I returned to Tipitina’s with the Guv the next night to catch Stevie Ray Vaughan. I had no idea what to expect. Around ten pm three guys hit the stage, drummer, bassist and the guy who was obviously Stevie, with a guitar slung from his shoulders. He wore a cap and had a face that looked like a boxer’s, with a flattened nose and raw features. 

The sound engineer muttered an introduction from the house board in the middle of the room, and the trio launched into a Freddie King instrumental. Stevie’s tone was fat, drenched in reverb, and cuttingly loud. He played the head of the tune twice, and started to explore the melody. At times it sounded like there were two or three guitars up there - he was playing impossible solos that appeared to be teetering upon total anarchy, and then, with a stop and a single hard hit on the bass string, would avoid what had seemed to be inevitable calamity, rode out the tune to the astonished applause of the couple of dozen people in the audience. He grinned, and in a raspy voice said he’s screwed up his voice over the last week, and wouldn’t be singing tonight. And so he just played his guitar. 

And how he played! He and the band were all over the blues style book. Texas blues with a heavy groove. Swamp blues from the Louisiana bayous and even a little Hendrix, all delivered with a tone that most guitar players could only dream of. This was amazing, four nights in a row with Roomful, and now this guy. Something was happening in America, and I was lucky enough to be witnessing it.

They played two long sets to a woefully small audience, and yet played as if it was a sold out gig at Madison Square gardens. Jerry and I left there way after midnight, walking through the humid night under the spreading oaks, looking for a cab home, and marvelling at what we had just heard and seen.

The Guv was a wonderful host, and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of New Orleans, its musicians, clubs and heritage. He lived in what is known down there as a ‘shotgun house’ - a long rectangular single story building, so called because one could fire a shotgun through the front door and hit everyone in the house.

Fortunately, he had a typewriter, and I was able to go through the notes I had made interviewing the guys from Roomful, and piece together a story on the band. Typing it in triplicate, I sent one copy to Melody Maker, one to Greg Piccolo, and mailed the other to myself at a UK address. I found out weeks later that Melody Maker was on strike that summer, and so those efforts turned out to be in vain, but the guys in the band appreciated my efforts, and the story stood me in good stead with them when I met up with Roomful later that year.

The Guv was also a tremendous cook, and we dined on great pans of shrimp and seafood, gumbos and rice and red beans, washed down with Dixie beer. The food in New Orleans is justly famous, and I could never get enough of jambalaya, etouffe, crawfish and the rest. 

Jerry took me around all the clubs, and in short order I heard L’il Queenie and The Percolators at the Old Absinthe Bar on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry at a club along the street closer to Canal Street, where he had a long term residence, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, at Preservation Hall of course, saw Tommy Ridgley, pipe clenched between his teeth between songs, playing an electric piano outdoors  in Jackson Square, with a swinging little band behind him. Luther Kent and Trick Bag, various incarnations of the Meters and The Neville Brothers, The Radiators, James Booker, silent and mysterious at the Maple Leaf Bar, black patch over one eye, playing slow dreamy introspective piano to an audience of just me. And I don’t think he even knew I was there, and certainly didn’t care, and then at the interval, suddenly coming to life, and vanishing out out the bar door on some urgent errand. Ernie K-Doe was everywhere, as was Irma Thomas, hollerin’ ‘(You Can Have My Husband but) Don’t Mess With My Man’. 

A mad kaleidoscope of artists and rhythms, coming from every window and door, young kids tap danced crazy and groovy to tinny transistors on street corners for quarters while tourists wandered the streets of the Quarter with drinks in hand, acting like they would never dream of doing in their straight laced communities back home. Most wore necklaces of plastic beads around their necks, like it was Mardi Gras forever, and barkers stood outside the bars shouting invitations. As the nights wore on, the crowds got rowdier, noisier and drunker. Little carts sold Po’ Boys, pralines and street food, everyone on a hustle.

One weekend there was a festival in a huge playing field out on the edge of town somewhere. The Guv and I took a street car to get there. Two stages, one at each end of the field, one for Gospel, and the other for Blues and Jazz. There were probably no more than two hundred people present - should have been thousands, at least in the hapless promoter’s dreams. Nameless gospel groups praised the Lord with passion and theatrics, while at the other end legends like Al Johnson (’Carnival Time’), Jesse Hill (‘Oo Poop Pah Doo’) and the ubiquitous K-Doe entertained the few whose enthusiasm belied their numbers. And then that night back to Tip’s to see Snooks Eaglin, or Gatemouth Brown or some visiting act.

The Guv worked at the airport, so during the day I’d wander about the city, taking street cars to who-knows-where, just digging the streets and architecture, through beat little poor neighbourhoods checking out the bars and little restaurants. I hit the record stores, and was amazed to find boxes of mint Ace 45’s from the late fifties, fifty cents each. Didn’t buy anything, as I knew I would have to carry anything that I bought for the next few months. 

Out on the edge of town were big cemeteries, with grand mausoleums and moss covered tombs, all above ground, the soil being too damp and marshy to bury anyone below. It was a kick to prowl the rows of ageing stones, attempting to pry out stories from the dead but after a while I started to feel like I was some weird voodoo voyeur and split. Other times I'd hang down by the waterfront, close by Jackson Square in the Quarter, and sit on the banks of the big old Mississippi, that muddy river coming all the way down the vastness of America, to spill out into the Gulf south of the city, through its massive delta, formed over countless millennia of scouring the lands to the north.  Boats, ships, ferries, barges moving over its waters, klaxons blaring, horns moaning mournful and long, now and then the steam calliope of a big pleasure boat, playing ‘The Saints’ in a boogie woogie figure. 

The weather was unrelentingly hot and humid, and around three or four most afternoons, there would be a thunderstorm, with torrents of rain, and the subsequent and immediate lowering of the temperature. And then, just as quickly as it had started, it would be over, leaving gleaming streets and wide puddles, steam rising from the streets, and the humidity would return.

One fateful morning I left the Guv’s barefoot, just shorts and a t-shirt, to walk to the quarter, which was a couple of miles away. I was trying to stretch my money, attempting to live on $20 a day, and this day I thought in order to save money, I’d just leave my wallet behind. An hour or so after noon, I was starting to get hungry and headed back to the Guv’s. The sun had been beating down all morning, and I was getting burnt, and what was worse, the tops of my feet were burning too. And then the soles of my feet started to feel raw. What had started out as a pleasant barefoot penniless jaunt now turned into an extremely painful endurance test. The blacktop was so hot that I simply could not walk on it. The sidewalk was fine gravel, and thus really painful. The road was two lanes, separated by a grassy median. I crossed my lane and stepped onto the median. What had looked like grass was really some kind horribly sharp half grass, half cactus - ten times more painful than the blacktop, and certainly worse than the gravelly sidewalk. I crossed back over the road, and walked along the stone curb, which was all of five inches wide. 

I cursed and cursed my stupidity …. ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen going out in the noon day sun’ and all that. My tortured hobbling and hopping eventually led me back to the Guv’s place, and sweet respite. Never ever, ever did that again.

Jerry’s sister lived next door, with her husband, a New Orleans fireman. On May 18th, Mt St. Helen’s blew, up in Washington state, and firefighters from all over the country were called in to help deal with the subsequent mayhem, including the Guv’s brother-in-law. The tales he told us upon his return were sobering and out of this world. Hundreds of square miles had been flattened, and over 50 people died. Landslides had extended for 50 miles … 

After six weeks I felt it was probably time to give the uncomplaining and oh so hospitable Guv his house back, and so set out on the next part of the trip. So far I had travelled by train and bus - now, as I headed west, I thought I’d hit the road with an outstretched thumb, and so I caught a bus up towards the airport, past Metairie and Kenner, and with my bag on my shoulder, stood hopefully at an on ramp to Interstate 10, the highway two thousand miles later ended in Los Angeles, and the Pacific Ocean. The end of the road ...