New Orleans Bar Association

New Orleans Nostalgia Archives

Ned Hemard's Weekly Column Remembering New Orleans History, Culture and Traditions

From “Men In Tights” to “Men in Krewes”:

If Ever I Cease to Love

The man in tights was Jules Léotard and he became the rage of London. Born in France in 1842, he had invented the flying trapeze act. He first appeared in London at the Alhambra in May of 1861. His success and notoriety caused two things: Leotards became a new word for tights, and a man named George Leybourne wrote a popular music hall song in 1867, The Flying Trapeze. We know the song as The (Daring Young) Man On The Flying Trapeze.

Leybourne (1842-1884) originated for London music halls the role of Champagne Charlie, a high-rolling "swell" who was seen only in the most fashionable places. His major rival, The Great Vance, also sang songs about such stylish places, including the Zoological Gardens. It was Vance’s song Walking in the Zoo that popularized the word Zoo (which really bummed out the Royal Zoological Society). However, Leybourne’s song Lounging in the Aq failed to work the same magic for the word Aquarium. “They all Aq’sd for you at the Zoological Gardens” just wouldn’t have cut it anyway.

Leybourne did have another claim to fame. He wrote If Ever I Cease To Love for “Bluebeard.” Lydia Thompson came to New Orleans to sing it. The Grand Duke Alexis came, too. Whether he came to see her or another chanteuse of the day is open to debate. But in the process, Rex was born in 1872 and New Orleans got a fanciful and memorable Mardi Gras anthem.

NED HÉMARD

New Orleans Nostalgia

"Men In Tights to Men In Krewes"

From Chalmette to the Charts:

The Battle of New Orleans to Popular Music

The British historian, Paul Johnson, in his chronicle of world society from 1815-1830, The Birth of the Modern, chose the Battle of New Orleans (actually fought in Chalmette) as the pivotal starting point of his tome. That event demonstrated to him “how this friendship between the two great English-speaking nations sprang, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the tragic and bitterly fought War of 1812.” Both sides were at the time unaware that the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed, but after New Orleans “the strong and abiding community of interests between the two peoples did its healing work and the elements of a mighty, civilizing friendship began to come together.” This special relationship
between Britain and the United States after Jackson’s victory on January 8, 1815, along with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo that same year, was for Johnson the beginning of an exciting modern age.

The night before the battle (which was really the culmination of a series of military encounters), Ursuline nuns (along with New Orleans wives and daughters) gathered to pray to Notre Dame de Bon Secours, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, for victory the next day. The Ursuline Convent had been spared from a fire in 1812 after prayers to Our Lady. The wind changed direction and turned the fire away.

Jean Lafitte, played by both Fredric March and Yul Brynner, in two versions of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Buccaneer, has been a much romanticized figure. According to eyewitnesses, he almost definitely was not on the battlefield that day, nor did the Lafittes ever fly the skull and crossbones flag so immortalized in pirate fiction. That is not to undermine the Baratarians’ contribution. Although originally called “hellish banditti” by Jackson, they provided his forces with flints and
powder, knowledge of the bayous and swamps leading into the city and an
able cannoneer known as Dominique You.

Besides Lafitte and his men, Jackson had amassed an army of militiamen (from Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana), Choctaw Indians and locals. Two battalions were free men of color, over 600 strong, a volunteer contingent much larger than that of the privateers of Grand Terre.

Major General Ned Pakenham, the Duke of Wellington’s brother-in-law, was
impatient and had a poorly executed plan of attack for the British side. One failure was that fascines and ladders needed to scale the earthworks along the Rodriguez Canal were never brought forward. And Old Hickory had flooded the battlefield by breaching the levees (this time on purpose). The British siege cannons could not get a solid footing and sank into the soggy terrain. Trajectories could not be calculated. The Americans, although facing twice their number, were on high ground and mowed them down. It was over very quickly.

Americans killed on the line that day were less than a handful or two, while the British casualties (killed and wounded) were over 2,000. As astounding as these numbers are to us, most Brits simply are unaware of this particular bit of history. They remember many more significant battles fought by England like the Battle of the Somme in 1916 with over 58,000 British troops lost (one third of them killed) in a little over ten hours. Some English however have heard of the Battle of New Orleans from a most unlikely source – a song!

Believe it or not, the song, “The Battle of New Orleans,” was a big hit on the UK charts in 1959, reaching Number 2 and staying there for several weeks. It was the most popular recording in the States for 1959, second only to “Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin. Johnny Horton had the U.S. hit while Lonnie Donegan had the hit record in the UK. It was a song written by Jimmy (James Morris) Driftwood to the music of an old fiddle tune known as “The Eighth of January.” Driftwood was a teacher who used music to teach his students history.

Lonnie Donegan was a skiffle musician very popular in England. Skiffle bands were first known as spasm bands and began, ironically, in New Orleans, in the early 1900s. Street performers used simple improvised instruments like kazoos and cigar-box fiddles. Donegan found inspiration in the blues and New Orleans Jazz. He started playing traditional Jazz, called trad in the UK. He then performed skiffle for audiences with washboard, tea-chest bass and a cheap Spanish guitar. As a result, Skiffle became extremely popular in England in the 50s and 60s. Donegan played a lot of folk songs in the skiffle style and had a huge hit with “Rock Island Line,” a song by (Louisiana-born) Leadbelly. Donegan inspired so many British bands because he made playing music look so simple. One skiffle band in England known as the Quarrymen evolved into the Beatles. Paul McCartney said of Donegan, “We studied his records avidly. We all bought guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man.”

The British have always loved New Orleans music. The Beatlesrecorded two songs by Larry Williams. The Stones did “Time Is On My Side”and “Fortune Teller.” Herman’s Hermits even did “Mother-In-Law,” but they could never compare with the late Ernie K-Doe, the Emperor of the Universe. Still it is a peculiar footnote to history that a song about the British defeat at New Orleans was so popular over there.

NED HÉMARD

King Cakes

“If music be the food of love, play on.” These are the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and there probably aren’t many better words to describe the life and culture of New Orleans: Music, food, love and play. They’re all here, and they begin in New Orleans with Twelfth Night, or the Feast of the Epiphany.

At the end of the “twelve days of Christmas” comes January 6, when New Orleanians send their Christmas trees off for wetlands restoration and when king cakes begin production (although many bakeries have jumped the gun in recent years due to the overwhelming demand). The Mardi Gras season is also officially underway and an old established carnival krewe, Twelfth Night Revelers, holds its annual ball. Why is this?

It all has to do with that twelfth night long ago when the three wise gift-bearing kings, or Magi, visited the Christ child. This manifestation of Christ’s divinity is commemorated each year. That is why when we say we have “had an epiphany,” it means we’ve experienced a sort of divine revelation. These kings are remembered on Twelfth Night, which in New Orleans is also called Kings’ Day. In France it is called Petit Noël, or Little Christmas. There balls were held where a cake made of brioche dough was served. It is said that Louis XIV participated in at least one of these festivities where a bean, or perhaps a jeweled token, was hidden in the cake. Some opine that this is the reason it is called Gâteau des Rois, or Kings’ Cake, but the custom goes back much earlier. Medieval monarchs would have lively entertainments with jugglers, acrobats, conjurers, jesters and other comical characters. This motley crew would be organized by the Lord of Misrule, whose task was to orchestrate these performers. A lot of these revelries pre-date Christianity itself, for one of the ways the King of Saturnalia was chosen was by discovering a fava bean in a piece of cake (shades of Silence of the Lambs!). Early bean kings were chosen sacred kings of the tribe for a year, then sacrificed so their blood would go back into the soil for a successful harvest (Hannibal Lector, bring the Chianti!).

Twelfth Night Revelers continued the medieval traditions in New Orleans at its first bal masque in 1870. A huge cake was cut and its slices served to the ladies by the Revelers. The lady who received the golden bean would become queen. But the jesters and court fools made a mess of serving the cake, and the finder of the bean remained bashfully silent. It was not until the following year when their monarch, also called the Lord of Misrule, knew the pre-ordained recipient, Emma Butler, and crowned her queen before all present. There was no queen for the carnival season before then. Comus had not yet crowned one and Rex would not roll for another year.

Today the Revelers (dressed as pastry chefs) use an elaborate mock wooden cake with drawers inside, but at one time McKenzie’s Bakery baked king cakes for the organization. Henry McKenzie owned a bakery on Prytania Street that was sold to the Entringer family in 1935. Donald Entringer would place trinkets supplied by a jeweler in the cakes for the Revelers. At first, about a dozen cakes were baked with about half going to the ball with the remainder placed in the store. These numbers would grow exponentially as king cake purchases increased. King cake parties have always been popular New Orleans events. Whoever got the bean (or later the baby) would be king or queen and have to host the next party. Around 1940, a friend of Entringer’s began supplying him with porcelain dolls from China to put in the cakes, but they could break a tooth. Years later the much safer plastic baby (representing the Christ child) would begin inhabiting the king cakes of New Orleans. McKenzie’s is no longer in operation, but countless other Greater New Orleans bakeries produce a wide variety of king cakes which are shipped around the world. There are even gold babies, black babies and those that glow in the dark.

The traditional king cake is oval-shaped and decorated with colored sugars of purple, green and gold, the Mardi Gras colors. In France today the king cake is called the couronne, or crown. It is a round cake of sweetened brioche dough, with coarse sugar, red and green glazed cherries and an apricot glaze coating. The trinkets inside each year are new and different, just as Mardi Gras is each year for New Orleanians.

NED HÉMARD

New Orleans Nostalgia

"King Cakes"