The Fertel Funky Tour: Part 1 in a 2-part series on New Orleans culture and music
On Saturday, March 29th at 10 a.m. in the Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, I’ll be speaking at the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival on the panel “Early New Orleans Jazz and its Neighborhoods,” alongside writers Fatima Shaik and John McCusker, and moderated by Peggy Scott Laborde. Given the topic — and the impending arrival of Jazz Fest visitors from around the world — now seems like a good time to re-introduce the “Fertel Funky Tour,” which I was first honored to write about in the pages of Smithsonian Magazine in 2011.
The following piece is a revision of the article that originally appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, September 2011.
New Orleans Beyond Bourbon Street
From out-of-the-way jazz joints to po’ boy shacks, a native son shares his favorite haunts in the Big Easy
Who can resist New Orleans? Gumbo and oyster po’ boys, jazz and funky blues, the French Quarter and the Garden District. Eyes light up, mouths water, toes tap. I’m obsessed with New Orleans — explaining its uniqueness to myself and to visitors. My need to understand the city is perhaps inescapable. When I was 15, my mother bought Chris Steak House with its small but loyal clientele. I bussed its 17 tables and learned how to butcher heavy short loins. Before long, Mom added her name, and the famous Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain of restaurants was born. Meanwhile, my father was making a name for himself too, running for mayor on a platform of bringing a gorilla to the New Orleans zoo. He got only 310 votes but kept his campaign promise by going to Singapore and buying two baby gorillas he named Red Beans and Rice. As the son of the Empress of Steak and the Gorilla Man, how could I not become a New Orleans obsessive?
I take friends on what I call the “Fertel Funky Tour,” meandering through sites the tour buses mostly miss. Once, some Parisian guests politely asked, “What ees thees ‘fun-kee’?” I explained that “funky” means smelly. Buddy Bolden, arguably the first jazzman of them all, played at the Funky Butt, a music hall named for his song that begs us to “open up that window and let that bad air out.”
Read the rest of “Fertel Funky Tour” over at Randy’s Substack, “Yes And: Essays in the Age of Improv.”
