I’ve been to New Orleans twice.  The first time for a conference, which was the first conference I ever attended, not long after starting to work for Holzer Medical Center.  It was held in the Superdome, which was pretty awesome.  The other time was when Dale and I were on vacation.  It was the summer we spent time in Jackson, Mississippi where Dale’s dad was living while working on a year-long project in Natchez.

I had always been interested in old-time jazz.  So what better place to go than Preservation Hall, in the heart of the French Quarter. From the outside, Preservation Hall looks like a long-abandoned storefront.  The windows are grimy and the doors haven’t seen paint in probably decades.  It cost only a dollar to get in, and you could stay as long as you wanted.  The people were packed like sardines inside.   A few people were lucky enough to get to sit on the floor directly in front of the band.  The band, Sweet Mama, happened to be the same band on both visits.  It was August, and with the room packed with people, the couple of floor fans didn’t make much difference.  But once the band started playing nobody cared.  It was classic Dixieland.  The song that I still remember best was an extended version of “All of Me”.

Afterwards, I thought how great it would be to try to capture that whole atmosphere on video—a real production.  Several years later I saw PBS production that recorded a night at Preservation Hall.  But it didn’t do it justice.  The director constantly kept cutting between cameras, to the point of being distracting.  It didn’t capture the “atmosphere”.  Maybe someday?