Sandra Hill - [Creole] (37 page)

November 28, 1870

Everyone agreed it was the grandest party ever held at Bayou Noir plantation…the wedding of Dr. Harriet Ginoza and Etienne Baptiste.

The bride wore a gorgeous eggshell satin, off-the-shoulder wedding dress that her new stepmother-in-law had purchased for her before leaving California
—just in case
. The groom said the gown was so low-cut
he
could hardly breathe.

Cain Lincoln gave the bride away. James Baptiste gave his son away, although he’d balked, at first, until his wife had convinced him it was only a symbolic gesture.

Abel Lincoln played his own improvised trumpet version of “Ave Maria.” The recessional proved a bit more nontraditional…the bride and groom’s own special song dealing with peach orchards. Abel and Simone did a sensual duet of the peach lyrics that gave new meaning to
risqué
and
double entendre
.

The groom said he could see the bride’s blush all the way to her peach pit, which caused Blossom to whack him with her cane.

Saralee, who was the flower girl, made the most spectacular six-tiered cake with cream filling. There was nobody who didn’t like Saralee’s cake. Even Lance. Saralee had been offered an opportunity to dress up as a fairy princess for her wedding party, but she’d declined, saying she’d rather just be her papa’s little girl.

After the ceremony, since the weather was unseasonably warm, a reception was held outdoors in the oak alley. All the workers were invited, as well as a few neighbors, and, of course, Etienne’s numerous family members. Colored lanterns hung from the limbs, giving the hanging Spanish moss the appearance of golden tresses.

A group of Abel’s musician friends came from New Orleans to form a band for dancing. Blossom had already warned two of them that if she heard any more of their low-down devil lyrics she was going to soap out their mouths.

All the young people, black and white alike, were doing the macarena, which Harriet had taught them days before. Once Cain was seen macarenaing with sensual rhythm toward Ellen, who kept backing away from him in her usual prissy way. Finally, she relented, as everyone knew she would. Those Lincoln boys always did have a way with the women.

When the last of the peach punch was drunk, and not a speck of cake remained, and the dancers were all pooped out, Etienne Baptiste looked at his new wife and grinned.

“I’ve got the hula hoop, darlin’.”

She responded with her own grin. “I’ve got the cowboy boots and the spectacles.”

He winked. Harriet was known to have a thing about his winks. And spectacles.

“You are such a frog,” she told him.

He chuckled. “Yeah, but if you rub my wart, I turn into a prince.”

And then they both laughed as they walked up the grand staircase, arm in arm. Later, someone reported overhearing them remark, “
Vive la fantaisie!
”

Louisiana was an exciting place to live in the years after the Civil War. However, I have taken some literary license with dates to accommodate my story, which took place in 1870.

Without a doubt, New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz. Or at least, it was the spawning ground, pulling together all the different types of music that eventually became what would be called
jass
(sic)—Negro spirituals (sorrows and jubilations), work chants, Creole folk songs, water calls, African melodies. Even by 1870, the elements of the low-down blues essential to early jazz were being played by the street brass and scat bands, in the brothels, in funeral and wedding processions, and in minstrel shows. But it wasn’t until about twenty years later that a historical record was set down of these early jazz musicians.

There was no direct railroad connection between Chicago and New Orleans until 1885. And the bridge at Cairo wasn’t built until a number of years later, unlike my story. In 1870, a passenger would still have had to take a train
from Chicago to Cairo, a steamboat across the river, then board another train for New Orleans, and vice versa—a three-day trip.

The Blue Book
, an annual publication listing in graphic detail all the brothels in New Orleans’s legally sanctioned red-light district, did exist, as mentioned in Chapter 7. However, the first known edition was put out in 1895 and it was discontinued in 1902 when, as one famous madam said, “Business went downhill ’cause the country-club girls started giving it away.”

Improvisation was the key to early Louisiana songs, many of which were just variations of older European ballads. Such is the case in the lyrics quoted in Chapter 1 from the Creole love song “
Celeste, mo bel Bijou
,” which is similar to the eighteenth-century European ballad, “Oh, Sally, My Dear.” (
Daily Life in Louisiana
, Liliane Crété, Louisiana University Press, 1978, pp. 140–141).

Water calls by the slave workers, or “hollers,” such as the one shown in Chapter 14, were among the lyrics and music that became the backbone of many jazz songs. This particular stanza eventually made its way into the repertoire of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter (
Negro Folk Music
, U.S.A., Harold Courlander, Columbia University Press, 1963, p. 87.)

The peach-orchard lyrics quoted in Chapter 16 come from an early Louisiana folk song (
Sportin’ House
by Stephen Longstreet, Sherbourne Press, LA, 1965, p. 114).

The lyrics in Chapter 17 are excerpted from “A Good Old Rebel (Unreconstructed)” by Innes Randolph (1837–87), as listed in most Civil War songbooks.
Unreconstructed rebel
was a term applied to a Southerner not reconciled to the results of the Civil War.

The lyrics in Chapter 17 were collected (according to Giles Oakley,
Devil’s Music
, Taplinger Publishing, New York, 1976, p. 38) by the folklorists Howard Odum and Guy Johnson. Blacks were singing the blues in work songs such as this long before jazz or the blues were born.

About the Author

SANDRA HILL
is a graduate of Penn State and worked for more than 10 years as a features writer and education editor for publications in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Writing about serious issues taught her the merits of seeking the lighter side of even the darkest stories. She is the wife of a stockbroker and the mother of four sons.

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