St. Claude Avenue Music Corridor
These are in response to Jan Ramsey’s blog post “More Music Moving East?” (September 2019) questioning if St. Claude Avenue is the next music corridor and reporting that city councilmen and staff will be making a trip to see how it’s done in other cities, namely Seattle and San Francisco.—Ed.
Just read the article about St. Claude Avenue becoming the next music corridor. Since they mention sending people to San Francisco, to gather information, I thought I should chime in.
San Francisco does not have a music corridor! They tried to get things going on Fillmore Street. This would have been a perfect place to have clubs up and down the street. No success. The wonderful jazz club Yoshi’s couldn’t even survive as well as some other smaller clubs. The venues in San Francisco are just individual clubs in different areas. We are natives of San Francisco and love music so we know where the clubs are. Plus, we have no reputation as a music destination.
Our new reputation is a growing homeless problem, mental illness, open drug sales on streets, rental car smash and grab, no parking, and high prices.
Any trip here to help with your problems will be futile.
You have done it best with Bourbon and Frenchmen. I concur about Frenchmen, it has gotten too crowded.
I feel a moderate cover charge of $5.00 each would be enough to pay musicians along with a meal. Or, you can charge a surcharge on drinks during live entertainment hours specifically for musicians.
We love New Orleans and have been coming to Jazz Fest since 1989 and stay a couple of weeks. Your city is really special and we always tell everyone they have to go.
—Sher Giannini, Brisbane, California
Frenchmen Street definitely has “evolved”—better or worse who knows. Gone are the fabulous evenings of grabbing a bite there, listening to music, strolling the street, going from club to club, listening to the most diverse and wonderful music. Now it is simply a huge, loud, crowded cluster f—k.
—Connie Akard, Antlers, Oklahoma
You’re about five to eight years late on this article. St. Claude Avenue started down this road years ago, and my prediction 10 years ago was that St. Claude Avenue would be a restaurant mecca and that the “new Frenchmen” would be St. Bernard with its wide corridor and plenty of liquor licenses.
—Curtis Casados, New Orleans, Louisiana
Paul Butterfield
This is in response to Dan Willging’s review of Smoky Greenwell’s Blues and the Power of Peace CD review, August 2019.
Michael Bloomfield was a master of the blues guitar. He did not play harmonica. Perhaps the author meant to write “Paul Butterfield,” with whom Bloomfield played early in his professional career.
—Rick Wilkof, New Orleans, Louisiana
Spider Murphy
Thank you Jay Mazza for the complimentary ink on the enormous talents of Mr. Spider Murphy [August 2019 CD review]. And you Sir should be recognized for unleashing the word as Spider Murphy is no doubt the real deal. For those who don’t know about the legend of Spider Murphy, just google his name and enjoy the ride!
—Phillip Rauls, Seattle, Washington
Loss of music legends
We will never get over the loss of so many New Orleans legends in such a short period of time. It has been devastating, traumatic and profoundly sad. Dealing with all of this has taken the song out of my heart and has sucked the life out of me. We all have to learn to live with this. Accept it. Keep on keepin’ on. Much easier said than done. They say time’s a healer. Not this time.
—Ted Gogos, Buffalo, New York
