Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz

1. 1886–1896: Le Monde Creole en Campagne

[ 6 ] chapter 1 1886–1896 LE MONDE CREOLE EN CAMPAGNE The Woodland Plantation was a sprawling 1,882-acre sugar cane farm twenty-five miles upriver from New Orleans in a tiny St. John the Baptist Parish hamlet called LaPlace. Its main house—a raised, elongated cottage with a modest tin roof, cistern, and two stainedglass dormer windows—was built in 1839. About two dozen buildings , many of which had been slave quarters, ran along a dirt road behind the main house.1 It was there on a cold Christmas morning in 1886 that Edward “Kid” Ory was born. Ory’s family lived about a half mile behind the main house across the cane fields, next to the massive multi-story sugar mill where his father worked. At least two sets of railroad tracks ran through the plantation between the main house and the mill. One ran to other places like New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The other, a spur line, curved through the fields back to the sugar mill. The overland route was the River Road, an often-murky thoroughfare that followed the Mississippi downriver southeast to New Orleans and upriver northwest to Baton Rouge. Most folks called it simply “the road.” In the nineteenth century most of the population of St. John Parish lived close to the river on the plantations and farms daisychained along its banks. An earthen levee hemmed the waters in, providing some small protection from the spring floods that were responsible for the rich soil that made farming possible. The fields fanned out like thinly cut pie slices originating at the water’s edge: large wedge to the river, thin to the swamp. le monde creole en campagne [ 7 ] The Woodland was part of the village of LaPlace, which was little more than a few homesteads, some rental property, and a store. Further upriver was Reserve, which had more of a town feel, including stores, social clubs, and the only Catholic church for miles, St. Peter’s. The church was about five miles from the Woodland sugar house, so the Ory family would have needed transportation to get there. They would have traveled down the red dirt road that crossed the railroad tracks until they arrived at the River Road. From there they would have headed upriver, winding and turning with the river until reaching the simple wooden church. Built in 1867, it sat some distance off the road, allowing parking space for dozens of buggies. Out back, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, was the cemetery that took over as the burial location for east bank Catholics who previously would have been buried across the river in Edgard at the St. John the Baptist Church. Father Etienne Badoil was the Ory family’s priest from the founding of St. Peter’s until his death in 1905. He baptized most of the Ory kids. He was out in the community and could often be found playing euchre, a card game, at the Planters and Merchants Social Club hall down the road from St. Peter’s.2 Other than the Latin he spoke during mass, he always conversed in French, as did most of his parishioners. Across the river from Reserve is Edgard, comprised largely of the parish courthouse, St. John the Baptist Church, the Caire Store, and a few other businesses. Apart from a couple of villages up and downriver, the rest of the parish was sugarcane fields and swamp. The majority of the population of St. John the Baptist Parish was of African ancestry, though one would never get this impression from the names on the 1860 census. A puny document compared to its postwar counterparts, the census lists white planters and a few free blacks. The 1870 count, the first after the Civil War and Emancipation, would present a very different view. The nameless masses that had been noted merely as numbers on the 1860 slave census had become a political majority.3 With the support of [ 8 ] 1886–1896 occupying federal forces, which arrived in 1862 with the fall of New Orleans, and the disenfranchisement of white voters, St. John voters elected black officials. Even after the troops withdrew in 1877, black politicians like Sheriff John Webre held on to power. For the better part of a generation former slaves enjoyed, if not a radically changed life, the promise of one and the assurance that the American...