Alphabe - Thursday - "D" is for Dixieland Jazz - October 14, 2010

Alphabe - Thursday - "D" is for Dixieland Jazz - October 14, 2010

 

I'm writing this on Tuesday because, at 7AM Thursday morning, I depart San

Francisco for the "city that care forgot".  Friday night, the Charity Hospital School

of Nursing "Class of 9-10-65" ( our graduation date ) will gather for its 45 year reunion.

We started out with about 150 students in September of 1962 and ended up with only

about 75 remaining three years later.  Nursing school back then was rough.  You had to

live in the dorm until the final six months of your senior year when you could get a special

dispensation to marry, with the director's approval.  The hospital was run by the

Daughters of Charity who, back then, wore the old religious habits with the white

caps that made them look as though they were about to become airborne any minute.

As freshmen students, we had difficult classes, heavy in the sciences - anatomy and

physiology, chemistry, microbiology.  There were three mandatory ( monitored ) study

halls a day - two in the evening.  We had to be in by 8PM on week nights and by

12:30PM on weekends and sign in and out under the watchful eyes of stern

housemothers. Any infraction meant being campused for the weekend and having

to sign in every hour on the hour, from 8AM until 8PM, in full uniform.  If we survived

that first years, things got a little easier.  We were even allowed to work on our days

off in the areas where we had completed our nursing education - for the immense

sum of a dollar an hour. 

The hospital wasn't air conditioned and, until the summer we became seniors, neither

was our dormitory.  I don't really know how I survived.  My home in Georgia wasn't

air conditioned, either! 

There were some brights things, though, about life at Charity, the largest hospital in the

world under one roof ( something like a thousand beds, if I remember correctly )..  We

were student nurses with two medical schools - both LSU and Tulane - so there were

plenty of dates and many of our classmates married medical students or young doctors. 

New Orleans was a fun place, where you could drink legally at eighteen, get raw oysters

for a dollar a dozen back then and, in crawfish season, those little darlings were three

pounds for a dollar. 

And, of course, besides zydeco music about which I've already blogged, there was

Dixieland jazz.  For those of you who live elsewhere in the world, Dixieland, or, Dixie, is

a term used for the Southeastern part of the United States.

Dixieland jazz, born in New Orleans, early in the 20th century, is the oldest form of jazz.

According to Wikipedia, "The style combined earlier brass band marches, French

Quadrilles, ragtime and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. While

instrumentation and size of bands can be very flexible, the "standard" band consists

of a "front line" of trumpet (or cornet), trombone, and clarinet, with a "rhythm section"

of at least two of the following instruments: guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano,

and drums". 

I was weaned on Dixieland jazz.  It was a favorite of my mother's and I can't remember a

time that I didn't love it and dance around to it.  I wonder if that is what got my brother

interested in playing the drums - which he did all through middle school, high school

and the Georgia Tech marching band.

I would enjoy weekends and going out in the French Quarter where you could hear jazz

wafting out of every other door.  Pete Fountain and Al Hirt both had clubs and there was

always Preservation Hall - a famous jazz hall, dating from the 60's, where one could sit

on wooden benches, stuffed in like sardines and hear some of the greatest New Orleans

jazz. - for about ten dollars.  The Preservation Hall Jazz Band performs almost every

night and some of their musicians tour almost 150 nights a year.  I was thrilled, once, to

hear/see them at Stern Grove in San Francisco!

The original "Dukes of Dixieland"

Louis Arnstrong singing "The Basin Street Blues"

Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, singing, "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?"

I guess I do know what it means to miss that city where I spent six important years of my

life.  It was so important to me that I even flew there from Boston to be married by a dear

priest friend, Monsignor Gerard Poche ( although he was not a monsignor back then ).

He had been our nursing school Newman Club chaplain though I didn't really remember

that.  I got to know him when he ws my patient at Mercy Hospital and we stayed friends

forever after.  When Shawn was born, his father and I flew to New Orleans in a small

plane Ed rented so  Jerry could baptize Shawn!  Both men will be in our thoughts on

Friday.

Sometime, in the next five days, if I'm lucky, I may even get to see a jazz funeral.  Talk

about a send off.  The band plays and anyone walking down the street just joins right

in the procession. 

Funeral scene from James Bond movie, "Live and Let Die"

I'm taking part in Jenny Matlock's Alphabe - Thursday.  Be there or be square!

Note:  I'll be away from the 14th to about 1AM the 20th - please forgive me if I'm
delinguent with reading comments and replying - I may even get behind on my
blog posts as I celebrate with my nursing school classmates of almost half
a century ago!  I'll report in if I find time.  Otherwise, I'll update everyone when
I return to San Francisco.  You'll be in my thoughts, though.
xxxooo