“I made a cocktail for Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington because when I first moved to New Orleans I got a job at Boucherie uptown and one of my regulars was Hank Staples of the Maple Leaf—such a sweet man. He’d come to the bar and have dinner and write his name on a paper napkin and we’d call them ‘hankies’ [laughs]. Anyway, he gave them to all of us on the staff so that after our shift we could go dancing and drinking at th...