Word: homelies
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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They bought him some teeth and a cornet, and threw together a band of unknown black jazzmen from New Orelans. In the fall, the old men gathered in a piano warehouse to make some home recordings because the professional studios in the city refused to record Negroes. When the crude recording machine was warmed up, Bunk stomped off the first number, "Make Me a Pallet on the Flood," and the "revival" of traditional jazz began...
ONLY A YEAR before this, I had gone with my father to visit him at his home and found him suffering from a severe asthma attack. His daughter came to the door in hysterics. We found him lying flat on his back in bed, wheezing and gasping for breath. He could only talk in spurts when the attack eased momentarily. My father grabbed the phone and called a hospital, and I was left alone in the room with George. He gasped for breath, stared at me. "You the one now, Tommy," he said suddenly. He thought he was dying...
...couldn't wait for an ambulance, so we carried him out to our car and sped off for downtown New Orleans, across the river from his home. His daughter carried his 99 pounds in her arms like a little black doll. I thought he would die on the way to the hospital, he was gasping...
...cold January night. Three or four people were standing on the front porch of Blandin Funeral Home when I arrived...
...unforgettable experience. Thousands made the long, slow march from the funeral home to the little white church, and then to the cemetery by the Mississippi River. There were dirges, and hymns, and muffled drums. They lowered the casket into a simple plot with a whitewashed concrete border. "G. Lewis" was painted on it in black letters. We played "The Old Rugged Cross" at graveside, then filed silently out of the cemetery...