I used to drive United Cab 170 around New Orleans with the expectation that somehow there would be some money involved that I would actually get to keep at the end of the week. I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I loved it - sort of the way junkies are about eating eggs.
“During the late 1800s until the early 1920s this property along the with the adjoining 227 Bourbon Street was used by the Chas W. Stumpf Piano Co. LTD. Charles Stumpf was a cornet player and band leader in New Orleans. The musical legacy continured into the 1930s when Leon Prima (1907—1985) operated the Shim Sham Club here. A September, 1935 advertisement for the Shim Sham Club announced “Opening Tonight — Louis Prima and his New Orleans Five Orchestra Direct from the Famous Door in New York at Prima’s Shim-Sham Club for Five Days Only featuring the Kind of Music that made him the Toast of Broadway — Shim-Sham Review…Dimples Dalton, Princess of Blues…Shim-Shamettes, Beauty Chorus…Barron and Lynne”. Louis Prima was Leon’s older brother. By the late 1930s the building became the Swing Club — a detail of the larger sign out front includes “Formerly Prima’s…Tantalizing Swing Music…New Low Price Policy…No Cover Charge…No Miniumum…Under New Management” these 1938 photographs. The smaller sign included “Proudly Presents 2 Shows Featuring Hi-Class Entertainment”(shared caption)” Courtesy of the LSU Digital Library.
Image Source: http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/u?/CLF,2348
I saw a burlesque show at the Shim Sham with an emcee who told terrible jokes, a three piece jazz combo and a half-dozen reasonably attractive women. We were subjected to fan dancing and sword dancing and balloon dancing. Tourists nearby coughed theatrically and waved their hands in front of their wrinkled and upturned noses. They gave us dirty looks for smoking in the bar and my friend Luke so offended one of them - sort of a horsey-faced blondish woman from St. Louis or Denver or one of the Portlands - that they both started channelling noir film from the forties…she tossed her drink into his face, he tossed his drink into her face…bourbon dripping from her bangs, she slapped him…he slapped her…she tried to slap him again and he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close and gazed wetly down into her smouldering eyes…
they did not, however kiss…
This was not the only time Luke and I were asked to leave a bar…
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