April 20, 2022 | David Johnson, digital media editor of OffBeat, interviewed national park ranger Jade Perdue and museum director John McCusker. Beat Café, a weekly program that explores the music scene in New Orleans and the broader reach of Louisiana, is broadcast on WHIV 102.3 FM every Friday from 1 to 2 p.m.

Perdue is a ranger at Jazz National Historical Park in New Orleans and a vocalist who sings with the Arrowhead Jazz Band, an ever-flowing musical institution afthat features park rangers performing alongside local New Orleans musicians. She joined the park service following an internship for students from historically Black colleges and universities.

McCusker is the founding director of the 1811 Kid Ory Historic House in LaPlace, Louisiana.  The museum is located in one of the oldest structures in St. John the Baptist parish and figures in two noteworthy moments in American history: The 1811 rebellion of enslaved people and the dawn of jazz with the birth of Edward “Kid” Ory in 1886.  An award-winning photojournalist, first at The Times-Picayune and then The New Orleans Advocate, McCusker has documented the people and places of his native city for three decades. He started offering the Cradle of Jazz tour in the 1990s as a means of advocating for the preservation and marking of the homes and haunts of pioneer jazz musicians. McCusker has written two books: Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz (2012) and Jockomo: The Native Roots of Mardi Gras Indians with Shane Lief, (2019). Both were published by the University Press of Mississippi.