One Note at a Time (2016) - full transcript
'If the musicians ain't got a chance to live, then what chance has the music got?' Dr John. This is a beautifully crafted, feature documentary, rich with colourful characters, and set in the iconic musical backdrop of New Orleans. In 2005 the music stopped, when one of the most deadly and destructive hurricanes in American history struck. The flood defences failed flooding the Crescent City for weeks. Lives were lost and shattered. Many displaced musicians felt compelled to return to the chaos and bleak confusion to play again. This is the story of some who made it back, told in their own words, with those who fought alongside to resuscitate the music scene; In particular the founders of The New Orleans Musicians' Clinic, a unique medical facility with the motto, 'Keeping the music alive'.
♪ I'm still safe ♪
♪ No despair ♪
♪ Well, she went to the doctor ♪
♪ Tried all that they could ♪
♪ But their lesson would be no good ♪
♪ While she was pushing her way through ♪
♪ Somebody kept asking her ♪
♪ What are you trying to do ♪
♪ She said I will just trust the Father glory ♪
♪ You know I'll, yeah, go, right now ♪
♪ Oh, Lord right now ♪
♪ For she clap, oh ♪
♪ And oh, Lord, oh, Lord ♪
♪ Whoa, Lord ♪
♪ My Jesus touch and heal bodies glory ♪
♪ You know I'll make it home ♪
♪ Oh, Lord right now ♪
-During the storm, when the levee bust,
the water started coming in to the Treme area,
getting higher and higher.
I used my drum just to hold in front to kick.
And I floated to a higher ground.
-When Katrina came, I was playing outside there
with a four-piece overture and the man come out.
He switched off the fan.
And I said don't switch the fan,
what the hell's the matter with you.
It's hot as Hades.
It was a day like this.
And he said ain't you heard?
The hurricane's changed course,
it's coming right up the river.
So, I'm low, wow, I'll be damned.
Go out fellows.
Pack, the weatherman said get the hell
on away from here.
So there was three men in that band besides me
and it took me almost a year,
took me 11 months and a week to find
all of those three was still alive.
-This painting is a rendition
depicting Merci Ray Nagin.
And he was the mayor that
experienced the devastation
and the chaos and the turmoil
and the helicopters that flew at night
in search of victims.
Katrina was not the problem.
It was when the levees were defeated.
It was a man-made incident.
1,800 people died that was documented.
And plus they have other
people that were undocumented
that are still warehoused now that has
not been identified.
-Look at that.
Isn't that beautiful?
And like this guy here.
He's got a nice yard, got a nice pool.
Never speak to me.
His kids speak, his wife, but we ain't speak.
I could be out doing yard
and he'll never say a word
and the day before the storm,
he told me say, hey, man,
what you and the wife gonna do?
He stopped and spoke to me, I was shocked.
I said we splitting.
Hey, you welcome to come and stay over here,
we got an upstairs.
I said man, I'm not staying back here
from the storm, man.
I don't care if I had five floors.
I said I'm not saying back here.
He said well, you're welcome.
I said the first time you
gonna speak to me, you know.
I said no, man, uh-uh, you could stay back here.
He stayed, boy, he wish he never done it.
Buddy of mine stay over there,
he was stuck on his roof
for like three days, you know.
-When the water start rising,
a door that I can normally open with my finger,
I couldn't open with all of my might just
I mean I just got so exhausted trying
to get the door open.
And I had about a terabyte of hard drive
with hundreds of songs that I had spent
countless of hours recording
and mixing and producing.
So my head was just pounding
once I realized that it was gone.
-My older son had a whole lot of equipment,
you know, at his house and that got flooded
and ruined everything.
And he had to move up to West Virginia.
And I think that because of the storm,
he passed away because of what he lost, you know.
My second son, second oldest son died
almost the same way.
-I mean a lot of musicians
that is from New Orleans
can't get back.
They have no way to get back and nowhere
to go home to.
I've seen guys places like Baltimore, Maryland
to all over this country.
I saw somebody in New Mexico recently
and they were saying about I can't get used
to living in this desert.
Or the ones that be in places like
they don't, they older guys
and they not used to being in the cold.
Some of them are just, they don't know how
to talk to people there.
-When I came back, no music, no birds, no bees,
no tearing, no nothing and that is why
I put all the junk out that I did
and now that I decided to,
you know, support music,
I support music all the way
and I didn't realize that
until I got to Houston, Texas
and I found out that it's not the same, you know.
Nobody really cares about music,
they don't care about talking to come in,
they go in the house.
And see like now I decided that I would try
and let people know that
hey, this is New Orleans.
Ain't nothing like New Orleans and we love music.
WWKFM New Orleans.
It's beautiful music, amazing music.
-So this is where we come to get cured.
-I don't know what I would have done without it.
Probably wouldn't have done anything, but died.
-The Musicians Clinic is
an access to healthcare.
We offer primary care and
also preventative services
and specialist referrals.
We have a very full market
basket of medical services
to help musicians who never have insurance.
-The thing that will
bring them into the clinic is
they can't play the horn because they have
an abscess in their tooth.
But in the course of diagnosing the abscess,
we find that they have diabetes,
they have asthma and many
times they have hypertension.
We have healthcare statistics that rival
third world countries.
And so to me, when one member of a band
who've played together for 30 years
is risking death because he is not taking
his medication so he doesn't have a stroke,
that's a blow to our culture.
This is a portrait of my ancestor
and it used to hang up over my parents' fireplace
when I was growing up in Mississippi.
And the poignant thing about this portrait
is that it was painted a few weeks before
my ancestor and his son and 11 other members
of our family were killed
at the resort they owned
on one of the barrier islands, called Il Denier.
And I actually wear this gold coin around my neck
that he gave to his baby
daughter right before he left
and it's really one of the few things
that we have left from him.
Because they'd had a big dance that night
with an orchestra and then tidal wave
and hurricane hit
and over 300 people were killed.
And it always struck me that they knew
the names of the slaves
because they were property,
but they never documented what happened
to the musicians.
We don't know their names,
we don't know where they came from
and it always stuck with me.
-I grew up in New York City,
went to a very exclusive private school,
next to the Guggenheim Museum,
watched them build the Guggenheim Museum
and everyone else's family were business people,
lawyers and business people and politicians
and I was there on a scholarship
as their token artist child.
We were very different and everyone was very
envious because I could go home on my own.
There wasn't a limousine waiting for me.
But growing up in an artist's household
was very, very different from what was usually
seen in America.
And that gave me the background to understand
what the need was for a musician's clinic,
that artists are not thinking in that direction,
that they're using a
different part of their brain
and if you want to talk bad about them,
which some people do, oh, they're druggies
and irresponsible individuals.
Tell me what symphony you've written today, sir.
-It was a blessing to come home
and watch people work all day.
They may come to the little bars at night
and hear us play and kind forget for that time,
it's like spiritual healing.
I mean I felt it, I know they felt it
and that's going on till today.
I mean you wouldn't believe`.
-I came to New Orleans,
I was playing rock and roll,
so I had to learn how to play R&B.
And once I got into it,
I started gigging and it was great.
I bought a BMW motorcycle and in August 2008,
a lady came flying around the curb and hit me
and that's how I ended up with a prosthetic leg.
When I had the accident, people that I thought
hated me actually showed up and the people
that I thought loved me so much never sent
a card or called me, it's weird.
And I got a sense of humility at that time.
Getting back into music
has been tougher than I thought.
The long hours of being on stage.
My stage diving days are over, put it that way.
But it hurts,
I can actually still play guitar though.
I'm not gonna complain.
I'm glad to be alive actually.
Had the accident, woke up in the hospital
four days later.
Paralyzed from the neck down.
I never really think about it.
I'm getting choked up, you know.
I knew life was changing.
I knew it was bad.
I remember the day the doctor said, Paul listen,
we've done 11 surgeries and he said
we can keep shooting you up with antibiotics
and keep sucking the pus out.
Paul Patton?
-Yes, but if it gets more infected
we're gonna have to end
up cutting off your whole leg
and I said take it off
and that was that.
-I had spent maybe 15 years working
with the New Orleans Jazz
and Heritage Foundation,
which produces the Jazz Festival.
And we never could tackle medical issues
because they're so expensive.
One heart attack is a bill of $50,000.
Foundations don't have that kind of money.
So I realized that if we could bring it
into inside a medical center and get
the services donated, then it becomes possible
to help people.
-They saved my life four or five times.
And I don't know what I would have done
with this organization.
Presently, I'm working at Preservation Hall.
I had two bands of my own,
but since Katrina, the members have been
spread out all over the country,
so I haven't been working any of my bands.
Today I'm gonna have fish.
Whatever I have for dinner, I eat for breakfast.
-I was born, you probably can tell, in England
and they used to have block parties there.
And it would always impress the girls
if you came with records
of all the local favorites
and I went to my local music store
at a place called Stains.
I said you got any records here?
Yeah, we just got one.
Here, this was Louis Armstrong.
And when I took there and played it,
all the girls there, they were into pop music,
they laughed at it,
but I thought it was great.
So I said to hell with the girls,
I'll stick with this music
and it brought me here.
All of the musicians would
take me under their wing.
The problem was segregation was in full force.
When we made a recording, it was sweltering hot
and we had to keep all the shutters closed
'cause I was the only
ofay in the black band, see.
'Cause anybody could peek in,
they could call the cops.
Sometimes you'd get arrested
and they'd haul you off to jail.
I spent one night in there, you know.
They'd come, like you'd go out before the judge
in the morning and they'd say look here, boy.
Down here we don't mix cream with our coffee.
He'd put it like that, you know.
Feeling bad about yourself
or that you're a failure.
Or that you've let yourself
or your family down.
-I have an IVC filter in me,
which is an inner cardiovascular filter
and what it does it catches blood clots
and allows them to dissipate actually
and won't get packed up on me.
I feel like I'm 70 years old.
But everything is hurting.
My whole body's just.
-I've been eating all kind of crazy things.
You know, you're on the road,
you have to go and eat at Cracker Barrel.
-And you still go to that Subway
fast food place, don't you?
-Yeah, I still go there.
But I have little things, look,
they're the size of this,
they're called torpedoes.
-And you know I don't want you
to eat the bread.
-Well, this is, I was eating
the big sandwich like that.
But now.
-You don't need all the bread.
-Now I'm eating the bread is like that, see.
-You understand that you don't want the bread.
-They put all the salad in the bread.
-Yeah, but you don't need the bread.
♪ You won't be satisfied
until you break my heart ♪
♪ You won't be satisfied
until you break my heart ♪
♪ You won't be satisfied
until the teardrops start ♪
-I wish we were here every two months
and we'll be due here, we have tons of people
that come, they look at all the stuff
and make notes and then they come back
to the auction on Saturday and Sunday
and the make bids on it.
♪ I bet you wouldn't like it ♪
♪ If I didn't say you're only happy ♪
♪ Tearing all my dreams apart ♪
♪ You won't be satisfied
until you break my heart ♪
Well, we just have a good time playing music
and the three of us has had this little trio
for oh, years, I mean a long time.
And Frankie Lynn, he generally plays the guitar.
He had an operation a little while ago
and he can't lug the guitar and amplifier
and all that up the stairs.
So we have to play upstairs
and he just plays his banjo.
And Chris, he's a friend of Louis Armstrong.
They made an album
and you could hear for yourself,
we play a different repertoire than most
of the local bands do, you know.
-We play music.
♪ Papa was a rolling stone ♪
♪ Wherever he laid his hat was his home ♪
♪ And when he died, oh, ♪
♪ He left us all alone ♪
♪ Papa was a rolling stone ♪
♪ Wherever he laid his hat was his home ♪
-This is George Ingmire.
One of the ways you can support local music
is to support the musician
because in many ways they work 80, 90 hours
a week rehearsing and gigging
and that takes a wear and tear on their body.
-Well, yeah, it's a fact that we don't live
a regulation life.
But thank God we got some people
that keep us breathing and if we don't
be breathing then we ain't living
so then they ain't getting that music.
-The Musician's Clinic is struggling
a bit financially.
-It is because we depend on grants and donations
and right now our federal grant,
which has sustained us because 90%
of our patient live on less than $15,000 a year.
These are the great musicians of New Orleans,
but they make very little money.
The really important thing is the federal grant
is going to dry up in the next eight months.
Wow.
-Since Katrina, we were the beneficiary
of a three-year federal grant to help sustain
medical services here in the city.
And we've been blessed with a great riches
from this program and are
in now year three of the grant,
so it's coming to the point where we can see
the end of it.
-Player Town Oaks, give
them another round of applause.
They're brilliant.
New Orleans.
-Well, if I wouldn't have came here,
I would have stayed in Atlanta.
And I would have did okay in Atlanta.
But Atlanta wasn't mine
and New Orleans was mine and I felt
the responsibility to come
back and take care of it
because she was sick.
And it was sick way before the storm.
And all of have a part of making it sick
and you get a certain age,
you look back, you say
all right, I did this wrong,
I did this bad.
And now I have a chance to make it right,
make it better, at all costs.
Now one of a time Johnson, y'all.
♪ The green room is smokin' ♪
♪ And the Plaza's burnin' down ♪
♪ Throw the baby out the window ♪
♪ And let the joint burn down ♪
♪ All because it's carnival time ♪
♪ Whoa, it's carnival time ♪
♪ Oh, well, it's carnival time ♪
♪ And everybody's having ♪
♪ Right now it's ♪
-It never ended like that, you know.
-Hey.
-They said that was all wrong.
You know, say Beethoven
wouldn't have done it like that.
And Chopin.
-We didn't make classical music.
We made classical funk music,
classical rhythm and blues music.
He taught me how to play a B flat shuffle
on the piano.
-And I always said that he made money
and I didn't.
-But he was fighting for his money
after all of that.
And this is the saddest part to me,
that he had to spend so much time
trying to collect money.
-And I think we were in court
for 10, 11 years with Carnival Time.
And I came out victorious
and it's really been helpful there to me
and I appreciate all my
carnival timers I call them,
you know, the people that like Carnival Time
and like me.
-I was wondering, do they have a diabetic book.
Photo book can they give me.
-Yes, sir, we sure do.
-And my kids be saying you ain't supposed
to be eating, oh, said they're salty.
-You have six, you know, that's gonna be okay.
Just don't order three dozen.
-All right.
I told you get off of the floor
and now you hit me right
in the head three times, Lord.
-Okay, I won't talk about it anymore.
-This is my daily routine.
Walking down to the elevator
going to mass every morning.
That's where I get all my inspiration from
to help me here, man.
Good morning.
How you doing baby?
-Okay.
-All right, great.
We thank you for all your gifts,
especially the gift of the Holy Spirit
which helps us pray at the altar.
-Well, I gradually just started losing
my eyesight peripherally to be honest with you,
it started closing in, closing in, closing in.
So I had several operations on my eyes
because of it.
I don't linger on the fact that I can't see.
And fortunately I have a son that I
continue to do my work.
-I have seen my dad all my life
just write without the
assistance of an instrument.
You know, he'll hum a part
and it's called relative pitch.
Once you know what the first note is,
you can go from there.
And now since I know this process
is very easy.
If he hums something for me, you know,
rhythmically and pitch, boom, boom, boom,
I can just try to get it down as fast as I can
with the assistance.
-Wadelke was the maestro himself.
The genius, that's all I
could say about that man.
He, even without being sighted he still
can come up with some hellified arrangements.
-I am working on a composition
called the Passion of Christ.
The time from Palm Sunday
up until the resurrection.
It's an undertaking for me because I'm doing
it with symphonic instruments,
you know like oboe, flute, clarinet,
trumpets, trombones.
I have six strings in there.
Then on the end I have it done where the voices
do the amen and the resurrection the hallelujah.
It's working out all right.
I'm just about 75% finished it.
Either someone like what you do or they don't.
I hope that they did in my case here,
but it was just a gift that was given to me
and I have to use.
-My goal as a patient of the clinic
and as a musician's advocate and as a health
and wellness provider, I want to model
to other patients that you can overcome
a lot of obstacles because I have end stage
diabetic retinopathy, which is an
irreversible eye condition and I'm still
relatively young to be facing imminent blindness
but I had been going to a private physician
who did a wonderful job and he helped
to save my eyes, but when my insurance ran out,
the Musician's Clinic stepped in and
so believe it or not I have 20/20 vision.
I used to go to my parents' home
in the Lower Ninth Ward, regularly,
even though it was flooded
and everything was messed up in the house,
I still went because it always felt like home.
Every Sunday when I go to church,
I want to go there when we finish.
And I don't have anywhere to go
when we finish because everybody's gone.
Everybody in my family is gone.
We have a family like most families.
We loved each other in our own way.
We argued a lot, but you better not
mess with us because one of the other ones
would kick our ass, you
know that kind of situation.
But I didn't realize until after
what I really had.
♪ Higher ♪
♪ Higher ♪
♪ Take me higher ♪
♪ Higher ♪
♪ Higher ♪
♪ Gonna take you higher ♪
-I've had this blasted diabetes since I was 50
years old, that's 19 years I've had it.
Gotta do that, see.
Get a spurt of blood.
And for a drama, this is the pain in the finger.
That all there is to it.
Then you write down in here,
before lunch, here it is.
215, all right.
It's bad if you walk around with high sugars
all day and night.
It'll kill you in the end.
You don't die of diabetes,
you die of complications from diabetes.
-Ooh.
-Was that good or a bad ooh?
Yeah, that's good.
I haven't been that low weight in years.
My prime weight used to be 220,
that's when I was slim and trim.
-Oh, really?
-Yes, indeed.
-I'm just gonna turn you around, okay.
-Okay.
-When I was a drunk, I was a pretty
hopeless alcoholic, me.
I would drink a fifth of bourbon,
that would last me two
nights, a bottle, you know.
So I was an alcoholic, I guess, I don't know.
I never really thought about it.
I just drank too much.
-All right.
-I taught school for 25 years
and when I retired, I didn't have any insurance.
They didn't pay for nothing or provided any.
-My sons will give you Walter's life story.
They play in London, but their influence
is strictly from New Orleans
because they met all these people.
-I want to see you walk here.
Okay.
-Are your brakes on.
-Yeah, yeah.
-Go ahead.
Oops, looked down.
Turn around again.
No, okay, that's rambunctious enough.
Come on back in here.
-You know the top part of my heart beats wildly.
I think I had too many love affairs
when I was young.
-My first law wife a common law wife.
Her name was Caroline.
And my second wife, which was a legitimate wife
was Carol Martyn, fine woman.
And she raised those boys
with little help from me.
And then I married Barbara Martyn
and I married Norma Martyn.
She was a Delizo.
And I married Karen Martyn,
who's my wife now.
And she takes better care of me
than any woman I've ever know,
which for me it's wonderful
because being musician, Jesus.
Subway, Chalmette.
Home of the gods.
♪ Amen ♪
-Hold it, hold, hold.
♪ Amen ♪
One, turn, turn it up, three four.
♪ Ah ♪
Still flat, someone, two, three, four.
♪ Ah ♪
-Good, good, good.
If we do it like that, we'll have no problem.
All right.
♪ Amen ♪
-Our funding situation is that
we have not heard a peep
from the federal government.
We've tried every way we can
to reach them, just silence.
And we know that the grant that we
and the other clinics in New Orleans had
will not be renewed.
-Well, if the musicians
ain't got a chance to live,
then what chance has the music got?
-I have diabetes.
But my numbers seem to do well, you know.
'Cause I've learned to eat small portions.
Rather than to eat six doughnuts, I eat three.
And I want to lose weight and do more exercising,
but all of that has something to do
with the frame of mind, you know.
So.
I'm gonna work on it eventually I guess.
♪ Now I don't know 'cause you're free to go ♪
♪ Because my home is not there anymore ♪
♪ I'm calling it ♪
♪ Oh, I'm naming it ♪
♪ No, I'm not going through ♪
♪ I'm talkin' bout 2349 Tennessee Street ♪
♪ It meant so much to me ♪
♪ 2349 Tennessee Street ♪
♪ I loved it and it loved me ♪
♪ I'm telling you now like I told you before ♪
♪ The home I love is not there anymore ♪
♪ That's why I'm calling ♪
♪ Whoa, I'm naming it ♪
♪ Oh, I'm not going through ♪
-That is a great tune, too.
I used to pull right on up here.
See, that's that famous,
won't be another 2349 Tennessee.
I don't even own it anymore.
I hate that.
But I called them,
I want to buy it back.
And that's the big oak tree.
I remember it so well.
And by leaning like that,
I always said it was gonna fall
or fall on me 'cause my house was right here.
I went on and let them take this
and turn this into the money.
-The tag is 4445 sus 5 and then 4 ones
and then we'll repeat the first line 4445 sus 5
Diamond.
There'll be no diamond the first time.
I just thought, you know,
wouldn't it be cool to have a song about
a person that might be the kind of person
that would use the New Orleans Musicians Clinic.
So that's what it was,
a story about one man.
This man is an icon for the types of people
that I've seen in New Orleans
that play music on the street
or play music in the clubs for tourists
and have reached a point where they need people
to help them.
♪ He's an old trombone player ♪
♪ From an old lost, lost town ♪
♪ Playing Dixieland to us ♪
The ending two lines of the chorus
are Lord send me an angel,
which the angel has been
New Orleans Musicians Clinic,
but please don't take me home,
I don't want to die.
♪ He's got pain he can't drown with whiskey ♪
♪ Sometimes so bad he screams out loud ♪
♪ Jesus Christ I'm trying ♪
♪ But I need help right now ♪
-That's the way we look at it here
in New Orleans and have
always looked at it that way.
You're here temporarily,
you're just passing through and you're an entity
that's doing what you can while you're here.
Your permanent home is when you die.
So he's not ready to go home,
which is his permanent home is when you die.
He's not ready to die
is another way of phrasing it.
He says he's not ready to go home.
♪ Oh, send me an angel ♪
♪ But please don't take me home ♪
♪ Lord send me an angel ♪
-There's something about playing music,
they say it calms the sadness
and it also heals people.
When I get to the gig
and I get on stage, I'm well.
♪ All the girls who live next door ♪
♪ Can't wait till I get on that dance floor ♪
♪ Now might be late ♪
♪ Probably have two or three dates ♪
♪ And I shimmy, shimmy, shake, shake, shake ♪
♪ Shimmy, shimmy, shake, shake, shake ♪
We gone y'all.
Lots and lots of times,
after the concerts some people come up and
talk to me and say the
music really made me shimmy.
I haven't felt like this in a long time.
I didn't know music could make you feel so good.
Just little comments like that
and you realize you touched somebody.
-Losing Walter was very painful for all of us.
He was a, he was very fortunate
to have access to the Health Clinic,
to the Musicians Clinic.
They loved him and bent over backwards
to provide him with the best care that they
could give him and I think that was something
that was very touched by.
I literally studied with Walter from preschool
all the way through high school
and for the last four and
a half years of his life,
he toured the world with
the Preservation Hall bands
and that was an amazing experience
that he and I got to play together in a band.
Death is something that is out in the open here.
We don't hide behind the doors
of a funeral home or church.
You know or leave the kids at home
because the parents are going to a funeral.
You know when I was a kid, I mean,
you would go to people's houses
and the body would be right there
in the living room for a couple of days
before the funeral.
Dealing with death,
emotionally, I think we deal with it
better than anybody because we have music
and we have this built in mechanism for mourning.
You know when that bass drum hits
those four beat at the beginning
of Closer Walk With Thee,
I mean it's time to start,
it's time to let it out.
It's like on cue, you know.
And that's what music does.
It allows us to open up these emotional doors.
You're gonna miss this person,
they're not there anymore
and then to celebrate that person.
I don't know anybody in New Orleans
who's afraid to die.
We're all kind of looking forward to it.
You know.
We all talk about it very openly.
We all sort of know that when it is our time,
the community comes together at those moments.
It's an honor, the deceased.
The oldest member of our band, Charlie,
he's 80 years old and he just looks at me
sometimes when I'm eating a salad or something,
they're like, something he just couldn't imagine
and he just says man you
are gonna die a healthy man.
And you know what?
There is some truth to that.
I think we all want to die healthy.
Nobody wants to die sick.
Nobody wants to spend
the last days of their life sick.
I mean, I've seen it too many times
and to me that's the sad part, not the death.
-Death is gonna happen.
Death is certain.
None of us can get around it.
And you know sometimes it's a surprise
and sometimes it's not.
Either way it goes, it's gonna happen.
And when it happens, you know,
you've got to move on.
So you try to do that with the music.
When you do the music, it's supposed
to help you feel so good.
Say, all right, he's gone now and you move on.
You move on like instantly, like right there,
he's gonna be missed, you'll never forget him,
but you'll move on quick.
-You know I was told a long time ago
the proper fitting way for a musician to die
is to fall over and die the last note
of the last song on the show.
The band gets paid
and you don't have to play an encore.
The people got to see something
they'll never get to see again.
Somebody died.
-Once you're out of view of the church,
the band will break into
something fast and happy,
something like Lord, Lord, Lord,
You Sure Have Been Good To Me
or Thinny Ramble.
And all of a sudden you see this like burden
just lifted off people.
I mean you will literally see people, you know,
get out of their wheelchairs.
-The Seondline at a funeral is where people
from the community get to go and celebrate
the life of someone who died,
but I truly believe that it is where
you produce the endorphins in your brain
that help you get through the tragedy of life.
You celebrate.
Wasn't this a great life?
Rather than what am I gonna do?
I don't think I can go on without them.
You know, it's we will survive
and we will survive as a community
and whenever there's a drum beat, we will smile.
Because we had to rebuild from scratch,
we were able to get electronic medical records.
Because we have electronic medical records,
we can track illness and I think that because
of the Musician's Clinic, we have an opportunity
that in a hundred years of jazz
has never, ever happened before
and that is that we can document each
and every person, we can do the best we can
for each and every person.
We can get the medications that they need
and we can try to make sure that they pass
on a healthier lifestyle.
-Okay, ladies and gentlemen,
put your hands together
for Mr. Shelton Alexander.
The code man is in the house.
-I remember as kids we ran.
We played cool cats, marbles, spinning tops
and football in the sand.
We pretended to be stars and formed
our own band, a drum line.
Makeshift instruments, for instance our cymbals
were made of two tops from big gumbo pots.
Our snare and base drum we used
broken broomsticks and mops,
water buckets we'd beat on the top
and on the side of heavy duty cardboard boxes.
As we marched through the courts
of the Iberville Projects,
while them little kids watched.
We paid attention to the older brothers,
I know I learned a lot.
As they Second Lined,
straight out of the juke joints,
the bars and jazz spots, took it to the streets.
We joined them whenever they arrived
on our blocks,
followed them for miles and miles
until the music, it stopped.
And it started again.
And there we were, right behind them.
Dancing in the streets.
We called is Second Lining,
-Second Line is about the line that's behind
the first line, which is the band.
Usually it's done on jazz funerals,
but as you can see, it's become an
every Sunday event where you can relieve
all your frustrations.
Second Lines for the jazz funeral is
release the spirits, transform the grief.
Now it's a Second Line when we take it
and go like this, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Every kind of way to overcome your obstacles
is a new move.
Hey, all of this, hey, oh, oh, hey.
Go to the trees and we say this.
Oh, shucks, oh, no, every
way, hey, hey, hey, hey.
-Katrina tore a riff in New Orleans.
The music industry and the tourism industry
and the cultural aspects of it has suffered.
When you lose participants
and you lose the fans, then
it requires a recalibration.
So, it's a smaller city that has not really
psychologically came to terms with the fact
that it's a smaller city.
-I'm from a very large family.
And my dad played every
instrument except the harp.
An aunt of mine I used to
have, you stand on your feet
hold around the waist and she showed us to dance.
Any dance there is, I could do it.
I'm a tailor.
I play music, I love to dance.
And the girls chase me, I don't chase them.
I bet.
-It's very hard to find a paying audience
in New Orleans because it is so come,
it is somewhat of a poet in its own land.
So much of it, that's
almost a natural way of life.
We find that most of our funds
and most of our development monies
that we raise come from outside of New Orleans.
New Orleans itself is not a very rich city.
It has one Fortune 500 company only,
and it's basically a lot
of very small businesses.
-We have been so grateful to have
a lot of European donors
who kept our clinic going
and many, many of those donors are here
for French Quarter Fest in New Orleans.
And so we host something
we call a Creole Jazz Tea,
very casual and so some of our wonderful
staff and our volunteers and I have
been cooking for days.
This is lump crab dip and
we have homemade biscuits
and homemade cakes and over here,
Rose Mancini, one of the nurses at the clinic
is chopping the beautiful Louisiana strawberries.
-It can go from teaching
a patient about diabetes
or hypertension or talking
to them about depression
to talking with providers
who might give our clients
free care for depression or reduced care
for dental care to chopping vegetables.
-You pick it up again between
the formal sort of ability to provide healthcare
and where these people are,
they're off the end of the chain.
-Yeah, they are.
I mean because musicians
have always lived under radar.
They live under radar on purpose.
-I think it's a total fear of the IRS
to do an investigation.
-And it's also that they have been
taken advantage of by producers, record labels,
attorneys and it's part
of the culture not to trust.
That's right.
-If you don't get to the Musicians Clinic
and actually get plugged in with that,
health problems can just escalate and all
of a sudden you're in row
de court saying going out.
It's like just recently I draw my head,
Herman Ernest had just went through
a whole thing with tongue cancer
and I just recently got off of interferon
for hepatitic C and for
the cirrhosis of the liver.
-In my case, you know I suffer with oral cancer
and I had surgery.
This is like, you know, last year sometime
and I had portions of my tongue taken off.
At one time the doctors told me I wouldn't
talk at all.
They said we gonna do it, I said no, you don't.
Better give me something.
So the guy looked at it, I got the specialist
from New York that came here and said no,
man, we just gonna take
a little piece off back there,
pull this out, do that.
I said do what you gotta do,
but make sure I can talk.
So it did slow me down a little bit on talking
because boy, it be going, I'm going.
-I've gone from waking up at 7 a.m
and going to be at midnight to going to bed
when the sun is coming up and waking up around
2 or 3, 4:00 in the evening, which is a drag.
Taking in 5,000 calories of alcohol every night
probably doesn't help anything.
I've been feeling sluggish lately.
-Musician doesn't equal poor financially.
Maybe poor health, health seeking habits,
but not necessarily poor financially,
so we had to do what was
called sliding scale fees.
In other words, if you make a certain amount,
you pay one thing, if you
make more, you pay more.
If you make less you may pay nothing.
♪ Good morning America, how are you ♪
♪ Don't you know I'm your native son ♪
♪ I'm the train they call
the city of New Orleans ♪
♪ I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done ♪
-Well, the vulnerable
part of New Orleans culture
right now is that it is a very difficult city
to live in.
There are a lot of feral children.
By that I mean kids who are here without parents.
There's a lot of violence.
It's easier to get heroin and crack
than it is to get a cheeseburger.
One of the very positive influences that I feel
is continuing to keep the
brass band culture alive
because brass bands are groups of men
who play music together.
They travel the world
and they make a living at it.
Being able to sustain a brass band
and have them be role models
into the community, for them to go into schools
and say, you know what,
here's how I take care of my diabetes.
Here's how I take care of my hypertension.
I don't carry a gun.
I don't do drugs and my friends and I
are not in a gang.
We play music together.
-If we don't have a gig,
we'll all call each other and say
well, hey, we're not doing anything,
let's go play in the Square for a little while.
There are certain instances where they'll
come and shut us down.
They'll say well, we either have a complaint
or it's a certain time for curfew.
They'll make up different reasons to
stop us from playing.
Which gets a little annoying at times,
because of the fact that this is what most people
come to New Orleans to see.
It's interesting that the police
are trying to stop that, you know.
This is the heart and soul of the city, the jazz.
-Was that the only thing wrong with the horn?
Yeah.
-Yeah, it's a little sticky.
We had a couple of customers that actually
were displaced up in Kansas City and
we thought, you know, what can we do
to help the musicians down here in New Orleans.
So I decided that I could just be direct
and come down here and help them out.
We've had a lot of challenging horns,
a lot of horns that just got smashed.
We had a chick yesterday
who had two borrowed horns
that some people had lent her because
she didn't have a trumpet
and it had actually gotten completely smashed
and run over during Mardi Gras by a vehicle.
So she had no horn.
Somebody loaned her a horn and at the parade
somebody was kind of touching her,
trying to grab at her, so she smashed him
with her horn, but it was borrowed horn,
so she was worried she had to get
this borrowed horn fixed.
So we fixed that horn up
and then another horn she was borrowing
because she had smashed that one up,
so we actually just gave her a horn.
So she was really happy.
She's got her own trumpet now.
We got her other ones fixed up.
So we had a gentleman come out yesterday
who actually goes by the name of Tuba,
but he didn't own his own tuba,
so he walked away away with a new tuba.
Yeah, it was pretty fun.
-We been through a lot.
We been through the hurricane together.
We been through a few of our
band members getting killed,
just dealing with New Orleans
and everything that come with this city
besides the food and the fun and the music.
-Six months after the storm.
I got out my truck, caught a flat tire.
See what was wrong, I looked up, car came,
pinned me to my truck, boom.
And that you know like.
I'm like wow.
You know at the time I know I can't believe,
you know I wake up, I'm like thinking
really it's a dream trying to get up
and I'm saying to myself like
why I'm not getting up.
So, like eventually ambulance came,
put me in the thing,
tell me you know what's wrong with you?
I'm like, yeah, both of my legs are gone and
it was, you know, just
pushing forward from there.
I was in the hospital for three months
and on bed for like another bed rest
for like another three months,
back and forth to therapy.
Altogether I was out for like about
you could say a good two years.
I'm opening up $180,000 surgery bills
and, you know, I'm still getting calls
about those bills, you know.
They still accumulating as we speak.
-It was more than just treatment.
Treatment is great, but I mean we need it
because we gonna just die.
It's a repeating cycle, you know,
heart attacks and all that.
Diabetes, everybody have diabetes.
Right after I finish playing a whole nother
set I'm a want to eat something.
And then it's gonna be mostly something fried
and just what else I'm a do.
-I started out as a trumpet player,
you know a band, bam, bam,
bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
You know, started out just like everybody else,
grade school through high school.
Got a scholarship to Southern
University, played there
in the marching band and wanted to go into jazz.
Then I realized I couldn't improvise.
When I went to this music store called Werlein's,
I saw just pictures,
you know the big life size picture
of a guitar player like that
and I said who is that?
And they said Jimi Hendrix and that was a wrap.
Man, I was Hendrix all the way.
From what I learned in playing covers,
I know if I want to work until I die,
I'll be playing jazz cover tunes at some hotel,
boom, boom, boom on the beach preferably.
-You see panic attacks in musicians
because of the intense
noise in the French Quarter,
particularly amplified music blasting
out of T-shirt shops
that is not New Orleans music per se,
but the traditional jazz musicians
are having to compete with that,
and so not only do we see an increase
in deafness in musicians,
profound deafness in musicians,
but also in mental problems
because of trying to compensate
for the unbelievable noise.
-Well, it's noisy because,
you know, everybody's trying to get the business.
They think the music is gonna bring people in.
I don't agree.
I think that bands should do that.
They should keep the clubs closed.
People can make their
choice where they want to go.
♪ The sky is cryin' ♪
♪ Can't you see the tears roll down the street ♪
-We play horns, we not criminals,
we not the ones that's destroying this city
and we trying to get other kids
to feel like well, it's the cool thing to do,
this is what happens here.
I'd like to be a part of this
and we can't do that if the police
is on our back like we on
the corner selling drugs.
-I generally get cell phone calls
and sometimes cell phone
pictures from the actual event.
And I can do very little when it's happening.
All I can do is say let me look into it,
let me find out what's going on
and we have several pro bono attorneys
who've worked really closely with us.
And we've tried to do things that are equitable
and not dramatic, so that musicians
don't end up in jail
and that's one of the concerns that we have
with the way the new ordinances being enforced.
-They been kind of enforcing the noise
ordinance on musicians.
From the neighborhood complainants,
people that live in the French Quarter.
-When folks are not knowledgeable
and they don't know what we do and why we do it,
their ignorance takes place and they make rules
or the enforce rules that exist before taking
the time to figure out what's going on.
-We don't have a curfew, never have.
And once they do that,
then they gonna lose the economic aspects
of the business in this city
because this is what New Orleans is known for,
we party 24/7.
There are other parts of the city you can live in
without going in the French Quarter complaining
about the noise, 'cause
it's not noise, it's music.
-Negligence and ignorance.
Negligence by not taking care of the musicians.
Ignorance because you don't know what you've got.
And if you don't know what you have,
you know, it really is pearls before swine.
-Without our traditions, we are nothing.
We don't have our millions of ways
of New Orleans people
speaking, we don't have nothing.
If we don't have our millions of ways
of what we do that's part of our tradition,
we are nothing.
So, somebody is pushed the edges
and the boundaries into
a thing that's jamming it.
I don't think that's correct.
-It was so bad the first time
when I went to go see my house.
You know, I'm a reserve sheriff, too,
the sheriff department so I
had credentials to come back.
Ooh, I seen it all.
And I know when I first went back there,
you could hear a pin drop in the day time.
Wasn't nothing flying but flies.
And I never in my life would have expected
that I would have 10 feet of water in my house.
Never.
And I mean last time I seen that kind of water
was in 65 and I was a kid when
Hurricane Betsy came through here.
And it was the same thing.
They blew up the levee to try to
take the pressure off the levees from downtown
and who knows what happened this time.
It's a lot went down.
So yeah, I changed a whole lot.
-Herman was a dear, dear friend
but he was phobic about the dentist.
So even though he had health insurance
and he was a very well paid musician,
he got cancer of the tongue
and it was undiagnosed
for quite a while because he
wasn't going to the dentist.
So once it was diagnosed, many doctors put forth
a valiant effort as did he to save his life
and sadly, he succumbed to the disease
about six months ago.
But in his memory, we want to make sure
this does not happen to anybody else,
that not being able to afford health insurance
should not be a barrier to being able
to stay healthy.
So this would have been Herman's 60th birthday
on the 7th, so that's what we want to do
is honor him, celebrate his life
and then tell people we're going
to do this screening initiative.
And it's our New Orleans Musicians Clinic event.
-I know he wanted to go out not how he went.
He wanted to go out and be playing
and then go do the traditional
New Orleans way to go.
And I love this kid in the psych.
He was my partner all through thick, thin,
through the ups and the weirds and anythings.
And he was suffered and I watched him
for about a year come out on the road
and he'd have to just, all he could do
was make the gig and go to his room and rest
till the next gig.
And it's not really a life, but he was happy
doing that than at the end when
we had to get subs and stuff.
-I know you up there in heaven's Jazz Fest.
This one's especially for you my man.
A little Dr. John.
♪ He used to stand in front wherever ♪
♪ I'd be getting ready for a gig ♪
♪ And he'd stand in front the door ♪
♪ Had a piece in his belt ♪
♪ And he wouldn't let nobody in ♪
♪ See now this is before he was a visual police ♪
♪ And the bishop Alvin Shine Robinson ♪
♪ Gave him that nickname ♪
♪ Calling him Roscoe, 'cause that's what Bishop ♪
♪ Called all the peeps ♪
-When I first met Herman,
he treated me like I was
part of his family immediately.
And even though it was Dr. John's band,
it is Dr. John's band, he told me whenever
we're playing you can just come up,
just bring your horn and come up and play.
Don't worry about it.
Great musician, great person.
That's why there was no way I could not be there.
That was my buddy.
Donald Harrison.
-It's good to be back in the house y'all.
You know if everybody, where my drinkers at,
where my drinkers, say
I'm drinking, y'all drinking.
My mantra for the day is stop thinking,
start drinking, babe.
Who's here, who's here, take a big swig, come on.
Socials is when we get the crowd to
put their drinks in the air.
Let me see if I can play this here.
Club owners are pressuring me to tell people
about the one drink minimum so they can
make their money, what have you.
And I dare says since I stopped drinking
I do a lot less socials, which is probably
'cause once you drunk, you're like yeah, social,
I'll make everybody drink.
But musically, it's pretty good.
Maybe I feel I make more mistakes than I did
when I was drunk or maybe I made the
same mistakes, but I really didn't pay attention.
But you know, a couple of nights I noticed
without drinking I missed a few points there.
But other than that, you know, no it's fine.
♪ People shining ♪
♪ I would give you both night and day ♪
And you know they talk about the industry,
the tourism industry, $5 billion industry,
well, I guess all of that money
is not going to the musicians.
♪ Well, I feel like makin' love ♪
♪ Well, I feel like makin' love ♪
♪ Well, I feel like makin' love ♪
♪ Feel like makin' love to you ♪
-Aw.
Aw.
I'm sick again.
I guess the high blood pressure
does have many effects on your body,
so that's what happened.
High blood pressure.
Jumping up and down and
you know I'm pretty diligent
about taking my medication,
but it's got to be something that I'm eating
that's throwing off my coumadin.
You know, they still told
me my blood is very thick.
My stomach woke me up,
it was bubbling, bubbling, bubbling
and next thing you know,
I'm vomiting everywhere, every 10, 15 minutes.
So once my stomach is
empty, now I'm throwing up bile,
which is not a good experience.
So, they gonna find out what's wrong.
But this is a part of amputation
and they telling me they don't want me to work
as many night a week as I'm working right now.
That might be having an effect on me.
I slacked down on drinking.
I need to just quit smoking, you know.
I can't say, just not feeling good.
Once I get through this,
okay, I need a hurl bag.
See, this is why it's hard to pay bills.
When you gotta lay in the hospital, oh.
-This picture is from Hello Louis.
It was the Louis Armstrong 70th birthday
in the Shrine Auditorium Los Angeles.
My band, we had to play in the pit
and then the first act home was Sara Vaughn.
So I'm sitting in the dressing room
smoking my cigar and drinking my bourbon.
I was drinking in those days and a man come
running, he said Mr. Martyn,
your band's left to go back home,
Sara Vaughn's forgotten her dress.
So we went on the stage and played,
we played for about an hour
and then she came and then all the acts
went through and it was the funniest things,
I was standing in the wings.
These two producers, they
were standing there talking,
I could hear them and one producer said
to the other, we have to cut down Louis' act,
because it's about 20 to midnight
and Louis was standing right behind me
and he heard them and he said
ain't nobody gonna cut down my goddamn act.
And he just walked on the stage like that
and he stopped the band and then he went into.
♪ Hello Dolly ♪
♪ This is Louis Dolly ♪
You know, his act, you know.
But it was a wonderful day for him
and I was so proud to be a part of it, you know.
-They said my lungs were great.
They checked my pancreas,
kidney, everything, liver.
Who knew?
They said it was the plug going into my heart,
the IVC filter was clogging up again.
And I found out that the reason why
I was feeling so bad was because
I was drinking a lot of green tea
and I found out that was
canceling out my coumadin.
So maybe after a few weeks
of not drinking green tea,
my blood'll come back.
But my goal is to get off coumadin.
I want to get off all the medication actually.
-People from all over the world helped us.
But in terms of the United States looking
at New Orleans as being a jewel in their crown,
most Americans don't.
We get more money from a little rotary club
in northern Germany, than
all of United States combined.
-I came here a year ago because being
a guitarist, I use a lot of pedals and it makes
a lot of weird noises and playing loud concerts
over the years, I eventually
badly injured my ears
and had to come in.
They're actually really red and inflamed
and one of them's actually punctured,
but I got prescribed some ear drops
and definitely started taking care of it.
You know, started to get a little bit better.
-This love.
Rightfully so talk about a new New Orleans
because there just hasn't been enough
to come back to really preserve the old 100%.
-I think it's important for us to recognize
that some people in parts of our culture,
in parts of our community are stronger today
than they were pre-Katrina.
And that's one of the bittersweet pills
that we all have to swallow is that there
has been this silver lining
to this very, very, very dark moment
in our history.
-We definitely have an upsurge of new talent
and new forces, you know.
For one thing you have a lot of young musicians
playing trad, which is interesting,
and you also have a lot of
younger jazz musicians, too,
that are trying to do their thing.
So, you got a lot of new things happening
alongside the old, very cool.
-It's a difficult thing because I want
to play the old school music, but not old school.
I want to always bring that modern element to it,
so I think the band is kind of catching on
and the other thing that's difficult is I'm
asking the band to be responsible,
each individual, as opposed to me having
to constantly dictate, okay, you're gonna solo
for this play.
I want the band to be able
to make good decisions,
so even if I'm not there,
you know we have a unified concept of music.
♪ One of these mornings ♪
♪ You're gonna rise up singing ♪
♪ Spread your little wings ♪
♪ Take to the sky ♪
♪ But till that morning ♪
♪ Nothing to harm you ♪
♪ Mommy and daddy standing by ♪
♪ Daddy and mommy standing by ♪
Can I help you?
-Yes, are we permitted to play a CD in here.
Yes, it's music, yeah, you could just,
you know at medium level
where it's just you can hear it.
-Yeah.
Yeah, that's fine.
-A lot of times he's just in the background
and a lot of times people over look his work
because he's not on the forefront.
So for him to put out something
by him being a spiritual man,
doing the Passion of Christ.
He's really thankful for that.
Nice piece.
-Yeah.
Hard to believe you
finished it Wardell, it's done.
-Put it out.
Put it out, it's done?
Done.
That sounded really good.
♪ Amen ♪
♪ Amen ♪
That was it.
Boy that was sweet.
-He's an integral part of the R&B and funk
and soul scene with his
great arranging, you know.
On so many hits from down here.
He showed us the way.
-It's weird when they been friends all your life
and stuff, everything changes a gear.
Or even when they're people that are like
heroes to you, but when they friends
and heroes both, and it really gets deep.
-Where did you buy your piano.
-At LaFog.
-Me, too.
You got a grand piano?
-No, it's not a grand, it's a Spinnett.
-A new one?
-Yeah.
And I'm practicing, I'm working on my next hit.
-Are you writing a new song?
Three of them.
-Three.
-I want three hits.
For this year.
-It's one of the best moves I made in the
last so many years, you know,
getting this piano and things I should have been
doing years ago, you know just taking my time
and learning to, you know, to read.
I didn't do that, I just picked up
a couple of cards and some of the keys
and just went on out there, you know,
on the piano and that's
not quite the way it's done.
So now I'm doing a little better
and it takes time.
And I'm enjoying the time I'm giving to it.
Every little break I get, I'll just sit down
at the piano and try and do something.
-The music has actually
been better since the hurricane.
I'm just gonna tell you the truth,
the music has been better.
And it's, think it's because of just what
you have to do, what the every day life.
It tends to make, what's the term,
urgency of now.
That's what New Orleans is functioning on.
-New Orleans are the
only people that can take this
and kind of shake it off and try
to bounce back right away.
It takes a special kind of person to come back
and do it all over again.
We have a lot of that.
We have a lot of that.
♪ I'm gonna lay down my prayer ♪
♪ Down by the riverside ♪
♪ Down by the riverside ♪
♪ Down by the riverside ♪
♪ I'm gonna lay down my prayer ♪
♪ Down by the riverside ♪
♪ And study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more ♪
-It wasn't our leaders who did it,
it was the citizens of this city
that brought New Orleans back and made it
what it is today, which is a place
that I've never seen before.
A place that I'm so happy to be a part of,
a place that has an energy that I've
never felt before.
-I do believe now that the musicians understand
that we almost lost it.
It was almost over with and I think that it is,
it's changed them as individuals
and they realize that, you know what,
that lump on their neck, they need to go
to the clinic, not wait for six months.
I think that it's really making them realize
that we want to be a partner,
but it's not our total responsibility.
We're not the lifestyle police.
-New Orleans, Louisiana,
the birth place of jazz.
Our culture is rich and unique.
We also have style and class.
Come on down.
Have a blast.
Have a cup.
Have a glass.
You can party with us till however long you last,
can't always hide behind a carnival mask.
We have Mardi Gras parades, Second Line,
Super Supper Sundays.
We even have jazz funerals when our
saints go marching in and then they
fly away to a better place.
Man made disaster trying
to ruin our celebration like the goal
of the victims and people of the off spill.
They called destruction and devastation.
There are many powers we're facing,
an aggressive city, slumping economy,
homeless people sleeping under the bridge
and there are many still living in poverty.
It's worse than before
and the divide is still far and wide
between the bricks of the city,
wouldn't survive without the poor.
Can't afford to be ignored anymore.
At this point, we'll take you on tour.
Follow me and rest in peace
to the Snap Drama brothers that never
saved the Hot 8.
Meanwhile the murder rate is still
meeting the nation, amazing.
Feels great.
However, I'm not gonna focus on that today.
This moment's about the great musicians
and a self-care situation.
No matter how good they play,
medical bills are so outrageous,
some still can't afford to pay, it's not okay.
Can't none of them go
out this way, Second Lining.
Talented and gifted, some of the best artists
that ever exist.
Over 2000 musicians, no mack has provided
treatment if they ever needed it.
Since 1998 they have been
dedicated to the mission.
Just ask the musicians.
And as long as God gives them live and breath
until death they'll continue to play.
They will continue sing.
They will continue to dance, march and step
with no regrets.
Take a second to reflect
and just remember the Big Easy without music.
The thought itself is stupid and foolish.
Even if some say we the city that care forgot,
as long as we care and never forget it
and we confident, I can admit,
there isn't another city in the world
as live as this.
So pull out the umbrellas.
The sun may or may not be shining.
Follow the music,
we're not too hard to find.
Like L. Johnson said, it's carnival time.
Even if it's not, we will still be somewhere
in the city dancing in the streets,
but we, we call it Second Lining.
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ This little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ This little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
-Somebody say amen.
Amen.
Thank y'all and goodnight.
---oOo---