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'.

♪ Here and there ♪

♪ 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---