It was a terrible shock. We all felt so bad that even the boys cried.
When Arthur was buried we all chipped in and hired a brass band to play at his funeral. Beautiful girls Arthur used to go with came to the funeral from all over the city, from Uptown, Downtown, Front o' Town and Back o' Town. Every one of them was weeping. We kids, all of us teen-agers, were pall bearers. The band we hired was the finest I had ever heard. It was the Onward Brass Band with Joe "King" Oliver and Emmanuel Perez blowing the cornets. Big tall Eddy Jackson booted the bass tuba. A bad tuba player in a brass band can make work hard for the other musicians, but Eddy Jackson knew how to play that tuba and he was the ideal man for the Onward Brass Band. Best of all was Black Benny playing the bass drum. The world really missed something by not digging Black Benny on that bass drum before he was killed by a prostitute.
It was a real sad moment when the Onward Brass Band struck up the funeral march as Arthur Brown's body was being brought from the church to the graveyard. Everybody cried, including me. Black Benny beat the bass drum with a soft touch, and Babe Mathews put a handkerchief under his snare to deaden the tone. Nearer My God to Thee was played as the coffin was lowered into the grave.
As pallbearers Cocaine Buddy, Little Head Lucas, Egg Head Papa, Harry Tennisen and myself wore the darkest clothes we had, blue suits for the most part. Later that same year Harry Tennisen was killed by a hustling gal of the honky-tonks called Sister Pop. Her pimp was named Pop and was well known as a good cotch player. Pop did not know anything about the affair until Sister Pop shot Harry in the brain with a big forty-five gun and killed him instantly. Later on Lucas and Cocaine Buddy died natural deaths of T.B.
The funerals in New Orleans are sad until the body is finally lowered into the grave and the Reverend says, "ashes to ashes and dust to dust." After the brother was six feet under ground the band would strike up one of those good old tunes like Didn't He Ramble, and all the people would leave their worries behind. Particularly when King Oliver blew that last chorus in high register.
Once the band starts, everybody starts swaying from one side of the street to the other, especially those who drop in and follow the ones who have been to the funeral. These people are known as "the second line" and they may be anyone passing along the street who wants to hear the music. The spirit hits them and they follow along to see what's happening. Some follow only a few blocks, but others follow the band until the whole affair is over.
Wakes are usually held when the body is laid out in the house or the funeral parlor. The family of the deceased usually serves a lot of coffee, cheese and crackers all night long so that the people who come to sing hymns over the corpse can eat and drink to their heart's delight. I used to go to a lot of wakes and lead off with a hymn. After everybody had joined in the chorus I would tiptoe on into the kitchen and load up on crackers, cheese and coffee. That meal always tasted specially good. Maybe it was because that meal was a freebie and didn't cost me anything but a song – or I should say, a hymn.
There was one guy who went to every wake in town. It did not matter whose wake it was. In some way he would find out about it and get there, rain or shine, and lead off with a hymn. When I got old enough to play in the brass band with good old-timers like Joe Oliver, Roy Palmer, Sam Dutrey and his brother Honore, Oscar Celestin, Oak Gasper, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory and Mutt Carey and his brother Jack I began noticing this character more frequently. Once I saw him in church looking very sad and as if he was going to cry any minute. His clothes were not very good and his pants and coat did not match. What I admired about him was that he managed to look very presentable. His clothes were well pressed and his shoes shined. Finally I found out the guy was called Sweet Child.
For some time funerals gave me the only chance I had to blow my cornet. The war had started, and all the dance halls and theaters in New Orleans had been closed down. A draft law had been passed and everybody had to work or fight, I was perfectly willing to go into the Army, but they were only drafting from the age of twenty-one to twenty-five and I was only seventeen. I tried to get into the Navy, but they checked up on my birth certificate and threw me out. I kept up my hope and at one enlistment office a soldier told me to come back in a year. He said that if the war was still going on I could capture the Kaiser and win a great, big prize. "Wouldn't that be swell/' I thought. "Capture the Kaiser and win the war." Believe me, I lived to see that day.
Since I did not have a chance to play my cornet, I did odd jobs of all kinds. For a time I worked unloading the banana boats until a big rat jumped out of a bunch I was carrying to the checker. I dropped that bunch and started to run. The checker hollered at me to come back and get my time, but I didn't stop running until I got home. Since then bananas have terrified me. I would not eat one if I was starving. Yet I can remember how I used to love them. I could eat a whole small ripe bunch all by myself when the checker could not see me.
Every time things went bad with me I had the coal cart to fall back on, thanks to my good stepfather Gabe. I sure did like him, and I used to tease Mayann about it.
"Mama, you know one thing?" I would say. "Papa Gabe is the best step-pa I've ever had. He is the best out of the whole lot of them."
Mayann would kind of chuckle and say:
"Aw, go on, you Fatty O'Butler."
That was the time when the moving picture actor Fatty Arbuckle was in his prime and very popular in New Orleans. Mayann never did get his name right. It sounded so good to me when she called me Fatty O'Butler that I never told her different.
I would stay at the coal yard with father Gabe until I thought I had found something better, that is something that was easier. It was hard work shoveling coal and sitting behind my mule all day long, and I used to get awful pains in my back. So any time I could find a hustle that was just a little lighter, I would run to it like a man being chased.
The job I took with Morris Karnoffsky was easier, and I stayed with him a long time. His wagon went through the red-light district, or Storyville, selling stone coal at a nickel a bucket. Stone coal was what they called hard coal. One of the reasons I kept the job with Morris Karnoffsky was that it gave me a chance to go through Storyville in short pants. Since I was working with a man, the cops did not bother me. Otherwise they would have tanned my hide if they had caught me rambling around that district. They were very strict with us youngsters and I don't blame them. The temptation was great and weakminded kids could have sure messed things up.
As for me I was pretty wise to things. I had been brought up around the honky-tonks on Liberty and Perdido where life was just about the same as it was in Storyville except that the chippies were cheaper. The gals in my neighborhood did not stand in cribs wearing their fine silk lingerie as they did in Storyville. They wore the silk lingerie just the same, but under their regular clothes. Our hustlers sat on their steps and called to the "Johns" as they passed by. They had to keep an eye on the cops all the time, because they weren't allowed to call the tricks like the girls in Storyville. That was strictly a business center. Music, food and everything else was good there.
All of the cribs had a small fireplace. When our wagon passed by, the girls would holler out to Morris and tell him to have his boy bring in some coal. I would bring them whatever they ordered, and they would generally ask me to start a fire for them or put some coal on the fire that was already burning. While I was fixing the fire I couldn't help stealing a look at them, which always sent me into a cold sweat. I did not dare say anything, but I had eyes, and very good ones at the time, and I used them. It seemed to me that some of the beautiful young women I saw standing in those doorways should have been home with their parents.