It's been a while since I updated this area of my website. Many things have changed since I last posted an update. I am still in the Crescent City doing both the New Orleans Music Show and the Jazz Roots Show for WWOZ. We evacuated the day before Katrina hit and weren't allowed back into the city until the middle of October. Our house sustained moderate damage mostly from the intense winds. We lost part of our back roof, trees were down as were our fences. The storm did minor damage inside so we have been able to live in our home since we returned.

Life has changed for all of us here in New Orleans. I have done many radio, print and television interviews since the storm. I am looking forward to hosting WWOZ's live broadcasts from the French Quarter Festival and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fesitval. I will be interviewing singer John Boutte at the Allison Miner/Lagniappe Stage at the Jazzfest on Sunday May 7th at 5pm.

Let us hope that this summer is a mild one hurricane wise for the Crescent City. We look forward to seeing many old friends as they revisit our badly damaged city in the next three weeks. Please make a plan to visit us yourself and discover all that is wonderful in this part of the country.

We dodged the hurricanes this year, thank goodness, which makes us appreciate even more, life in the Big Easy. October is a special time in New Orleans with loads of free music and special events. Every Sunday at Cafe Brazil, from the beginning of October til just before Thanksgiving, the Nickle-A-Dance series from 4-7 pm is held. Stop on over and dance to your heart's content. Last week it was the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra that packed them in and this week Detroit Brooks will hold court. There is also a free Friday night music series held next to the French Market that will be going on through the first Friday in November. Next week, the Blues Queen of New Orleans, Marva Wright will be entertaining.

I continue to do almost monthly lectures at the New Orleans Jazz National Park. I am beginning to do these in Microsoft Powerpoint, which gives me a chance to use many more pictures from my archives in my talks. Last month the talk was on "Dance and Jazz" and my next one in November will be on New Orleans trumpeter, Wingy Manone.

Be sure and stop back to Jazz Roots often as we will be unveiling our retail shop soon. This will give us the chance for you to pick up some wonderful gifts with an early Jazz feel.

2003 has been a great year so far. The April edition of Offbeat Magazine featured an updated article of mine on jazz man Clarence Williams. You can read it here. At the music syposium that takes place as part of the French Quarter Festival, I gave a talk about the early New Orleans jazz composers. I used many early sheet music covers from these masters to illustrate my talk. It was very well received and it looks like I will be giving two similar presentations this fall. It was a great Jazz Fest this year with our annual party drawing more folks then ever before. The entertainment was provided by Tuba Fats and the Choosen Few.

The August edition of Offbeat Magazine will feature another article of mine for the Louisiana Master series. This time, I take a look at the life and times of the great King Oliver. August also brings my annual pilgrimage to Clarksdale, Miss. for the Sunflower River Blues Festival, one of my favorite blues fests. Speaking of the blues, I am working on a number of entries for a new two-volume Encyclopedia of the Blues, published by Routledge and edited by Edward Komara and Peter Redvers-Lee. Look for it at your favorite book store next year. Finally a recent trip to New York City, reignited a love affair with that wonderful city, so more trips from the Big Easy to the Big Apple are planned in the near future. Last but not least is the annual Cutting Edge Music Business Conference and Roots Music Gathering held this month in the city. This year I will be doing an oral history of Larry McKinley, a legendary music entrepeneur and disc jockey here in New Orleans. If you ever listened one of the great recordings on the Minit label from the early sixties then you have Larry to thank. Now quit reading this and go out and hear some live local jazz!

A cold day in New Orleans but a bright year ahead. Before long Mardi Gras will be here and then the festival season begins. As a member of the Krewe De Vieux and the sub-krewe of the Krewe de Craps, I am looking forward to our parade and ball. We are busy building our float which we promise will have you on the ground laughin' as we pass you by on the evening of Feb. 15th.

On April 12th, I will have a one hour talk about early Jazz sheet music during the annual Music Colloquium that is held as part of the French Quarter Festival. I will also be broadcasting the festival from our Woldenberg Park location and then it is on to 8 days of Jazz Fest. If you are going to be in town for the Fest, let me know as our annual crawfish boil just keeps getting bigger and better.

The Jazz Roots show has begun an extensive look into the roots of Jazz with a year by year exploration of Jazz music. On Jan 8th, I started with 1925 and each successive week will explore a single year in Jazz history from 1925 to 1940. At that point I plan to go back to 1893 and visit with some of the earliest African American recordings as we work from there up to 1925. Come listen every Wednesday morning from 9-11 am CST.

Another year has gone by in the Crescent City. I hosted WWOZ's broadcast every day this year from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as well as the Satchmo Summerfest at the beginning of August. It is always wonderful to bring the music and culture of the Crescent City to the world and also to have a chance to interview some of the great local musicians. The Cutting Edge Music Conference and Roots Music Gathering has just finished and I must say that this year's conference was the most informative and well attended in the events ten years. I had the great pleasure to moderate a panel on "How to Get Airplay" as well as I did a lecture/demonstration with the New Orleans musical force, Deacon John. Be on the look-out for his fine audio/video tour-de-force available later this year. It was also my great pleausre to do an oral history of pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis, the patriarch of one of New Orleans' most prominent musical families.

I have begun a series of monthly lectures at the new Jazz National Park, located here in New Orleans. These talks have been well attended and combine music, and education along with a sampling from my vast early jazz sheet music collection. Here are some of the topics I have discussed so far:

• From Rags to Jazz
  • How ragtime composers & early black broadway musicals paved the way for jazz.
• Radio and Jazz
  • A look at how the development of radio aided in the growth of jazz
• Jazz of the Twenties
  • A listening session of some of the great groups of the era.
• 1920s New Orleans Bands Recorded in New Orleans
  • New Orleans groups as territory bands after the exodus.
• History behind a jazz funeral song
  • Oh Didn't He Ramble from the Shires of England to the Bayous of Louisiana
• Clarence Williams
  • The first black businessman of jazz and significant composer
• Jelly Roll Morton
  • The man behind the myth and the myths the man made famous
• Early Black Music Publishing Companies
  • Gotham Attucks, Pace & Handy, Clarence Williams and more