Barbarin boys and Walter Blue’s death

Abstract

All Isidore’s four sons, Paul, Louis, Lucien and William, were playing and starting to get on the jazz whirl. So naturally I was entangled in this scene. I couldn’t escape: all they did was talk, play, dream, eat, sleep, argue, follow music—jazz that is. They knew and discussed everything that was happening about jazz. During the period 1916 to 1920 there was a big demand for jazz musicians. If there was to be a jazz affair in the immediate neighborhood I followed my younger uncles Willie and Lucien to the scene, and watched and listened as they commented on who was playing (good, great, bad or lousy). And they knew jazz. Then I began to hear of the great musicians. They talked of who was away, up North or East, doing great. Who was going away. Who came back.