When I rolled into town twenty-some odd years ago as a teenager with nothing but a busted-up old saxophone and a blown gasket in my hatchback “apartment,” I was as alone as I’d ever been in my short life. After spending my first week or so in New Orleans hungry, getting lost in the Quarter and pushing my dead car/home around corners to avoid getting towed, I met “Washboard Lissa” Driscoll, a.k.a. “Ragtime Annie,” and my fortune changed in an instant. She fed me until I was full and introduced...