THE BIG EASY

A Jimmy Cagney lookalike in baseball cap and plaid shirt, the Mississippi river pilot was quite opinionated of American society: “too many Jews and African-Americans in government” he proclaimed as the ship swung ten degrees port up river to New Orleans.I thought: oh! dear, is this the type of prejudiced society I half-expected it to be? By the way, for those fortunate to be too young to remember Jimmy Cagney movies I didn’t recall any racism but Cagney played roles in which he usually got his own way.I hadn’t sailed to the Deep South before, but as is said, first impressions count and hearing African-Americans referred to in a nasty term which should never be used today seemed to confirm prejudice indeed.For in 1975 we were on a large bulk carrier in New Orleans to load for Europe. Throughout the outward-bound voyage the crew had been cleaning the hatches in readiness for 90k tonnes of grain and despite best efforts it was decided on arrival by the US Department of Agriculture that these hatches were not clean enough. A squad of US officials visited the ship at this time – first of all immigration officers, followed by health and quarantine and, lastly, by labour organisers who were to oversee the final cleaning.

Berthed close to the centre near Canal Street with cleaning arranged quickly up to one hundred guys and girls arrived on board to start work.. As an aside, it was alleged that USDA and labour agencies colluded to fail cargo hold cleanliness in order to generate work. Whether they did or not, none us really cared, as in our favour, it gave us a longer port stay in New Orleans.

The cleaners turned up with huge extendable brooms, ladders, shovels, lifting equipment and, of course, plenty of bottled water for this was September, a particularly hot and humid time of year.All of them African-American employees, they finished the work within the stated three days, and perhaps because of this haste, they had little time for conversation with ourselves.There were some exceptions though, and the night foreman, a massively-built guy named Clyde Brown was a bloke you didn’t want to disappoint when he asked to buy a beer from the crew bar.Evidently, he’d spent time in the USAF in Mildenhall, England and seemed well-acquainted with British culture, chuckling over expressions such as our ‘queues’ (“over here it’s a line, man – a cue is what ya shoot pool with!”). 
Friendly and conversational, Clyde explained that he preferred to work British ships not only because we had booze, but also this gave him a chance to reminisce about his military service in the UK, a time he seemed to have enjoyed.

He was a mine of information about New Orleans and just wanted to steer us away from being ripped-off.And after we’d spent the first night visiting bars and music dives such as The Spotted Cat, Snug Harbour and an Irish pub which I think was named Pat O’Brien’s, Clyde had had enough: “why do you guys go to tourist places?” he snorted. “And pay top dollar? – and an Irish bar in New Orleans? – c’mon!” 

It would have been embarrassing for us to say that, yes, seafarers were sometimes like tourists, i.e., heading for the nearest bright lights, but in any case, he came to our rescue with a notebook list of very good reasonably priced bars, rock and jazz clubs just a few metres from the main street (“these places are safe and sound, man – my own reputation’s on it.”)
Reminding us that jazz itself migrated downriver from the delta – places like Baton Rouge and Lake Charles – Clyde told us that jazz developed sometime in 1900 around the red light district of Storyville, a place very conductive to this progressive type of music.The iconic photos of smoky all-night clubs, jazz combos and bourbon whisky belong to history books for Storyville  wasn’t there in 1975, in fact – it closed decades before when a twenty-year experiment in restricting prostitution and drugs by the government of the day drew upon legalised red light districts in Germany and Holland.Jazz bars were a dime a dozen, and red light establishments ranged from cheap ‘cribs’ – so-called 50 cent joints – to expensive houses for the well-heeled and although there were both black and white brothels, black clients were allowed to purchase services in neither.Storyville probably summed up a forward-thinking attitude of that time until I read about this brothel colour bar which changed my whole perceptions. For African-Americans were prejudiced against in employment, housing and mobility but to deny them a little night’s honey seemed particularly mean.Finally it seemed that the US Navy used its powers to close Storyville as it didn’t want sailors distracted on deployment. So in 1917 – the time of WW1 – that was the end of Storyville and little remains today for the curious tourist. 

The City: 

I’m not sure if the ‘Big Easy’ nickname preceded the 1987 Hollywood film of the same name, but the city is noted for round-the-clock nightlife, vibrant music including rock, blues and jazz. It also has a unique spicy cuisine demonstrating French, African and American cultures.Most of these activities are based in a area of a square mile or so around Bourbon Street, Canal Street and the French Quarter.Home to around 400,000 people, it is a major port and economic hub and historically been prone to flooding leading to installation of a complex system of levees and drainage pumps.Tourism is extremely important hosting 10.1 million people in 2017, an increase of 5.2% over the previous year. (1)

The People:

In 1975, New Orleans’ population was 480,000, a decrease today for reasons we shall soon see. A true melting pot, many citizens can trace their ancestry from Native American, African slaves, Europeans and Caribbean slaves and migrants. Historically, the city had a bloodied past and was the centre of slave-trading during the Antebellum-era (prior to the Civil war); indeed the phrase ‘being sold down the river’ refers to the practice of sending slaves down the Mississippi to the New Orleans slave market.Today the inhabitants are proud of their city – acclaimed as unique in the US – with its service and high-tech economy. The latest unemployment stats hover around the 5.7% mark (1) – not an unduly bad figure at all.

The River:

The Mississippi is the largest river/drainage system in the US next to the Great Lakes. Main economics are centred upon the following:1) Oil and gas2) Fisheries3) Shipping and ports4) Tourism
Of shipping and ports, New Orleans is a hub for river traffic with grain and cotton transported downstream from the Mid-West. And of tourism, there is a niche market of ecotourism out in the delta wetlands which reportedly brings in billions a year in supporting local and federal government.Beyond the delta, the terrain is mainly forested wetland, swamp and maritime forest; much of this land was cleared in the 18th century for cotton cultivation, a mainstay of New Orleans economy.In 2005, the whole area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, a major natural disaster which saw the city population decline by almost 50% as people relocated to other areas – many folks were not rehoused for months resulting in a major scandal at the time.

But well before ‘Katrina’, our helpful friend Clyde back at the ship related to us the problem of ‘blockbusting’ – a particular form of housing discrimination there and apparently real estate agents – not viewed as the most trustworthy businesses in the US either – would convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices. The rationale behind this was to promote fear in these house-owners that racial minorities would soon be moving into the neighbourhood.Some white house-owners did sell, especially when Clyde told us that estate agents would pay an African-American mother to push a pram around a white neighbourhood, or give candy to a bunch of black kids to hang around the same streets.”Nobody benefited”, he said: the whites were pushed into more expensive zones whilst black folks were impelled to buy into houses they couldn’t ultimately afford.”And land in this city is already in short supply – meanwhile I noticed you guys in England don’t have this neighbourhood problem, don’t you live next to each other?” he suggested. Well, we did have racial problems in the UK (and still do) – but his point was valid: there was more social inclusion in England. 

But returning to Clyde’s recommendations on Big Easy bars, we found that indeed, the most welcoming and least expensive were away from Bourbon Street and here the musicians played their own music rather than cover versions from Leadbelly, Dr John and John Lee Hooker, with the additional draw of actually talking to some of the audience at interval. We share the same language I thought as a saxophonist discussed the attributes of the Rolling Stones: not a bit resentful that the Stones had successfully copied many riffs from the original delta blues artists even finding, as he comically put it, Mick Jagger’s “faggot dancing is very professional!”Clyde’s comment on blues was this however: “blues had a baby and they called it rock ‘n’ roll” – to me a very fitting observation to the way music crosses cultural and racial divides.

So glitzy tourist haunts don’t represent the real people and although hosts in downtown New Orleans would like to relate to tourist rapport, it hardly gets past a superficial stage.On the backstreets life was different in a jazz club on Roosevelt Avenue and the barmaid, a University of Louisiana history major, gave us an interesting talk about how blues music evolved from African spiritual chants, revivalist hymns and country dance music handed down through generations.

We were all rapt listening to her own childhood in a delta neighbourhood where kids were taught singing and guitar and – if they could afford one – a trumpet or saxophone. They lived in a small share-cropping community where agricultural work was the norm, her parents owning a old truck instead of a car (easier to move the hogs around!). Unemployment amongst African-American youth was high and some of her school friends enlisted in the army (the southern states have a high proportion of recruits) with many choosing the US Army Band.

We pointed out that playing ‘America the Beautiful’ was different than playing ‘Shake your Money-maker’, but she accepted our ribbing, pointing out that she preferred Motown but also rock music, adding that “thanks to y’all from England, Scotland and Ireland, rock’s now a major cultural force.”
Our history lesson over pitchers of ‘Budweiser’ moved to the subject of tobacco: “a dangerous substance” she said,  “grown in Virginia and here in Perique, Louisiana, exported from New Orleans by British traders and sold throughout the world thereafter.” We listened to her say that “originally there was a public backlash against tobacco in the sixteenth century until your government realised they could make so much revenue – shame on you guys!”

It was really just a gentle admonishment to the evils of the past British Empire, but I checked this information out with the history graduate barmaid correct – even King James 1 of England balked against the use of tobacco calling it ‘loathsome which irritates the throat” – but of course he didn’t complain about the vast taxation revenue of tobacco. 

The French Quarter of New Orleans: its colourful facades, cast-iron verandas  – a backdrop to the play and book A Streetcar named Desire – fronts onto the Mississippi river itself. At the western side, the Quarter has an amazing view of Louis Armstrong Park, a tribute to possibly jazz’s greatest musician. The French Quarter is where most tourist footfall takes place and it is here that access is on a human scale, i.e., there’s not much need to drive because walking is so easy. The ship’s agent, another wizard on local knowledge, told us that the city, in terms of access, culture, architecture and street-life is unique in the US.

And so it went – a trip ashore was an on-going movie discovering places and the locals’ take on life, their hopes and dreams with snippets of history and, whether it was due to New Orleans’ geographic location being a port, there was generally an avid interest in seafarers

For example, after leaving the Roosevelt Avenue bar, a cab driver was amazed to find we were crew on a large bulk carrier. “Wow! – I’m reading the book “Supership”‘ he explained. Had we read it? We hadn’t – but evidently it’s an account of life aboard a P&O bulk carrier named Ardshiel. As working crew on another bulkie we scarcely wanted to rush out and buy the book but it was fun to listen to his many questions as his old yellow Chevy cruised down Bourbon Street towards the wharf.
Back aboard each day there was an amazing view of the bayou from the monkey island: against the shimmering heat haze it was fascinating to see how it had been wrested from nature; swamps and virgin forest transformed into cotton fields, all done by slave labour during one of the darkest chapters of Louisiana’s history. At this time, this terrain had been returned to nature from the initial ploughing-up 150 years earlier; swamp grass, southern oak and magnolia trees had recolonised with presumably alligators, snakes and other critters – the main reason for the abandonment of cotton crops being price decline.

But yet again, expansion of housing units and Louisiana port facilities has concreted this bayou land over until the Port of Louisiana in 2019 is now the largest port by tonnage in the US.; in 1975 most vessels loaded intermittently as barges sailed from upstream grain terminals, sometimes as far as the prairie state of Illinois.  But since the port’s expansion all the way from New Orleans to Baton Rouge – – some 54 miles – the grain is ready for loading from silos. 

Eventually we left the Big Easy although only to sail upriver to a small port on Lake Charles where Mississippi lighters loaded the remainder of the grain.At the weekend the ship sailed and who should appear on the pilot ladder but Jimmy Cagney. “How y’all?” he asked. “And did you guys enjoy it.”We honestly said that it was a great stay and this time he was devoid of any racist criticism, instead preferring to concur with our own appreciation. And this above all, summed-up how an Orleanian feels about life: they’re very proud of their city. They think it’s wonderful and want the rest of the world to see it too.