Photo by Hex Windham
Buddy Bolden's monument in Holt Cemetery, a "potters' field" where New Orleans's indigent population has been buried since 1879. Bolden, who is credited as the "father of New Orleans jazz" is buried somewhere on the property in an unmarked grave.
Amidst a field of handcrafted plywood headstones sits a monument to Buddy Bolden, proclaimed by Jelly Roll Morton as “the blowingest man since Gabriel.”
Charles Joseph “Buddy” Bolden, known among his contemporaries as “King” Bolden, is the near-mythical father of New Orleans jazz, of whom there are no extant recordings and whose entire legend rests on the memories of other legends who heard him play. Morton himself recorded Buddy’s signature tune “Funky Butt,” and retitled it “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” a.k.a. “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say.” Bolden’s music career ended in 1907 after he received a diagnosis of dementia praecox (an archaic term for schizophrenia) and was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum, where he lived until his death in 1931. Bolden was then buried in an unmarked grave at Holt Cemetery, a city-owned “potters’ field” that has been the final resting place for New Orleans’s indigent population since 1879. Families are given access to graves here for the cost of digging, making it affordable even for those for whom funeral costs would be otherwise prohibitive.
The visibility of the cemeteries makes them essentially ubiquitous in our culture, constantly reminding us of those who have passed, and that someday we will join them.
However, the city’s location “below sea level” makes in-ground burial less than ideal, causing human remains to occasionally surface after significant flooding; this issue is further compounded by Holt being “officially” at capacity since the late 1980s, though the scarcity of affordable burial sites keeps it in active use to this day. As a result, burial sites end up being reused multiple times. This, combined with a lack of formal records of who is buried where at Holt, has resulted in a loss of many individuals’ specific resting places over time. So, the Bolden monument is less of a true grave marker than an abstract symbol honoring the musician.
Nearby lies the headstone of New Orleans R&B legend Jessie Hill; beneath his name is inscribed “Ooh Poo Pah Doo,” the title of the classic song he penned. (It is fairly common for New Orleans music legends to have their signature songs included on their gravesites.) Though Mr. Hill was originally buried in one of these “unmarked” graves and for decades after his death in 1996 had no permanent headstone, fans preserved the site with a plywood music note painted over in text, which stood for years until family and fans were able to raise the funds to commission a permanent stone marker (albeit with an incorrect year of death).
Other New Orleans music legends have been buried with more grandeur, in the archetypal crypts of the Crescent City: above-ground stone tombs that protect remains from flood damage and can be reused for generations. In Louisiana, we learn about the function of these tombs in elementary school. The visibility of the cemeteries makes them essentially ubiquitous in our culture, constantly reminding us of those who have passed, and that someday we will join them.
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Photo by Hex Windham
The tomb of trumpeter and bandleader Louis Prima in the Metairie Cemetery.
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Photo by Hex Windham
The tomb of jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain in Metairie Cemetery.
In Metairie Cemetery, the tombs of jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain and trumpeter Louis Prima are both inscribed with music notes and lyrics from their signature songs (“A Closer Walk With Thee” for Fountain, “Just a Gigolo” for Prima). Prima’s comrade Sam Butera lies in nearby Greenwood Cemetery in a slightly more modest tomb, though still above ground. All of these men worked as professional musicians for decades and lived to relative old age (Prima at 67, Butera at 81, Fountain at 86), and all three had enough success that they were able to purchase large tombs that will provide for generations of their descendants, too.
This end of the city (“At the Foot of Canal Street,” as goes the song by local musicians Paul Sanchez and John Boutte) is the neighborhood of the dead—organized by the rows of above-ground tombs of Metairie Cemetery, Greenwood, Holt, Cypress Grove, Gates of Prayer, St. Patrick, and more, some historically integrated and some historically segregated.
My daughter and I rode our motorcycles to Gentilly’s Mount Olivet Cemetery to find the graves of Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, and Allen Toussaint. Mount Olivet markets itself as “the only cemetery in New Orleans’s Mid-City District that caters to the African-American and Creole communities” and prides itself as a “small cemetery” that is “big on celebrating life.” Indeed, Mount Olivet does include massive tombs, some featuring musical embellishments (notes, piano keys, horns, etc.), but all three of the New Orleans musical giants we found there are currently resting in relatively unassuming mausoleum squares.
Whereas Professor Longhair died in 1980 in relative poverty, on the cusp of releasing the Crawfish Fiesta album that would secure his legacy, both Domino and Toussaint lived into the 21st century and certainly had earned enough money in their lifetimes to have purchased more elaborate tombs. Both men were also known for a degree of flamboyance, Toussaint especially notorious for driving his Rolls-Royce around town. As we were about to ride away, though, I noticed a quote from the Beatitudes on a plaque on the wall near Toussaint: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the Earth.” Perhaps it was simply a personal choice on the part of these men to be buried in a modest mausoleum square, preferring to spend eternity in a quiet resting place with family as opposed to within an ornate monument to their own personal glory.
Photo by Hex Windham
The resting place of jazz vocalist and pianist, "Sweet" Emma Barrett in St. Mark's Mausoleum in St. Louis Cemetery
Jazz vocalist and pianist “Sweet” Emma Barrett (a.k.a. “The Bell Gal”) was similarly buried in the St. Mark’s Mausoleum section of St. Louis Cemetery #3, the cemetery that I have visited the most throughout my life, where most of my mother’s family is buried in one of the more archetypal above-ground tombs. Ms. Barrett’s burial site is flanked by such tombs, owned by several African American families. But the fact was that I still hadn’t found a grave of a Black New Orleans musician that fit the traditional New Orleans archetype.
This trend seemed to continue when we rode down to Providence Memorial Park on Airline Highway, right down the road from where Gram Parsons is buried at the Garden of Memories. (The story of why Gram Parsons, who never even played a concert in New Orleans, is nonetheless buried here is a story better told elsewhere.) Here the legendary eyepatched piano virtuoso James Booker rests in the Champagne family mausoleum square. Like Sweet Emma Barrett’s, Booker’s grave has an elegant inscription, denoting him as “The Piano Prince,” but it is otherwise unpretentious and free of ornament.
Photo by Hex Windham
The plaque on the tomb of singer and "Emperor of the Universe" Ernie K-Doe, who is buried at St. Louis Cemetery #2
One of my priorities was to visit the grave of Ernie K-Doe, a singer locally beloved perhaps even more than Domino. Indeed, though his music was relatively obscure elsewhere, in New Orleans, K-Doe was the self-proclaimed “Emperor of the Universe,” operating his own bar named after his biggest hit: the Ernie K-Doe Mother-in-Law Lounge. One of my prized possessions is a Japanese-style fan that belonged to the K-Does, which I bought from the garage sale held before the bar's closure after Ernie's wife Antoinette passed on.
Thwarting me, though, was the fact that Mr. K-Doe is buried at St. Louis Cemetery #2, which has been closed to the public for years due to concerns about the fragile nature of the nineteenth-century tombs. However, after a couple of polite phone calls and emails, the nice folks at New Orleans Catholic Cemeteries granted me permission to visit, giving me a code for the digital locks on the security gates.
My quest to find these gravesites had developed beyond being a hobby and into a bit of an addiction, but this day’s discovery brought me a sense of satisfaction and closure.
On the appointed morning, my daughter and I rode back down Canal Street towards the French Quarter, turning on Claiborne, where St. Louis #2 is split into three separate plots, each of which is separately gated and locked. Wandering this graveyard brought back a childhood memory of looking into a dilapidated tomb near my paternal grandfather’s and being greeted by my first real look at human bones. Our visit through St. Louis #2 offered similar opportunities. These tombs were the oldest that I had ever seen, many of them inscribed in French or Spanish, and many housing celebrated figures from Louisiana history.
I was expecting that Antoinette would be buried with Ernie, but it was a pleasant surprise to discover that guitar legend Earl King was also buried in the same tomb, with a separate plaque for each local celebrity. It seems that a dedicated music fan had donated the use of her family’s tomb to all three, and Friends of New Orleans Catholic Cemeteries paid for the plaques.
Photo by Hex Windham
The tomb of drummer Paul Barbarin, where also rests jazz guitarist Danny Barker and his wife, vocalist "Blu Lu" Barker, in St. Louis Cemetery #2
Around the corner I also found the resting place of jazz guitarist Danny Barker and his wife, vocalist “Blu Lu” Barker, buried together in the gleaming white tomb of drummer Paul Barbarin, who was Mr. Barker’s cousin. The biggest surprise, though, was accidentally stumbling on the family crypt of some of my own Creole ancestors—with an inscription in French indicating that the first three people buried there were children, distant cousins of mine who died in the yellow fever epidemic in 1850s New Orleans. I was grateful to be able to show the grave to my daughter, giving both of us a sense of belonging amidst the crumbling nineteenth century graves, all backdropped by the interstate highway and urban decay. My quest to find these gravesites had developed beyond being a hobby and into a bit of an addiction, but this day’s discovery brought me a sense of satisfaction and closure.
There are a few gravesites of New Orleans music legends that eluded me during my research; however, I have come to accept this, especially if the families chose to keep the burial locations private. As someone who has family in those cemeteries so often visited by buses full of camera-toting tourists, I have made a special effort to keep sacred the burial sites I visit, always remembering I am walking past people’s ancestors and loved ones.
I’d like to think that every person deserves the dignity of being remembered and celebrated, and in particular I’d like to make sure that these culture bearers will never be forgotten.
