New Orleans pays attention

[brownie]

And it's about time...

From the Miami Herald today:

RACE IS ON TO SAVE JAZZ'S RICH HERITAGE

By AUDRA D.S. BURCH

NEW ORLEANS - In a city known as much for its big, boisterous, brassy sound as its bountiful eats and its bent on good times, a campaign is under way to save its cultural birthmark: jazz.

Historians, music buffs and urban cheerleaders simply in love with the city's legacy are rallying and racing to preserve nearly 600 New Orleans homes and buildings that in some way are connected to the birth of one of the true American art forms, perhaps the definitive score for this country's social and political history.

It is an effort threatened by the clock. Time, technology, neglect and the promise of progress have eaten up much of the history. The house on Jane Alley where Louis Armstrong was born was razed and replaced with public buildings and parking lot; the studio where he first recorded is long gone. Dozens of other places where jazz thrived are rubble, as well.

The remaining properties, some taken hostage by wrecking balls and urban demise, range from the childhood homes of other jazz pioneers to the places where the music was born to the halls where the musicians made magic. These are places where boldface names and anonymous cats tinkered and toiled until something wonderful happened.

''We are trying to make people all over the world know that jazz was born here and belongs here,'' says Annie Avery, a lady full of laughter, slowed by a walking stick, but dogged in her campaign.

Avery says the legacy of New Orleans' most prominent cultural export is in danger of being lost.

''We would be crazy to not work hard to embrace our history here. We have to celebrate the people who paved the way for the people who play today,'' says Avery, director of the nonprofit Preservation Resource Center's African American Heritage Preservation Program.

This most ambitious plan, backed more by promise and goodwill than funding, is targeting enough places to form the bones of a rich jazz heritage tour. It is for locals to remember; for tourists to learn. And if the urban gods are on their side, the project will also help rebuild blighted neighborhoods, help broken homes escape a traditional jazz funeral.

The program partners Avery's group with the New Orleans Jazz Commission, an arm of the National Park Service.

''New Orleans has a history of preserving its music traditions, through museums, festivals and now the homes,'' says Beverly Gianna, spokeswoman of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. ``Jazz and the evolution of jazz are really important here; it just makes sense that we work to preserve it.''

Much like the music, this is a story of good times and bad times, of discovery, death and rediscovery.

The properties were identified after researchers combed through old newspaper clippings, property records, phone books -- most anything printed that could help to fill in the blanks of the city's musical memories.

Among the places that Avery has or hopes to see rebuilt, cleaned, polished and stamped with a historic plaque that details the history is the Central City home of Edward ''Kid'' Ory, hyped as a supreme trombonist and one of the nation's first African Americans to record jazz professionally. He grew up in the city on Jackson Street in a rambling double shotgun home where he first learned to play the banjo, then switched to the trombone and developed the ''tailgate'' style that informs jazz today. A young Louie Armstrong, King Oliver and Jimmie Noone once played in his band.

For years, the house stood leaning and naked, stripped of its windows, doors, steps and trim. The Preservation Center bought the house about three years ago and renovated it with $150,000 in donations and loans. They later sold the house (with the historic marker prominently placed on the front) for $99,000.

On a recent gray day, Avery crossed the muddy Mississippi into Algiers Point, a quiet, working-class neighborhood. The silence was broken only by the buzz of renewal as a crew of construction workers and students worked earnestly in the drizzle to bring the once-crumbling tiny house on Newton Street back to life.

The second preservation project -- this is where Henry ''Red'' Allen Jr. was born. Allen, who lived here in the 720-square-foot, three-room shotgun house from 1908 until 1917, was a trumpeter who played with a host of music giants including Armstrong, Ferdinand ''Jelly Roll'' Morton and Billie Holiday.

Avery stands like a proud mama in the yard, her mood marred only slightly by a bad knee made more finicky by the rain.

''When we got here it was a mess. The water had not even been turned on since 1984. It wasn't even steady enough to walk in,'' she says. ``Look now.''

Just before the house was to be demolished, the Center stepped in and purchased it for $6,500. They hope to sell it in February for about $100,000.

Along with the Ory and Allen homes, the Center has placed plaques on another 50 homes that are historically part of the birth of jazz. In the coming year, they are looking at the former homes of Johnny Dodds, who made a life of playing the clarinet and driving a cab, and Peter Bocage, a jazz and ragtime trumpeter. There are also plans to designate the buildings where Mahalia Jackson was born and the church she attended.

The project is long-term, dependent heavily on donations and grants, a sound financial strategy and the commitment of the community. Still, Avery says, it's a non-negotiable mission.

''This is not a program that will stop in five years. As long as there is music, as long as there is history to be preserved and communities to be protected, this program will live,'' says Avery. ``It has to; our legacy is dependent on it.''