moved from, and I thought this was just as far away as I can get and John Sinclair put it best that New Orleans is as far as you can get from the American way and still be in the USA. And I didn’t really know anything about it except in retrospect I realized that I’ve been into New Orleans my whole life. Playing my parents’ Fats Domino records and Little Richard records, and we went to this big car trip out west when I was a kid and we had one freakin’ eight track and it was Dr. John Gumbo! And it had all the New Orleans covers on it like, Huey Piano Smith and all that and you know so… The Rolling Stones sang about New Orleans, Chuck Berry sang about New Orleans. All the music I heard and even that song by The Band [singing] “The city of New Orleans…” Yeah, I mean so I realized in retrospect after I moved here because I never really knew why I chose here and not Miami or Los Angeles or whatever, I feel like I was called here you know, in a lot of ways.
Interviewer: I know it might be hard to untangle but do you… do you know what your earliest, your first memory of Frenchmen Street was?
NK: Well at first, I wasn’t quite sure how to find it cause I guess I lived between Bourbon and Dauphine and I saw this place called the Praline Connection needed servers so… And it was weird because I went down Bourbon and you know how they had that weird little–Kerlerec is right there– and I wasn’t really sure if I knew where I was going.
Interviewer: It’s like a magical bend.
NK: Yeah, yeah! And so I went in, and they knew that I was from Cleveland and I just moved here and they hired me as a server. And I worked weekend nights because that’s where the money was and I worked some weekday lunches, and it’s the weekday lunches really that caught my eye because Ade’ was always out there hosing down the sidewalk and the plate glass… And he had this long dark curly hair and he never wore a shirt and he was really tan and his.. his jeans hung off his hips just so and… I just thought he was the most beautiful creature I’ve ever saw in my whole life. I was like who is that man, you know…and they said oh he owns the Cafe’ Brasil and I was like wow…wow… and so,
I guess I start working lunches, then I start working weekends and then I noticed like, wow that place is more than a coffee shop. You know it’s like a night club. And couple times I worked–Tribe Nunzio was like a big draw, the Iguanas were a big draw, those were big deals, and I knew that I could always go there and listen to music that I couldn’t hear anywhere else I mean there were no reggae clubs there were no… like Ade’ used to have this tango night on Sunday nights it was pretty amazing.
Int 1: Was that a live band for the tango night?
NK: Yeah, yeah it was a “milonga”. I think that’s a word for a style of tango and they were called milonga.. I think it was Chris Kohl, Matt Rhody….
Interviewer: Oh wow Matt Rhody must’ve been young
NK: He was very young, yeah he played the violin of course, Chris Kohl played [she cuts herself off here but he’s best known as a clarinetist]–I don’t know who else was in that band I just love those guys I use to work the door on Sunday nights just to be around the tango music! I really loved it. I mean I knew Cafe’ Brasil was a place where you weren’t going to just hear cover bands, like I come from a land of cover bands in Cleveland [laughter] and either that or it’s like, raaahhh!!! You know it’s metal rock, punk, hard core….
CAFE’ ISTANBUL/DREAM PALACE/BLUE NILE
Yeah, so that was cool, and then there was Cafe Istanbul which Suleyman [Aydin] owned at the time, and that’s where i met the drummer Kerry Brown, I don’t know if you know Kerry Brown? He’s married to that singer…… Jane Harvey Brown.
Interviewer 1: Ok I never knew that
NK: If you ever notice they both walk around on those shoes that have like the little [gestures]
Interviewer 2: Springs?
NK: Yeah, they have springs! [laughter] Yeah, he’s a drummer, of all people he’s a drummer for David Allan Coe. That’s like his guy, yeah.
Interviewer: Cool! So Cafe Istanbul then was where?
NK: Where Blue Nile is now it was called Cafe Istanbul at the time, and formerly it had been the Dream Palace. And then when Suleyman—I don’t know if he gave up the building or what but then it became Dream Palace again and somehow the Blue Nile. And Istanbul is over in Healing Center.
Interviewer 1: the dream palace was one of the first modern [Frenchmen venues] in 1976.
NK: Right, exactly and I think that’s what the owners that hoped to you know… invoke, you know…. I remember, and it might’ve been Bicycle Michaels or D.B.A, but there was a theater and I saw a play there once. It was really bare bones.
Interviewer 2: The Marigny Theater maybe?
NK: Yeah, I think so.. yeah. I don’t know what I saw there or even who i went with but i saw something there. It was very cold, I remember. It was, like I said, a very bare bones theater company.
Interviewer 1: So what, in the early ’90s were there any other venues on that strip that you were sort of aware of or that you knew of?
NK: Well of course Snug, and we use to call it Smug Harbor….
[laughter]
GENERAL “DICEYNESS” OF FRENCHMEN, ISTANBUL, NO/AIDS, DRAGON’S DEN
Interviewer 1: Yeah so, if you could list anything else you remember from in the early days
NK: Well I just thought that Cafe’ Brasil was a really cool place. I like the way it looked, I love the way they spelled Brasil with an S. I thought that was…, it gave it some caché I guess. But I remember it being like a pretty barren landscape for the most part. Like you really didn’t go past Royal St. for any reason, you know? it was known as dicey over there. A lot of us, those of us that drove, on nights that they had bigger shows, you had to park on Elysian Fields, and that could be a dicey prospect sometimes. Like, you would be worried. Well, as a female walking by yourself, you would feel worried, you know. So, you’d get people to walk you to your car or whatever.
Interviewer 1: What about the other direction? what was the other end like?
NK: Well there was Istanbul, and I really don’t remember anything else. I don’t know what was where Mona’s is. I don’t know what was there. I think Vaso’s use to be the NO/AIDS Task Force.
Which is now morphed into Crescent Care. Yeah, the NO/AIDS Task Force was set up right there, kind of maybe one door down from Checkpoint.
Interviewer 1: I believe the Dragon’s Den may or may not have been…
NK: I just, I don’t remember the Dragons Den being on my radar until I started managing Rebirth [brass band] and that became a venue that we can play at. If you could imagine, Rebirth in the Dragon’s Den!
MEETING/MANAGING REBIRTH
Interviewer 1: Yeah let’s talk about that, when/how did that happen?
NK: Shortly after I started managing them
Interviewer 1: When did you start with the management?
NK: In 1996 I started. They talked me into it. Seriously, they talked me into it.
Interviewer 1: Did you meet them on Frenchmen St or that was in different
NK: No I met them because I did this calendar. I researched it, I was working for this man named Harris Rea who had a whole bunch of grant money and he was supposed to be doing stuff for the culture and I’m like you know what, I’d like to do a calendar of New Orleans musicians. But I don’t want it to be like Dr John and Irma Thomas and Harry Connick. You know what I mean? They must even get sick of being the face of New Orleans music, they must be kind of embarrassed by that sometimes. ‘Cause they know the truth, right? That others came before them. So Harris let me do it, I researched, I believe over eight hundred Louisiana-born musicians, and put them on a calendar, and I did a lot of work with Diana Rose at the Tulane jazz archive she was Al Rose’s wife, very lovely, lovely woman. She kind of took me in her wing a little bit and showed me how to go through the archives over there and and how to write to people and ask for permissions… Because I didn’t know how to do any of that. I just had a big idea you know? And… so I chose, so the people I chose were pretty much off the beaten path. I put Uncle Lionel in there because he was not who he became when he passed away you know, I put James Black the drummer in there, I put Gatemouth Brown in there, because nobody seemed to know. And I put Danny and Blue Lu [Barker] and I put a couple of sentimental favorites of mine in there, Melvin Lastie, Earl Palmer, but mostly what I had to do was go around and just go to clubs and go up to musicians and say hi, I’m working on this calendar of Louisiana born musicians and id really live to include you on it and that’s how I met Rebirth, that’s how I met them….and at the time my car had broken down and I realized I had no way to get up to see Rebirth on Tuesday nights and I said gee… they don’t have any downtown gigs that I can ride my bike to or walk to, so I said, you guys, you know, if you had a couple of gigs downtown would you play them? and they’re like sure. So, I rustled ’em up a couple of gigs, and then I said they should have a flyer because I want people to come to the gigs so that maybe it could become a regular thing, they don’t have to go uptown. And so I made them a flyer and then it was the day of my–I use to have a Tuesday New Orleans music show–and it was election day early November and I told Philip [Frazier] I said hey let’s announce your gigs on the radio show.
Interviewer 1: This was on OZ?
NK: Yeah, when we were still in the park. And so he came up and I gave him his flyers including their second lines, their upcoming second lines and stuff, and made it cute and pretty, I still have those flyers a couple of them.
Interviewer 1: Cool! So you became the manager because you booked them gigs that you could easily walk to ?
NK: Yeah, I was living on Rampart St at the time so I could walk to Donna’s [Donna’s Bar & Grill, which closed in 2010 after almost 20 years serving as what OffBbeat calls “the home of brass bands”.] I could walk anywhere in the Marigny, or yeah so that’s where I was trying to get them gigs: at Istanbul and Brasil and–And Ade’ didn’t want to take them at first because he was like ‘do they draw?’ So we worked our way up to Cafe’ Brasil, but we made excellent money. In fact, an old boyfriend of mine he was in the music business and and he used to manage Cowboy Mouth and the Bluerunners, Jimmy Ford, and he’s married now to this woman Sue, and they have a couple of bands together like Pink Slip and anyway I’ll never forget it was such a point of pride with me one night Jimmy shows up at the door at Cafe Brasil and I happen to be standing there and it was packed… it was packed to the gills! And I quite magnanimously said, “Come on in Jimmy,” you know like.. you know come on in and he looked at me and he goes, you ought to be charging them to get out. [laughter] And I’m like you got me! You’re right. But that’s the kind of way he would think you know?
Interviewer 1: And they played there regularly right?
NK: Yeah, yeah every couple of months [in ‘97 and 98]. Like I said, I still have a lot of the flyers. It was always at jazz fest, always at Mardi Gras. I mean we became one of those bands
WHAT MAKES FRENCHMEN DIFFERENT
Interviewer 1: An interesting thing about this project is Frenchmen St is so intertwined with other parts of the city, sometimes talking about only Frenchmen St can be a little silly, but following all these threads that kind of pass through Frenchmen is super interesting
NK: Yeah, it always was different there was never anything status quo about Frenchmen St
Interviewer 1: Say more about that, what made it different?
NK: Well, coming from a place like Cleveland, any place up north, it’s shocking how segregated things are you know white people go to these bars and go listen to this kind of music and other folks go here and rarely the twain shall meet, as they say. So here it was just an amalgamation of like… you had guys like Kufaru playing with guys like Hart McNee playing with guys like Kenny Claiborne, you know what I mean? And there was a real oneness. Like if you met somebody on Frenchmen St you would kind of assume that they were a cool person.
Interviewer 1: So, I guess let’s talk about then vs now. When do you feel like the best years on Frenchmen were in your experience?
NK: Well, you know I was in and out a lot so I may not be the best person to ask because I might just be speaking out of a place of nostalgia. But definitely like 97, 98, 99. I remember in 99 Cubanismo played at Cafe Brasil! That was an amazing experience, they were in town for about six weeks, they were recording an album with a group that really didn’t exist called the Yockamo All-Stars which was… all stars. [Mardi Gras Mambo, released by ¡Cubanismo! Featuring John Boutté and the Yockamo All-Stars in 2000.] John Boutté, Herlin Riley, Craig Klein, Clarence Johnson III, the list goes on and on and on. It’s hard to think but Cubanismo is on the level of the national orchestra of Cuba and people like Jacques Morial worked very hard with the state department to get them to be able to come here under the cultural exchange.
Interviewer 1: I mean, what do you think changed in terms of why those years were the best.
NK: Well, I think… you know there was a saying I think I caught from the show Tremé or some… it sounds cliché but it really nailed it. You know people came down here to do good … and stayed to do well [after Hurricane Katrina] And I think people that were much more savvy and resourceful than your average New Orleanian go down to places like Frenchmen and they don’t see dilapidated buildings and history they see refurbishing and renovation… Yeah, they came down to do good and stayed well, they saw opportunity here. You know developers were coming down here and you know, even just your average house flippers you know it came down from Christian groups, do gooder groups and youth groups, I mean…
MODERN FRENCHMEN/WHAT WE CAN LEARN/WHAT’S NEXT
Interviewer 1: so have you hung out on Frenchmen since the storm or not as much?
NK: Yeah I mean I enjoy going to D.B.A, I enjoy… you know when I was working in the Quarter and living in Bywater/Marigny I would intentionally walk all that way down Decatur and across the street down Frenchmen just to catch a few minutes of the kids playing. Most of those kids playing in the brass band are sons and nephews of rebirth and the Hot 8, the nephews of the dirty dozen, they’re all related and connected to each other so you’re seeing like a perpetuation of culture right there even if the tourists don’t grasp that. I enjoy seeing that: it gives me hope. But you know, I do feel like as far as I’m concerned my best days of enjoying Frenchmen St are long behind me. You know? I was just a different person for one thing and I don’t know… it just feels like Bourbon St. Or what somebody called “suburban st” [laughter]
Interviewer 1: Well so this is a question I’ve been asking: what are we learning from Frenchmen St in terms of how to incubate and nurture music spaces. like how can we preserve that spirit and take that spirit and nurture it somewhere else?
NK: Well I mean, I think it’s probably being nurtured somewhere else and we don’t even know about it yet. I’ve been watching… I came back for good nine years ago and I’ve been watching St Claude grow slowly over that time with the clubs and there’s kind of a scene down there I was supposed to see Dj Soul Sister at the Hi-Ho and you can’t help but notice what’s going on I work at Fatoush in the Healing Center so you know between you know the healing center and Hi-Ho you know I saw things going on all-ways of course, you know, Zalia [Beville, owner of All-Ways] doing her thing
Interviewer 1: You know Soul Sisters back at the Hi-Ho?
NK: Oh I didn’t know that, I had no idea
Interviewer 1:I don’t think it is every Saturday, I think it’s just once a month…. But St Claude comes up a lot during these discussions
HAVANA/HAZE, BRASIL AS ANCHOR
Interviewer 1: Obviously talking about how Frenchmen is special and how its unlike anything else in New Orleans is there any other certain parting thoughts/images moments stories?
NK: I just, you know it’s just a great place to hang out and meet your friends especially in that time period of talking about, you could go down there and run into people you could dance you can do a little coke, smoke a little weed get drunk meet somebody you know what I mean? like… it was just like, I mean it’s everything you possibly want with all the coolest people you ever met in your life. I just recall being down there and some nights it was like a beautiful beyond haze like you remember the vibes more than you remember the details type situation. It was just a very romantic decadent, like how they say, like I’ve never been to Havana but I always imagine that it would look the way it looked in the ’90s it would be at home in Havana. Or it would be at home in Rio I mean he [Ade] is from Brazil you know so I think he really brought a slice of the rainforest and a slice of urban Latino life to Frenchmen St and it just kind of created this…. Cause there’s no doubt that it [cafe brasil] was the anchor. I mean snug was there first, the apple barrel has always been there but it never had the same music
Interviewer 1: Right
NK: And it made things like going to Cafe Istanbul easier like i use to go every Friday nights to see those bands Los Babies del Merengue at cafe Istanbul. you could always go hear a reggae band you could hear salsa you could hear merengue. Fredy Omar was there for a while and was king of Frenchmen St with his band
Interviewer 1: Where is he now do you know?
NK: I have no idea. i think of any place you might be able to find him at the French market. He’s still in town as far as I know. He and his wife divorced, and she passed away. you know, I’ve been talking to her son Nemo he’s in San Francisco he might know how to get a hold of Fredy
PEOPLE TO TALK TO
NK: Well, I would say John Boutte’ not just because he’s down there all the time now but we used to hang out down there all the time. I would say Suleyman who owns Istanbul. He’s a great guy he really is I enjoy working for his sisters very much over there at Fatoush. Yeah Ii see Suleyman every once on a while over here at CC’s [coffehouse on Esplanade] and I ran into his wife Sona at the store sometimes. She’s a sweetheart she’s finally speaking English. He brought her over from turkey. She spoke no English. They’re really in love though so I mean you know language has not been a barrier and of course he speaks her you know whatever language she speaks–what is it Urdu, Farsi? She’s been here six years now I saw her at Marshall’s, I hadn’t seen her in like a year and a half, I was like Sona your English is so good. I mean Kerry Brown was managing cafe Istanbul during that time during the ’90s and I met him first.. I got to know Earl Palmer, the drummer? and we actually dated, and we would go out and he would take me around to all these little jazz gigs that I never knew about at hotels and stuff like…I never knew the Windsor Court had a jazz gig or I think we must’ve saw him I think it was at the Monteleone. We went to Kerry’s gig and then we went to Kerry’s other gig which was managing Istanbul it was like a early show or something and then Earl lived in LA so–
Interviewer 1: we’ll get Kerry on the list for sure
NK: Yeah he managed that club for five or six years in the ’90s. he lives over on the bayou… And are you talking to anybody from snug like Jason or Silvia or anybody like that?
Interviewer 2: Jason’s on the list for sure. Apparently we’re going to talk about museum exhibition.. David [Kunian] said that Jason promised the big sign from the balcony!
NK: It really broke my heart that Cecil and Curtis sold out the praline connection and is now a Willy’s. But Curtis Moore and Cecil… I can’t think of Cecil’s last name [Kaigler] but they would be worth interviewing because they were down there they opened up in September of ’90 and just closed like what last year or the year before you know
Interviewer 1: Do you have their contact information’s?
NK: I don’t, I might be able to get a hold of Charles and see if he does.
Interviewer 1: I’ll follow up with you to try to follow some of these threads that’ll be fantastic
