A Tale of Two Cities

It's my first day ever in New Orleans—March 1988. Riding the streetcar along St. Charles Avenue, clattering into town from Tulane, I'm the only white person on board.

The driver is enormous, three hundred pounds at least. With that round face and pencil-thin mustache, he looks just like Solomon Burke, the great rhythm-and-blues singer. The conversation on the streetcar is a stew of dialects, from Caribbean to what sounds like Brooklynese—"church" is "choich." When we pass a Catholic church, a nurse across the aisle makes the sign of the cross.

Two boys, eleven or twelve, sit near the front of the car, and one of them is holding a trumpet—probably on his way to a lesson. For his friend's benefit, he keeps fingering the valves and taking the mouthpiece off, blowing into it, and putting it back on. The driver glances over, as if expecting the kid to break into a solo. Would he tell him to stop? Or would he sing along? At Canal Street everyone rises to exit, but there's a holdup at the front of the line. The driver has put out his arm, blocking the kid with the trumpet. He demands: "Show me an open C!"

The kid is flustered and depresses valves randomly. The driver shakes his head.

He booms out: "Shiiit! You don' know how to play dat ting!"

What a city! Is everybody here a musician? Or a critic? Or could it be that the driver really is Solomon Burke?

In a small bar on Decatur Street, I meet up with Stevenson Palfi, who loves the streetcar story. "It was a trick question," he says. "An open C on a trumpet means you don't depress any valves."

Stevenson is the New Orleans filmmaker who directed the 1982 documentary Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together, featuring three generations of musicians—Tuts Washington, Henry Byrd (better known as "Professor Longhair," or simply "Fess"), and Allen Toussaint. Stevenson is like a white version of Toussaint: slim and quietly composed, with a gentle face that breaks often into a broad smile. In his grainy voice he talks about the documentary, which started off as one movie but had to become another. The climax was supposed to be a public performance with all three pianists playing together, but a few days before the concert Professor Longhair died in his sleep.

"I was so depressed," Stevenson says. "To lose a genius like him! And, being selfish, to lose my movie too. I couldn't eat or sleep. But Mrs. Byrd, Fess's wife, phoned and asked me to come to the service at the funeral home, and to bring the film crew. It was—"

Stevenson stops, but his movie tells the story. At the funeral home he found the legendary record producer Jerry Wexler, who read a eulogy—and gave permission to include it in the documentary. Then a young minister said a prayer, or sang a prayer, each line beginning with a wail: "Oh, Father!" And Allen Toussaint played a tribute to Fess on electric keyboard—a new composition, but with riffs and rhythms that belonged to his mentor. It was a glorious blurring of grief and joy. Out on the street, the movie showed mourners walking in a stately ritual march and then, on the way back from the cemetery, cutting up behind the band in that New Orleans tradition of "second line" dancing. After reaching back to connect three generations of piano players, Stevenson was reaching down into the rich soil of the city's culture, where sacred and secular meet.

"It was," he says—"It was . . . like falling off a cliff, and then finding yourself in a river, and just floating as it flowed along."

When the bartender brings refills, Stevenson asks about sandwiches. "What's good today?"

The bartender shrugs. "It's all OK."

"Well, if you were me, what would you order?"

"Man," the bartender says, "I'd eat anything that wouldn't eat me first."

Stevenson flashes his broad smile. "My standards," he says, "are just a little higher."

That...