However, in this country, we don’t make laws based on what I believe. And that’s as it should be.
My personal faith tells me that each human has a soul, and that the logical time for this soul to take form is at conception. Many of my fellow Americans, in equally good faith, believe otherwise. Former First Lady Barbara Bush insisted that the soul entered the body with the first breath the baby took after birth.
The former First Lady wrote her thoughts about the issue in 1980 which was unearthed and transcribed only three months ago. “When does the soul enter the body is the #1 question,” she wrote. “Not when does life begin, as life begins in a flower or an animal with the first cell. So the question is does the life begin (soul entering the body) at conception or at the moment the first breath is taken? If the answer to that question is at conception, then abortion is murder. If the answer to that question is the moment the first breath is taken, then abortion is not murder.”
Seems kind of whimsical, but who can say? Some people don’t believe in souls at all, and although I hope they’re wrong, I can’t prove it.
Liz Scott Monaghan
I gave birth to six children —okay, for a long time I thought contraception was wrong as well, but I came to my senses about THAT, as have 89% of American Catholics.
My sister, who believes as I do, has eight children. Between us, we have 30-something grandchildren. Not all of these children and grandchildren were planned for, or arrived at convenient times, or even with the bounds of holy wedlock. One grandchild was put up for adoption. Abortion was legal, yet no one in our family considered it, not once. Our moral compass did not allow us to go there.
Of course, we had the means to feed our kids, and take them to good doctors, and send them to fine schools. We were well-educated white Americans, and we were able to find resources for whatever came our way.
First Lady Donna Edwards had that advantage as well.
She talks about being pregnant with a baby diagnosed with spina bifada, and despite advice to have an abortion, she went ahead and delivered her daughter, Samantha. They worked with her disability, and she thrived.
I had German measles during my second pregnancy, which put my unborn son at risk for being stillborn or having dire disabilities. Unlike Samantha, he emerged skinny but healthy. And as Donna did, I let this cement my beliefs against abortion. When life treats you gently, it’s easy to take the moral high ground.
As do a lot of the women in my social circle. Well-manicured hands over hearts, they proclaim they cannot, morally, vote for a pro-choice candidate. It would cost babies’ lives, poor little angels. They are the single-issue candidates being manipulated by the Republican Party.
But don’t stereotype these women.
Many mean well, and do support various services for the poor, and even oppose capital punishment. They are not cold-hearted women. They are just misinformed.
They do not yet realize —as I eventually did— that anti-abortion legislation does more harm than good—even if you are considering only the lives of the unborn.
A recent Guttmacher Institute study finds that the rates of abortion are actually highest in countries where there are laws against it. The most likely reason is that places where abortion is illegal are usually places where little sex education or easy access to contraceptives are provided. That would also apply to U.S. states that have most recently banned abortion.
By contrast, when Colorado, under former Gov. John Hickenlooper, provided free long-acting reversible contraceptives to its residents, there was aa 42%drop in abortions. So if the goal is to stop killing unborn children, that’s the way to go.
Unfortunately, we have danced beyond those logical arguments and dissolved into screaming matches, waving around posters depicting empty uteruses on one side and adorable baby-like fetuses on the other.
We should stop it. Give up the vulgarities about politicians keeping out of our uteruses— even though it’s true— and emphasize the fact that prohibiting abortion won’t work. We need to offer realistic sex education (news flash: the kids already know that abstinence works; they don’t care) and provide contraceptives.
We can also argue that anti-abortion laws violate the separation of church and state.
No, we can’t eliminate abortion. But— as Bill Clinton first said in 1996— we can make it “safe, legal, and rare.”
John Bel Edwards, our Democratic governor, calls himself pro-life. On the national scene, that is an unusual stance. But in Louisiana, Gov. Edwards believes his views are in the mainstream. In the three and a half years since Edwards’ inauguration, his press releases have touted balanced budgets, improved funding for higher education, and greater access to services for residents with disabilities. He’s worked hard on issues supporting LGBTQ rights, even while being obstructed by Attorney General Jeff Landry on this issue and others, such as Medicaid expansion.
Because of Gov. Edwards’ leadership, by any objective standard, Louisiana is in substantially better shape today than we were on the day Bobby Jindal cleaned out his office and movers hauled off his things from the Governor’s Mansion.
But in those same three and a half years, however, state legislators have passed abortion restrictions every opportunity they’ve had: Stripping facilities that perform abortions from all Medicaid funding, even for preventative health services; requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within thirty miles, and extending the waiting period from the first examination to performing an abortion to 72 hours. And every single year, the state Senate passes a resolution designating a specific week as “Pro-life Week” in Louisiana.
Last year was a banner year. Twelve different bills affecting abortion rights were introduced in the legislature; nine of those bills were passed and signed into law by the governor. Among these was a ban on abortions after fifteen weeks gestation.
Ann Porter
All told, since John Bel Edwards took office, legislators have introduced at least 40 different bills aimed at restricting abortion. Even before the passage of SB 184 this week, Louisiana was already one of the five most restrictive states for abortion in the country.
With the governor’s signature, SB 184 became Act 31.
Popularly known as the “heartbeat bill,” Act 31 would prohibit abortions after cardiovascular electrical activity is observable. This is usually at about six weeks gestation, before many women even know they are pregnant. Notably, according to medical professionals, the word “heartbeat” is biologically inaccurate.
“The use of the word ‘heartbeat’ is intentionally misleading and manipulative,” Dr. Jennifer Kerns explained to Newsweek. “It’s used to distract people from the actual intention [of legislators], which is essentially to ban abortion outright.” Kerns is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California San Francisco.
The new law only allows exceptions when the life or health of the mother are in jeopardy, or when the embryo or fetus is not viable. An amendment to allow exceptions for rape or incest failed.
Ultimately, it passed the state House 77-23 and sailed through the state Senate as well, garnering support from 31 members; only five voted against it. As originally written, the bill would have become enforceable as law when signed by the governor, but, as amended, it may only be enforced if a similar Mississippi law currently before the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is upheld.
The governor has always been clear about his anti-abortion beliefs. He was opposed to abortion rights as a legislator. His campaign in 2015 featured an ad with Donna Edwards telling the story of their oldest child, Samantha, who was diagnosed with spina bifida before she was born, and how they were advised to have an abortion.
Pro-choice advocates and other progressives have expressed their anger at Gov. Edwards’s determination to sign this bill. Until last Wednesday, when he released a statement reiterating his “Pro-life for the whole life” stance, his main response has been that he hasn’t changed his position on this at all. Gov. Edwards is speaking the truth: the records shows he has never seen a piece of anti-choice legislation he wouldn’t sign.
This legislation is not happening in a vacuum. Legislation restricting abortion rights has been passed and signed into law in nine other states. As a result of President Trump’s appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Bret Kavanaugh, conservatives now believe they have a real shot at overturning Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court. If they are correct, anything that’s happening in the legislature right now is just window dressing, thanks to a 2006 bill authored by former Sen. Ben Nevers (D – Bogalusa) and signed by former Gov. Kathleen Blanco. That law, now known as Act 467, would ban abortions in all cases, except when giving birth would threaten the life of the mother.
Forgive me if I see all these restrictions as political theatre. Current Louisiana law, in the event Roe v. Wade is overturned, is more onerous than any of the restrictions that have been passed in the last three years. Putting my pundit hat on, I don’t see “the heartbeat bill” passing Supreme Court muster without effectively overturning a law that has stood for more than 46 years.
If Roe is overturned, “the heartbeat bill” won’t be the law in Louisiana; a total ban on all abortions will.
John Bel Edwards is far from the most culpable party in this ugly drama. Anti-choice Democrats throughout the state are on the record supporting this bill – including some that I greatly respect. They are voting their own values and the values of their constituents. That they are willfully oblivious to the fully foreseeable result that women will die and families will suffer is tragic, but they seem to be willing to make that trade.
How is an ardent pro-choice Democrat to respond to this mess? I have found myself, through the entirety of Governor Edwards’ tenure, quoting the words of the Republican Prophet, Ronald Reagan: “the person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20 percent traitor.” John Bel Edwards is wrong on this issue. He’s angered progressives, women, and others in his base by both his stance on this terrible bill and his press release explaining it. But on 80% of the issues, I agree with him. A pro-choice Democrat doesn’t stand a chance in hell of winning in Louisiana. If we want a pro-choice governor, we need a pro-choice electorate. If we actually have a pro-choice electorate, we need to do a better job showing up. And until that time, I’m going to continue to support the 80% governor we have.
Louisiana Gov. Earl K. Long on his Attorney General.
A couple of hours after Robert Mueller III spoke to the American public for the first and only time about his two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the allegations that President Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice in order to illegally end the investigation before it even began, Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s attorney general and a former one-term member of the U.S. Congress, turned to Trump’s favorite online soapbox, Twitter, offering his own assessment of Mueller’s remarks.
In his haste to reflexively defend a President who once boasted about sexually assaulting women, paid $25 million to settle a case involving claims of fraud against his phony university, encouraged a foreign government to criminally infiltrate the email account of his opponent, ordered the separation of undocumented immigrants from their children, ordered those small children to be held in cages, a man who illegally funneled money to a porn star in order to force her to remain silent about their sexual relationship, spoke about white supremacists as “good people,” and, among other things, instituted an unconstitutional ban on Muslims seeking to travel to the United States, Landry inadvertently proved his comically wrong and vapid understanding of the law.
Jeff Landry currently has fewer than 7,000 followers, a paltry amount for an official who pines for the spotlight as much as he does, but that hardly mattered. His tweet is so riddled with basic errors about the judicial process, including the differences between a court case and an investigatory report, that he quickly generated nearly 20,000 people, including a number of celebrities, responding to point out the obvious: Landry’s comment reflects an embarrassing ignorance of his own profession. Thousands asked a variation of the same question: How are you a lawyer?
Did this go to an invisible court? As I understand it Mueller has his hands tied by a non legally binding DOJ policy paper.
Well let me be clear Jeff…in this country most people are capable of being indicted for crimes. And tried. The president is not by rule…you are either a liar, an idiot or both…the latter is my guess
You are a state Attorney General? Mueller was brutally clear he did not find Trump innocent. Assuming you understand the law, are you really ok with embarrassing yourself like this?
You should learn the definition of “exonerated” Though I just remembered you’re a Republican, so education and facts don’t actually matter in your world.
A "court" didn't find anything about Trump. Special Counsel Mueller said DOJ policy precluded him from even accusing Trump of a crime. So Mueller laid out the evidence.
If you want a "court" involved in Trump's innocence or guilt, then you're saying Trump should be indicted.
Ummm…do you really think the special investigation was a court proceeding? Because either you’re frightfully stupid or a pretty cynical liar. You folks have a good night.
— Peter Ames Carlin (@peteramescarlin) May 30, 2019
1—you're found "not guilty", not "innocent"… but whatever
2—was Trump indicted in a court and found "not guilty" at some point? No
3—criminal proceedings (where one is found "guilty" or "not guilty") are different from impeachment proceedings; see @justinamash for explanation
Is @JeffLandry —the Louisiana AG —a lawyer? He must be, right? That means he is the stupidest lawyer in the United States—quite an accomplishment. https://t.co/Hoho3YRhat
Over two days in December 2017, Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance James “Jim” Donelon received three $5,000 campaign contributions, one from a North Carolina insurance executive Greg Lindberg and two from companies owned by Lindberg, Eli Research, LLC and Dunhill Holdings, LLC, and about five months later, on May 25th, 2018, Donelon received yet another $5,000 from Eli Research, LLC.
SourceL Louisiana Ethics Administration Contribution Reports for James “Jim” Donelon.
Around the same time, at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, North Carolina’s Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey was secretly recording conversations with Lindberg. As a result, last month, Lindberg was indicted for conspiring to bribe Commissioner Causey.
While Lindberg’s criminal indictment was widely reported in April and well-known among insurance industry professionals, Donelon has not returned the $20,000 in contributions from Lindberg or his companies, according to his most recent campaign finance reports. It is not clear whether or not the FBI has reviewed any potential illegalities stemming from these contributions or a prior regulatory victory Lindberg secured from Commissioner Donelon.
Since 2015, Donelon has received approximately $680,000 in campaign contributions from insurance companies and agents, according to a comprehensive review conducted by Douglas Heller, a nationally-renowned insurance expert. In mid-April, Donelon’s campaign reported $863,206.91 cash-on-hand.
Before making these contributions, Lindberg had won approval from Donelon to expand his growing insurance empire in a transaction that raises new questions in light of the federal indictment. In 2016, Donelon approved the sale of a two insolvent Louisiana life insurance companies, Mothe Life and DLE Life, to another Lindberg company, Southland National Insurance Company. Donelon’s Department selected Southland from nine companies that had submitted letters of intent to bid on the insolvent companies, according to a transcript of the court hearing that approved the sale.
Despite the Department of Insurance’s stated plan of seeking a buyer among “larger companies and life companies that were here in Louisiana,” Donelon recommended a sale to Southland, a relatively small and obscure North Carolina insurance company that, only two years prior, had been an Alabama-based burial-policy insurer.
Lindberg’s company purchased Southland National in 2014, part of a strategy of acquiring small insurance companies with assets he could invest in his other ventures. As the Wall Street Journalreported, Lindberg “looked for small insurers that wouldn’t cost much…. His purchases eventually included a Louisiana insurer bought out of receivership and a struggling Dutch insurer acquired for €1.”
Donelon approved the sale of that Louisiana insurer (Mothe Life and its subsidiary DLE); records indicate the purchase price was approximately $100,000.
Additional information that has come to light in the wake of the federal indictment adds to the concern about Donelon’s approval of the sale to Lindberg and the Commissioner’s later receipt of $20,000 in contributions.
Reporting by Politico in October 2018 found that only days after Donelon issued the final approval of the sale of Mothe/DLE to Southland, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation sought to stop Southland from doing business in that state because the company was “financially impaired.” That Florida order was issued on April 1, 2016, just two weeks after Donelon’s Department handed over Mothe/DLE to Southland.
A review of the Louisiana Secretary of State’s corporations database reveals only one company associated with Lindberg as registered to do business in the state, Colorado Benefits Administrators, LLC. Neither Eli Research nor Dunhill Holdings, the two companies from which Lindberg donated to Commissioner Donelon, have ever been active businesses in Louisiana, and despite Donelon’s approval of the sale, Southland appears to have not yet filed requisite documents with the Louisiana Secretary of State.
Undoubtedly, the Louisiana Department of Insurance, which had previously aimed to sell Mothe/DLE to a well-capitalized insurer, would have been able to see the same financial impairment that so concerned Florida regulators. It is not clear why the Louisiana department did not identify any possible financial concerns when it presented its support for Southland’s purchase of Mothe/DLE to the East Baton Rouge District Court overseeing the matter.
On its website page about the insolvency and sale to Southland, the Louisiana Department of Insurance explains to Mothe/DLE policyholders, “The companies were purchased by Southland National Insurance Company who will continue to write policies and service your existing policies.” However, according to its own website, “Southland National is no longer issuing new policies.”
Louisiana is one of only twelve states with an elected Commissioner of Insurance. All told, since 1961, seven people, all men, have been elected to the position. Three of Donelon’s four most recent predecessors served time in federal prison after being found guilty of various federal crimes related to their official duties.
Today, Meek provided the Bayou Brief with permission to publish the full recording. While Meek did not disclose his decision to record the meeting with Brewer, Caples, or Clark, he was fully within his rights to do so, as stated in La. R.S. 15:1303 of the states’s Electronic Surveillance Act. Like many other states, Louisiana law provides that such a recording is permissible as long as one party is aware (i.e. Meek).
Three days after this meeting, Meek submitted his resignation from Louisiana College.
This February, three days after a contentious, accusation-filled meeting with Louisiana College President Rick Brewer, Vice President of Academic Affairs Cheryl Clark, and Vice President of Integration and Learning Philip Caples, Assistant Professor Dr. Russell Meek abruptly resigned from the school, where he had taught Hebrew and the Old Testament for the past four years.
Meek had urged administrators to officially distance the school from a string of bizarre, misogynistic comments made by Joshua Joy Dara, a well-known local Baptist pastor and erstwhile Republican candidate for the Louisiana state Senate. However, school officials were instead primarily concerned about mitigating any potential public relations fall-out and shielding Dara from criticism.
“You’re taking on the most powerful or one of the top five most powerful people in Central Louisiana,” Brewer told Meek, referring to Dara. Listen to the full audio here.
Joshua Joy Dara. Credit: Trinity Broadcasting Network.
Meek first contacted the Bayou Brief in April, and during the past month, we have reviewed multiple documents and internal emails concerning the events leading to his resignation. We were also provided a full-length audio recording of his meeting with school officials, which we were able to independently authenticate. Before Southern Baptist blogger Wade Burleson posted about Meek’s resignation on May 18th, these events had been largely unknown outside of the school’s Pineville campus.
The Bayou Brief is the only publication in Louisiana to report on the controversy. This report includes several details previously unknown to the public, including the extensive pressure exerted by LC President Brewer and Vice President Clark to conceal information and insulate Dara from criticism. At the time of publication, Norman Miller, LC’s Vice President of Communications and Integrated Marketing, has not yet responded to a request for comment.
LC hired Dara last September as its new Dean of Human Behavior. On Feb. 14th, Valentine’s Day, Dara spoke at the school’s mandatory chapel services about female sexuality, comparing a woman’s body to a house in order to lecture young women about their grooming habits and the importance of chastity.
According to those present, Dara argued women who have had multiple sexual partners have turned their bodies into a “crackhouse.” He also advised women to “mow their lawns,” a reference to pubic hair, as a way of keeping their partners sexually satisfied. His remarks were met with awkward laughter, but afterward, multiple students told professors and administrators they found Dara’s comments to be grossly inappropriate and misogynistic. Brewer later claimed to have heard criticism from at least five different individuals and stated that he would have responded differently if the remarks had been made by someone not affiliated with the LC “family.”
Dr. Russell Meek
The next day, Meek shared his own concerns and those privately expressed by a colleague and by at least one of his students to Vice President Caples. Additionally, multiple students shared their criticism of Dara’s remarks during one of Meek’s classes. He later sent an email to Caples “so there is a record of the concerns.”
Dara, notably, issued a terse statement to school administrators expressing his regret for offending anyone, which was later truncated and forwarded to students in a defensive email by Norm Miller, LC’s communications director. Miller argued that Dara’s remarks were merely “evidence of differences in cultural perceptions and nomenclatures,” calling him “the highly respected Dr. Joshua Joy Dara.” Dara, who is a native of Nigeria and who earned his law degree from Southern University, refers to himself as “Dr. Dara” on his church’s website. In most states, it is considered unethical for a lawyer to use the title “doctor,” and Dara has never earned a Ph.D. or M.D. or any other doctoral degree conventionally associated with the honorific.
It is unclear how, exactly, Dara’s remarks were, in any way, reflective of cultural differences, and for many, including Meek, the email only reinforced the perception that LC officials were flippantly dismissive of legitimate concerns about crude sexism and the objectification of women.
Although the school had previously uploaded videos of its chapel services to an official account on YouTube, Dara’s sermon was never published, and the entire account, along with its archives, has subsequently been deleted.
A Culture of Cover-Ups:
Only days before, in a blockbuster report titled “Abuse of Faith,” The Houston Chronicle revealed that during the previous twenty years, nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers have been either “convicted (or) credibly accused” of or “successfully sued” for sexual abuse; this number also includes those who have either confessed or resigned after being accused. Thus far, more than 700 victims have come forward. Despite that, “leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and its 47,000 churches” had failed to take action against “congregations that harbored or concealed abusers.” The SBC subsequently outlined a number of actions in response.
Louisiana College is controlled by the Louisiana Baptist Convention, an affiliation of the SBC. In September 2010, the college announced the founding of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, to be located in downtown Shreveport and led by now-U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson. Judge Pressler was one of the 400 Baptist leaders revealed by the Chronicle to have been accused by three different men of sexual abuse. In 2004, according to the report, Pressler paid one of these men, who alleged Pressler began raping him when he was a teenager, $450,000 for “physical assault.”
Because of financial difficulties, Louisiana College’s Judge Paul Pressler School of Law never opened its doors.
At least two others identified by the Chronicle as alleged sexual abusers are graduates of Louisiana College. To Meek and others, the timing of the Chronicle’s exposé is important in understanding the school’s response to Dara’s inappropriate comments.
Later that month, on Feb. 20th and only twenty-two minutes after Miller forwarded students Dara’s brief note expressing regret to those who were offended by his “tone,” LC President Brewer sent a campus-wide email to all students and faculty members urging them to heed the instructions of Matthew 18:15-17, which commands church members to attempt to resolve disputes internally before involving outside authorities. “If they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector,” the passage concludes. (During the meeting with Meek, President Brewer claimed the timing of his email was coincidental and falsely asserted he had only sent it to faculty members).
In recent years, LC’s reputation has been significantly damaged by a series of controversial actions undertaken by its previous president, Joe Aguillard, who was forced to resign in 2014. When Brewer was hired the following year, many believed he would be capable of repairing the damage Aguillard had inflicted and restoring the school’s academic credibility.
However, thus far, Brewer’s track record has been uneven. The school is currently being sued by a man who applied for a coaching job with its football team and was later told he was not hired because Brewer expressed concerns about the man’s “Jewish blood.” Only a day before Dara spoke at the school’s chapel services, Brewer announced LC was severing all ties with the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) after the organization adopted a “Fairness for All” plan, which recognized the rights of LGBT students.
“If this gets on the internet, it’s viral.” – LC President Rick Brewer.
Eleven days after Dara made the controversial comments, Meek met privately with Brewer and two other top LC administrators, Cheryl Clark and Philip Caples, in order to address the concerns he had outlined in an email to Brewer the previous week. In his email, Meek attached a draft of an op-ed he had written titled “No Woman Is a Crackhouse,” which refuted Dara’s remarks and raised questions about LC’s tepid response.
LC President Rick Brewer. Source: Twitter.
Almost immediately, Brewer and Clark both became hostile toward Meek. Clark was particularly combative, asking, in exasperation, how such criticism would help the school while also asserting herself to be a feminist who, puzzlingly, agreed with Dara. She ridiculed Meek for previously complaining about his salary, suggesting that his concerns about Dara, if they were ever to be made public, would undermine the school’s ability to raise money that could be used to increase faculty pay.
Brewer, while more soft-spoken, was also more threatening and direct. He told Meek that the school’s attorney and the chairman of its board both concluded that the draft op-ed Meek had sent him was “libelous, slanderous, defamatory, and inflammatory.” Based on the Bayou Brief’s review of the document, however, it contains nothing that comes even remotely close to rising to the standard of defamation and merely articulates Meek’s differences of opinions with a public figure, which is, definitively, considered to be protected speech.
“If you publish this,” Brewer told Meek, “you will be disciplined for insubordination.” Later, he warned, “If this gets on the internet, it’s viral,” as a way of emphasizing the damage he believed the op-ed could inflict on the school.
Joshua Joy Dara casting a vote for himself on Election Day in 2015. Dara lost his race for state Senate in a landslide.
Brewer also touted Dara as a powerful man, as previously mentioned, and suggested that Dara, a lawyer himself, may be inclined to take action against Meek. He briefly suggested setting up a private meeting between Dara and Meek, though the proposal was never presented seriously. He also rejected requests for Dara’s sermon to be posted online, speculating that “skeptics” at the school would parse through his words and upload the most incendiary clips to Twitter in order to “make fun” of the pastor.
Notably, both Brewer and Caples stated they were “uncomfortable” with what Dara had said, while, at the same time, refusing to take any type of action that would clarify the school’s official position on fostering a climate of respect for women.
Blessed Are the Meek:
By all accounts, Russell Meek was a widely-respected professor during his four years at Louisiana College. During their meeting, Brewer repeatedly stated that Meek was a “great professor” and a “great writer” who earned high marks from his students and colleagues.
Two years ago, Russell Meek (L) and Rick Brewer (R) attended the annual Southern Baptist Convention together.
For his part, Meek asserts that he “loved” the school, his students, and his colleagues and had merely hoped that the school’s administration would affirm the dignity of women who were offended by Dara’s comments and make it clear they disagreed with his commentary. Meek also tells the Bayou Brief that he had always respected LC President Brewer and credits him with significantly improving the “quality of the student body” by imposing more stringent admission standards.
Indeed, Meek arrived at LC in 2015 as one of Brewer’s first hires as the school’s new president. At the time, Meek, now 36, had just earned a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, where he wrote his dissertation, “The Meaning of Hebel in Ecclesiastes in Light of Qohelet’s Inner-Biblical Use of Genesis.”
He acknowledges that he was largely unfamiliar with the school’s recent past under former President Joe Aguillard and had never been under the impression that Joshua Joy Dara was a “powerful” man until Brewer made the assertion. To Meek’s credit, Dara may be a locally familiar name because of his relationship with KALB, the local NBC and CBS affiliate on which Dara frequently pays to advertise his church, Zion Hill Baptist, but there is scant evidence of his “power.” Four years ago, when he campaigned for state Senate, Dara, a Republican, lost in a nearly-19 point landslide to Democrat Jay Luneau, running a lackluster operation that had effectively halted to a stop weeks before Election Day. Privately, many had expressed concern about accusations that Dara had been attempting to raise money for his campaign from the pulpit, though evidence of such efforts never publicly materialized.
Meek says he enjoyed his four years at LC, but ultimately, he concluded he could no longer remain with the school.
“It would have compromised my integrity to have stayed,” he told the Bayou Brief, noting that he was, in no way, forced to submit his resignation and that his decision likely took the administration by surprise. “I would have loved to have stayed, but I couldn’t.”
Paul McCartney was 22 years old the first and only time he and his mates from Liverpool played a gig in New Orleans. They spent less than 24 hours in town, and it was pure pandemonium from the moment they landed. A helicopter was supposed to have met them at Lakefront Airport in order to whisk them away to their hotel, but mechanical issues kept it grounded. Instead, organizers sent over a caravan of limousines, but unfortunately, they were dispatched to the wrong airport.
Their police escort somehow got separated from them during the drive to the hotel, and the word got out to fans: The Fab Four were staying at the Congress Inn on Chef Menteur Highway. In the afternoon, New Orleans Mayor Victor Schiro showed up to give them all ceremonial keys to the city and present them with a proclamation declaring Sept. 16th, 1964 as “Beatles Day.” Before the show, the band met Fats Domino backstage; meeting him was the one and only request they had made.
(Decades later, when Fats Domino’s home in the Lower Ninth Ward was destroyed by the Federal Flood in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Paul McCartney helped pay to restore one of Domino’s prized Steinway grand pianos. Today, the piano belongs to the New Orleans Jazz Museum in the Old Mint Building.)
Fats Domino meets the Beatles in New Orleans. 09/16/1964. Source: George Harrison, Twitter.
Domino, who passed away at the age of 89 in late October 2017, was, at the time, one of the most famous musicians on the planet, but while he may have not realized it at the time, 1964 would mark the end of his decade-long dominance on the billboard charts. America was in the very beginning of the throes of the British Invasion.
That night, 12,000 screaming fans packed City Park Stadium to hear the Beatles play a 12-song setlist. They were so loud that recordings of the show are essentially worthless. 200 kids fainted; one girl broke her arm. The local police were aggressive and unamused by Beatlemania. All told, the band was on stage for less than a half an hour. They’d hoped to spend the next day casually touring the Birthplace of Jazz, but they had picked up a gig in Kansas City that changed their plans.
Last Thursday, in front of a sold-out crowd of nearly 18,000, Paul McCartney, now a 76-year-old billionaire who became Sir Paul more than two decades ago after being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, spent nearly three hours on the stage of the Smoothie King Arena in New Orleans, playing 38 songs from his catalogue, most of which now rank as global classics.
When he was here as a 22-year-old, the tickets were $5. A day before Thursday’s show, floor tickets were listed online for as much as $3,000 a pop. Fortunately, I didn’t have to cough up nearly that, and because I use a wheelchair for events like these and because the security on Thursday was far more generous than the cops who worked the Beatles show in 1964, I ended up in the dead center of the floor, with a largely unobstructed view of the stage.
Funny enough, the only time I couldn’t see the stage was during the obligatory performance of “Hey Jude,” when actor Harry Shearer and his wife, singer-songwriter Judith Owen, stepped into the aisle and held each other close as they sang along. Thankfully, no one bothered them, though the couple who sat next to me, a teenage girl and her mother, were both thrilled when I discreetly pointed out that the voice of half of the characters on “The Simpsons” (among other things) was in front of us. I’d met Shearer several years ago when he delivered a keynote speech at Rising Tide, a conference of Louisiana and New Orleans-based bloggers and activists that had convened every year in the decade after Hurricane Katrina. I don’t know him personally, but I have always admired his advocacy on behalf of his adopted hometown.
Photo by Bayou Brief.
There aren’t too many benefits to being disabled, but the ADA section at concerts is definitely one of them. It’s the only reason that I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen hundreds of concerts and even been able to attend nearly a dozen music festivals throughout the past twenty years. But until Thursday, I’d never before seen Macca in person, and perhaps like many others in attendance, I imagined the show would likely be the last chance I’d ever get to see him in New Orleans. After all, he is 76, nearly 77, and it’s not like he’s touring because he needs the money.
Photo by Bayou Brief.
But if you hadn’t known otherwise, you would be forgiven for thinking McCartney was a man twenty years younger. Sure, he has finally allowed his hair to turn gray, and sure, he no longer has the same youthful voice he did when he recorded “When I’m Sixty-Four.” But there aren’t many musicians in the world who can play seven different instruments over the course of a 38-song, nearly three-hour-long set, and arguably, the only other septuagenarian rock star as high-octane as McCartney is his 75-year-old rival, Sir Mick Jagger. (The Rolling Stones announced today that they will return to New Orleans for a show at the Superdome on July 14th, after being forced to cancel their planned performance at this year’s JazzFest).
I’ve never really understood the ideological divisions between fans of the Stones and fans of the Beatles. Of course, I belong to a different generation, barely a millennial and born two years after John Lennon was assassinated. Whenever I’ve been asked to chose between the two bands, I dismiss the question as a false choice, which it is. The Beatles may have first become famous for their up-tempo pop songs about teenage love, but I imagine that, like me, most fans prefer their later work, which is imbued with profound meditations on loss and religion and heavily influenced by their own experiences with psychedelics and Eastern mysticism.
They may have been a pop sensation when they arrived in New Orleans in 1964, but as we know now, by the next year, with the debut of Rubber Soul, John Lennon and Paul McCartney began a five-year streak that forever cemented their global influence and set a bar for songwriting brilliance that has never again been equaled. (George Harrison was in his own right a genius composer, but as songwriters, the duo of Lennon-McCartney was the core of the band’s transformation).
Next door to the Smoothie King Arena, the Louisiana Superdome (which its current leaseholder believes to be named after a German car company) is lit up with a sign welcoming McCartney back to New Orleans.
McCartney’s show on Thursday was the first part of the U.S. leg of “Freshen Up,” his 2019 world tour, and perhaps because he had taken a month-long break after completing a string of shows in South America, his voice was, for the most part, surprisingly strong. He had full control of his falsetto, and he punctuated his rock songs with on-key screams.
He also regaled the crowd with small asides about his career and his personal life (both his wife and his daughter Mary were in attendance). For most fans, these stories are already well-known, like the time he watched Jimi Hendrix cover “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” with the help of Eric Clapton.
McCartney performs “Blackbird” in New Orleans. Photo by Bayou Brief.
To me, two moments particularly stuck out: While introducing “Blackbird” as a song inspired by the “little girls in Alabama,” a reference to the four children killed in 1963 in Birmingham during the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, he spoke about meeting people across the world who have told them they learned how to play the guitar because of the song.
“How many of you know how to play ‘Blackbird?’” McCartney asked the audience. Thousands cheered back.
The other stand-out moment, at least to me, was when he picked up the ukulele and played a stripped-down version of “Something,” which he dedicated to George Harrison. “Cheer for Georgie,” he asked.
The place went wild.
Macca clearly has a deep affection for New Orleans. He’d camped out in town for a few days before Thursday’s show. He became much more familiar with the Big Easy than any of his fellow Beatles. In recent years, he’s been spotted at art galleries in the French Quarter, taking in a Jeremy Davenport show at the Ritz-Carlton, schmoozing at the Polo Club in the Windsor Court hotel, and, most famously, serenading streetcar passengers.
In 2013, McCartney sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to Evelyn Trahan, a resident of Mid City in New Orleans who unwittingly took a seat next to him after boarding a streetcar on Canal and Carrollton. Trahan’s friend was so nervous to take the photo, she ended up turning her camera off. Thankfully, another native New Orleanian, Robert Retz, snapped this photo. Source: Robert Retz.
For a brief moment in 1975, five years after the Beatles broke up, it looked like a distinct possibility that New Orleans would be the setting of the band’s reunion.
For five weeks, McCartney and his band Wings recorded their album “Venus and Mars” at Sea-Saint Studios in New Orleans, collaborating with Allen Toussaint. But before they arrived, McCartney and his late wife Linda had dinner with John Lennon and May Pang, Lennon’s then-girlfriend. After dinner, McCartney invited Lennon to join him in New Orleans; there was no pressure to record anything, of course, but it seemed inevitable that’s what would happen.
Paul McCartney and Allen Toussaint in New Orleans in 1975.
Unfortunately, at the last minute, Lennon canceled, and the reunion never occurred. It’s a shame.
If Thursday night’s show proved one thing, it’s that McCartney is still capable of evoking the same magic that launched him into the stratosphere. He shone brightly in the Crescent City, and hopefully, the next time he is in town, he can be convinced to play again at the Superdome instead. He’s already well-acquainted with the Dome; he stopped there during his 1993 world tour and again in 2002, when he opened up Super Bowl XXXVI.
If there is any criticism to be found about his show on Thursday, it’s that the venue was too small for the kind of party the city should throw for Sir Paul.
Stream the entire playlist on Spotify by clicking here or pressing play.
I didn’t set out to be the Bayou Brief’s listicle guy but the response to my Set In Louisiana: Top 40 Movies list has been so favorable that I decided to give it another shot. This list is based on three mix CDS that I created not long after returning home from Katrina Exile. I called them Louisiana Tunes. Each CD began with a version of Louisiana 1927 (Randy Newman, Aaron Neville, and Marcia Ball) and concluded with Feels Like Rain (John Hiatt, Aaron Neville, and Buddy Guy.)
This incarnation of Louisiana Tunes is based on that series, but I did a bit of crowd sourcing on Facebook. It paid off. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions: some made the list, others did not. I did, however, ignore a suggestion from my publisher. Sorry, Lamar, hip hop ain’t my thing so A-Town B Ballin‘ did not make the cut. (Editor’s Note: The follow-up classic A-Town Still Ballin’ also was not selected).
As with the movie list, Louisiana Tunes reflects my taste, which leans toward rock, blues, and classic R&B. I’m not sure if the songs are timely but they’re certainly timeless. Music is very personal to me, so I tell a few stories along the way. I excluded instrumentals, which is why there aren’t many early jazz or more recent brass band numbers.
The songs were selected based on their theme, not artist. Many great Gret Stet artists missed the list, but that’s no reflection on them: they just didn’t record one of the Top 50 songs about Louisiana and its various municipalities. Some of the artists are local, others are not. I stand by my selections although I expect, and even want, criticism. Bring it on, y’all.
I tried my best to restrict the list to one song per artist. I wound up punting at the end of the list because there are three artists who wrote and recorded so many excellent Louisiana Tunes that I couldn’t choose: The Meters, Zachary Richard, and Randy Newman. In my crowd sourcing, more people mentioned Louisiana 1927 than any other song. Given what happened on Mother’s Day in New Orleans, they’re still “trying to wash us away.”
Unlike the movie list, I did not include any Louisiana Tunes that I do not like. Some of them were new to me and were suggested by friends but they not only rock, they rule.
Without further ado, here are the Top 50 Louisiana Tunes in reverse order.
50.Jambalaya–Hank Williams. It’s not one of my favorite Hank Williams tunes but it was the second most suggested song by my friends and readers. Who am I to argue with the Vox Populi?
Written By: Hank Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG7-tsqDRYE
49.Bossier City–Turnpike Troubadours. My wife and I spent part of our Katrina exile in Bossier City. We stayed with our friends Susan and Steve who suggested this song. It was new to me but it’s a winner. The band sounds like a combination of the Old 97’s and Old Crow Medicine Show. That’s good enough for me.
Written By: Turnpike Troubadours.
48. Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man–Conway Twitty/Loretta Lynn. I’m not a fan of modern pop country but I like the real deal. And it doesn’t get much realer than Twitty and Loretta. This was another Facebook suggestion. Thanks, Stybby.
Written By: Becki Bluefield/Jim Owen.
47.Lafayette Waltz– Clifton Chenier. I didn’t grow up in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. I saw Clifton Chenier at Winterland in San Francisco along with Muddy Waters and Hot Tuna. I was blown away and wanted to waltz off to Lafayette at the end of the evening. It took awhile but I made it to Louisiana a decade later.
Written By: Clifton Chenier.
46.New Orleans Ladies– LeRoux. A swell pop song recorded in 1978 when the band was known as Louisiana’s LeRoux. The dropped the Louisiana from their name in 1981 but they’re still stirring the roux some 38 years later.
Written By: Hoyt Garrick/Leon Medica.
45.Callin’ Baton Rouge–Garth Brooks. This ode to Red Stick was originally recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys in 1978. In 1993, Garth Brooks released the song as a single and it hit number 2 on the country music charts. I guess wearing a gynormous cowboy hat matters.
Callin’ Baton Rouge was suggested to me via Facebook DM by someone who hates country music and requested anonymity. I’m only partially outing them because it was an excellent suggestion. Thanks, Unknown Country Music Hater. I wonder if they’re related to the Unknown Comic of Gong Show fame?
Written By: Dennis Linde.
44.Hurricane Party– Paul Sanchez. I know someone who attended the party in question. They don’t remember much about it but behaved badly enough that I’m leaving his/her name out of it.
I also considered Sanchez’s Jazz Fest anthem Exit To Mystery Street but it fell afoul of the one song rule. I don’t have a funny story about that one, which was the tiebreaker.
Written By: Paul Sanchez.
43.Louisiana Liplock– Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper. This duo describes their music as psychobilly. Who am I to argue? I’d rather not be struck by a psychobilly club, after all.
Written By: Mojo Nixon.
42.Longest Bridge In The World– Dash Rip Rock. This ode to the Causeway was suggested by my friend Kyle who used to play drums for Dash Rip Rock. He’s famous for his selfies so I was disappointed when the suggestion didn’t come with one. Oh well, there’s always next time.
Written By: Bill Davis.
41.Louisiana Lady– New Riders of the Purple Sage. This swell country-rock song came from NRPS’ debut album. It’s the one that Jerry Garcia plays pedal steel on, but it’s not an episode of Friends as far as I know.
Written By: John Dawson.
40.Take Me Back To Abita Springs– Bobby Lounge. There aren’t many Louisiana Tunes with Northshore towns in the title. I think quirky pianist Bobby Lounge has cornered the market on St. Tammany Parish tunes.
Written By: Bobby Lounge.
39.Gospel Shoes– David Bankston. One sign that I’ve taken to life in Louisiana is that I’m not averse to a bit of cronyism. In fact, David Bankston’s late father Al got a shout-out on my movie list for his performance as a racist cop in Sounder. It was only fair that David got one on this list. Besides, it’s a song that mentions Bogalusa. What’s not to love about that?
Written By: David Bankston /Sam Broussard.
38.Sweet Chalmette– Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes. This tune was suggested by my Spank krewe mate Jessica. She cautioned me not to make any jokes about spotted Chalmatians, but I cannot help myself. I have a spotty record when it comes to resisting a straight line.
Andre Bohren, one of the sketchier dirty notes, thanked me on Facebook for putting this song on the list. He expressed a desire that it rocket to number one. Sorry, man. Number 38 ain’t half bad for a song about a town in Da Parish. Try writing one about disgraced former St. Bernard politician Joey DiFatta and you might hit the top of the pops.
Written By: Marc Paradis/Darcy Malone.
37.My Darlin’ New Orleans– Little Queenie and the Percolators. Back in the days before the brass band boom, there was a lively rock scene in New Orleans. Leigh Harris aka Little Queenie was at the crest of that wave. Thanks to Chef Chris DeBarr for the suggestion. I’m trying to hustle some free food at Revel by name dropping.
Written By: Ron Cuccia /Ramsey McLean/Charles Neville.
36.New Orleans (After The City)Hot 8 Brass Band. Speaking of the brass band boom, the Hot 8 are one of the leading bands in post-Katrina/Federal Flood New Orleans. They even played at Ashley Morris‘ funeral at which I was one of the pallbearers. RIP. FYYFF.
Written By: Terrell Batiste /Chadrick Honore/Alvarez “Big Al” Huntley.
35.Conja (New Orleans 1786)– Beausoleil. I’m a sucker for historical songs and Cajun fiddles. That makes this lovely tune a two-time winner.
Written By: Michael Doucet.
34. Louisiana Man– Dave Edmunds. I’m sure some folks will be unhappy that I didn’t use Doug Kershaw’s original version but this 1982 cover rocks like crazy. The piano intro by Geraint Watkins is to die for.
Written By: Doug Kershaw.
33. Drop Me Off In New Orleans– Kermit Ruffins. When I worked in the French Quarter, I used to run into Kermit all the time. He never remembered my name, so he always called me Chief. I reckoned that I should drop his name given the song title. As you may have noticed, I’m big on name dropping.
Written By: Kermit Ruffins.
32. Way Down Yonder In New Orleans– Connie Boswell. Connie was one of the Boswell Sisters from Uptown New Orleans. They were the Crescent City’s answer to the Andrews Sisters.
Written By: John Turner Layton Jr/ Henry Creamer.
31. Thibodaux, Louisiana– Marcia Ball. Singer/pianist Marcia Ball’s home base is Austin, Texas but she was raised in Vinton, Louisiana. More importantly, she’s a longtime honorary New Orleanian. In 1998, she served as a Grand Duchess in the court of that year’s Krewe du Vieux Queen, Irma Thomas. We take our fake royalty seriously in New Orleans.
This song takes her on a trip to Terrebonne Parish. Geaux, Marcia, geaux.
Written By: Robin Syler.
30. Summertime In New Orleans– Anders Osborne. When Anders Osborne first came to New Orleans, we got our hair cut at the same short-lived Magazine Street salon, Whodunit. It was a combination hair salon and mystery bookstore. It was truly one for the books as is this song.
Written By: Anders Osborne
29. Congo Square– Sonny Landreth. Sonny Landreth is perhaps the greatest rock guitarist to have ever come out of the Gret Stet of Louisiana. He’s also a helluva songwriter.
Written By: Sonny Landreth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njQA4m04v1c
28. Louisiana Rain– Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I still miss Tom Petty. He personified everything that was good about rock music. This song reminds me of the last time he played Jazz Fest, a day so rainy that the Fairgrounds opened late, but the storm was gone by the time the Heartbreakers hit the stage.
Written By: Tom Petty.
27. Born In Louisiana– Clarence Gatemouth Brown. Multi-instrumentalist Gatemouth Brown played a multitude of styles: from blues to rock to swing to country to zydeco. Gate could do it all. The song title is accurate: he was born in Vincent, Louisiana and lived in Slidell for many years.
Written By: Clarence Gatemouth Brown.
26. Louisiana Blues– Muddy Waters. One of my musical heroes, Muddy Waters, was the king of the electric Chicago blues. He was born McKinley Morganfield in the Mississippi Delta and never forgot where he came from. Every time I hear Muddy, I think to myself: Hey neighbor.
Written By: McKinley Morganfield.
25. Goin’ Back To New Orleans– Dr. John. Mac Rebenack has recorded many Louisiana Tunes. In fact, he has recorded two albums of classic New Orleans music: Gumbo and Goin’ Back To New Orleans. I picked the title track of the latter album because it includes turns by various Nevilles, Danny Barker, Pete Fountain, as well as the great trad jazz trumpeter, Al Hirt who put a “Hoit on it” according to Dr. John. Fee nah nay.
Written By: Joe Liggins.
24. Mardi Gras In New Orleans– Professor Longhair. This was a coin toss. I nearly picked Fess’ ode to the Mardi Gras Indians, Big Chief, but went with the song with New Orleans in the title. Call me literal but call me anyway.
Written By: Roy Byrd aka Fess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrU5-I-eGA0
23. Treme Song– John Boutté. This marvelous Louisiana Tune was used as the theme song for HBO’s Treme. The show was a mixed bag, but the opening credits were special thanks to this Boutté shaking tune.
FYI: John is related to the late, great Krazy Kat cartoonist George Herriman, a black Creole who passed as white in the bad old days of Jim Crow.
Written By: John Boutté.
22. The Avenue– Cowboy Mouth. This song was written after Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood. The Avenue in question is St. Charles and hearing this moving song invariably chokes me up. I considered using Cowboy Mouth’s Louisiana Lowdown, but it was another victim of the one song rule.
Written By: John Thomas Griffith/Fred LeBlanc/Paul Sanchez/Sonia Tetlow.
21. King Creole– Elvis Presley. The theme song of the movie that was number 16 on my Top 40 list of movies set in Louisiana: “He goes by the name of King Creole.”
Written By: Jerry Lieber/Mike Stoller.
20. Basin Street Blues– Louis Prima. This song was written in 1928 and has been recorded by many artists over the years. The original version was by Louis Armstrong but he’s another victim of the one song rule, so I went with the Wildest.
Written By: Spencer Williams.
19. Crescent City– Lucinda Williams. Lucinda was born in Lake Charles about which she wrote a song that just missed the cut. The one song rule is a cruel taskmaster except when I choose to bend it. Besides, the fiddle on this record is perfection
Written By: Lucinda Williams.
18. Angola Bound– Aaron Neville. As a solo artist, Aaron is best known for lush ballads. That’s why this gritty nod to his unfortunate incarceration is so cool. Like many people in Uptown New Orleans, I was acquainted with his brother Charles who co-wrote Angola Bound. He was a lovely man who passed away last year. RIP.
Written By: Aaron Neville/Charles Neville.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klxDxqhBctI
17.Mojo Hannah– The Neville Brothers. The Nevilles were the kings of New Orleans music when I moved here in 1987. They were the ones who really put Jazz Fest on the map as they rarely missed a chance to plug it when they were touring.
I selected Mojo Hannah because it contains a shout-out to the 13th Ward, which is my neighborhood. One of my cross streets, Valence Street, used to be the home to many Neville family members. Art (Papa Funk) Neville lived a few blocks away and I remember watching the Thoth parade with Art and one of his nephews before the Storm. A good man: New Orleans nice.
Written By: Marshall Paul/ Mentor Williams.
16. Long Hard Journey Home– The Radiators. The veteran NOLA roots rockers recorded this tribute to Professor Longhair and Jazz Fest in 1995. It begins with the voice of God: Fess himself.
Written By: Ed Volker.
15.House Of The Rising Sun– The Animals. This venerable folk song about a French Quarter bordello has been recorded by many artists down the years. This version by British Invaders, the Animals was by far and away the biggest hit.
Written By: Traditional.
14.Lady Marmalade– LaBelle. This innuendo laced song was a big hit on both the R&B and pop charts in 1974. It was produced by Allen Toussaint and includes these lyrics:
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah”
Written By: Bob Crewe/Kenny Nolan.
13. Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight– Emmylou Harris. Neither Emmylou nor songwriter Rodney Crowell is from the Gret Stet of Louisiana, but they nailed it in this song. Recently, the pair have recorded two albums together and toured extensively. Hence the live version of this country rock classic featuring Emmylou and Rodney.
Written By: Rodney Crowell/Donivan Cowart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hWpXUSLbHM
12. Pearl Of The Quarter– Steely Dan. Steely Dan are the ultimate L.A. not LA band. But Donald Fagen has kin in New Orleans and was a frequent visitor as a young man. The Pearl in question was a prostitute named Louise.
Written By: Walter Becker/Donald Fagen.
11. Saturday Night Fish Fry– Louis Jordan. Jordan is one of the contenders for the title of founder of rock and roll. This song is better characterized as jump blues, but it definitely rocks and says so in the lyrics.
Written By: Louis Jordan/ Ellis Lawrence Walsh.
10.Lover Of The Bayou– The Byrds. Roger McGuinn hooked up with theatre director Jacques Levy to make a rock musical version of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. It was to be called Gene Tryp (an anagram of Ibsen’s title) but the production never materialized. Lover Of The Bayou was one of the songs the two men wrote together. It’s more fun than a “catfish pie in a gris gris bag.”
Written By: Roger McGuinn/Jacques Levy.
9. Walking To New Orleans– Fats Domino. Antoine Domino was a legend who as an older man was loathe to leave his house in the lower 9th Ward until the levees broke in 2005. He stopped touring and rarely played live; even cancelling a Jazz Fest set at the last minute. It didn’t matter: he was a legend, a true star so we forgave him.
Written By: Bobby Charles.
8. Rad Gumbo– Little Feat. I’ve long considered the L.A. based Little Feat to be an honorary Louisiana band. Percussionist Sam Clayton and bassist Kenny Gradney were born in New Orleans and co-lead guitarist and vocalist, Paul Barrère, has Gret Stet roots. It’s fitting since Little Feat is one of the original roots rock bands.
Rad Gumbo is perhaps my favorite food song. I wonder if it was served at Louis Jordan’s Saturday Night Fish Fry. It wouldn’t surprise me none.
Written By: Paul Barrère/Sam Clayton/ Kenny Gradney/ Martin Kibbee /Bill Payne.
7. Born On The Bayou– Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogerty was obsessed with Louisiana music when he was growing up in El Cerrito, California. It’s why he sings with a New Orleans accent even though he was born in Berkeley, not on the bayou. The accent certainly works in this classic rock song, which is how he often opens his live shows. Hence the live version below.
Written By: John Fogerty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZGEYfUden0
6. Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans– Louis Armstrong. This song was written for the 1947 movie New Orleans, which did not make my movie list. Louis Armstrong sang it in the movie and took ownership of it for the rest of his life. Louis’ version was also used as the theme song for the much loved but short-lived teevee show, Frank’s Place.
Written By: Eddie DeLange/Louis Alter.
5. Up On Cripple Creek– The Band. I’m obsessed with The Band and this is one of their most memorable songs. It all begins in Lake Charles Looziana with a girl named Bessie.
Written By: Robbie Robertson.
4. Feels Like Rain– John Hiatt. This is perhaps the most beautiful and evocative Louisiana Tune of all. Hiatt evokes Lake Pontchartrain on a summer evening. It was originally recorded with Sonny Landreth and the Goners who know from Louisiana Tunes.
Feels Like Rain has been covered many times; most notably by Aaron Neville and Buddy Guy.Buddy was born and raised in Lettesworth, Louisiana before finding fame and fortune in Chicago.
Written By: John Hiatt.
Here’s where the Top 50 list gets tricky. As I said at the beginning, three artists have written and recorded so many great Louisiana Tunes that I could not choose between them. It’s time to throw out the one song rule, which is okay since it’s my rule and I rule the roost as it were. I’ve used an outline format: 3a, 3b, and 3c to mask my indecision and highlight the brilliance of The Meters, Zachary Richard, and Randy Newman. I’m still listing them in reverse order.
3.The Meters almost single-handedly put New Orleans funk on the map. They spread the funky gospel far and wide when they opened for the Rolling Stones on their 1975 tour.
3c) Hey Pocky-A-Way. This is my favorite Carnival song. Just hearing it evokes grubbing for throws and dodging band chaperones on the parade route. When it was re-recorded by the Neville Brothers, they dropped the A in the title. I say re-recorded not covered because the bands had two members in common: Art and Cyril Neville. The Nevilles are everywhere.
3b)Fiyo On The Bayou. What’s a Louisiana Tune without a bayou in the title? This is the funkiest of the three Meters songs on the list and was also re-recorded by the Neville Brothers as the title track of a 1981 album.
3a) They All Ask’d For You. It’s not just a song title, it’s a catch phrase. Eh, la bas.
All Three Songs Written By: The Meters.
2. Zachary Richard’s ancestors came to Louisiana when the Acadians were driven out of Canada by the British. He grew up speaking French and has attained the stardom that escaped him in America with his French language recordings in Quebec and the mother country.
Zach has always been fascinated with Cajun history and has written and recorded three songs that are worthy of the Top 50 list. Thanks for making my life harder, Monsieur Richard.
2c) No French No More recounts how a misguided government tried to eradicate the French language in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. They came perilously close to succeeding.
2b) Sunset On Louisianne is about the oil industry’s role in despoiling Richard’s part of Louisiana. The locals have been, alas, willing participants. That’s why Morgan City has the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.
2a) Cote Blanche Bay. Jean Lafitte was a real person but also a mythic figure in South Louisiana. He vanished from the pages of history after the Battle of New Orleans, but his presence can still be felt. Cote Blanche Bay was the harbor from which he plied his piratical trade.
All Three Songs Written By: Zachary Richard.
1. Randy Newman’s mother was from the Gret Stet of Louisiana. When her husband went off to World War II, she came home to be with her family. As he says in Dixie Flyer, Randy “was born right here.”
1c)Kingfish. On his classic Good Old Boys album, Newman wrote songs that satirized the South. I think you know who this song is about: Huey P. Long.
1b) Dixie Flyer: Gorgeous and moving are not words ordinarily associated with Randy Newman’s songs, but they fit Dixie Flyer. It comes from Newman’s Land of Dreams album; the dream land in question is Louisiana. A musical highlight is some stellar guitar playing by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.
1a) Louisiana 1927. As I mentioned earlier, this was the most frequently mentioned song when I crowd sourced Louisiana Tunes on Facebook. I get it. It was written in 1974 but became even more meaningful after Katrina, Rita, and the Baton Rouge flood of 2016.
True story: my wife Grace and I were watching Randy Newman perform at Jazz Fest in 1994. When he launched into Louisiana 1927, a torrential downpour ensued that had everyone running for shelter. I am not making this up. Life often imitates art.
In addition to Randy Newman’s original, there are two other noteworthy versions of this great song: Aaron Neville and Marcia Ball both of whom have already made the list but I’ve snuck their covers in with the links attached to their names. Click away y’all.
Here’s our number one Louisiana Tune:
All Three SongsWritten By: Randy Newman.
That concludes this Top 50 list of Louisiana Tunes. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did compiling and writing it. It was a labor of love. Thanks again to everyone who suggested their own favorite Louisiana Tunes.
According to analysis published yesterday by FiveThirtyEight, three of the nation’s five most politically-polarized cities are in Louisiana (New Orleans #2, Baton Rouge #3, and Shreveport #5), a reflection of the state’s growing partisan divide and also a testament to the multi-generational government subsidization of “white flight” infrastructure and the continued development of the kind of densely-packed and predominately African American public housing projects that have come to characterize inner-cities across the country.
Political polarization in the Greater New Orleans area. Source: FiveThirtyEight.
Lafayette narrowly avoided the top ten, placing 11th on the list, directly behind the Greater New York City area (the only non-Southern city in the top ten).
Jackson, Mississippi ranked first, and Birmingham, Alabama placed in fourth.
All of the cities in the top five are in the Deep South, led by African American mayors, and surrounded by rings of low-density and overwhelmingly white suburbs. (In defining cities, the analysis relies on the same framework used by the U.S. Census Bureau).
At first glance, it may be easy to attribute partisan polarization to racial divisions (after all, more than 80% of African American registered voters are Democrats, and during the 2016 presidential election, 89% of African American voters supported Hillary Clinton, while 70% of white voters supported Donald Trump), but the truth is slightly more nuanced.
“An obvious trend jumps out when you look at the most politically segregated cities: They’re also the cities with some of the highest proportions of black residents,” FiveThirtyEight’s Rachel Dottie explains. “The persistence of racial segregation in American cities continues to define those cities’ politics.”
To understand how these cities became both politically and racially segregated, you must also understand how they were (and are still being) developed.
Political polarization in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Source: FiveThirtyEight.
Recasting St. George:
This fall, as a result of an expensive and protracted petition initiative, voters in a majority white, 60-square-mile area of East Baton Rouge Parish will decide whether to incorporate the proposed city of St. George, Louisiana. In 2015, a similar initiative fell 71 names short of the number necessary to send the proposal to voters, and despite organizers’ insistence to the contrary, the campaign was widely perceived as racist.
East Baton Rouge Parish, like Lafayette Parish, is governed by a convoluted “consolidated” body of both city and parish elected officials and led by an awkwardly-titled “Mayor-President.” While intended to maximize a region’s access to federal and state funding and streamline services, the consolidated governments in both Baton Rouge and Lafayette have sometimes exacerbated political, socioeconomic, and racial tensions.
The proposal to incorporate St. George, for example, was initially conceived as a way to create a new school district, effectively steering tens of millions of dollars away from the existing majority African American, financially-scrapped public school system in order to create a majority white and significantly wealthier system.
Although this year’s proposal is 15 square miles and 20,000 people smaller than the effort that failed four years ago, the new city would immediately become the fifth-largest in Louisiana, dethroning Lake Charles. And while the redrawn borders may have improved its chances at the ballot box, it is difficult to ignore the decision to exclude majority African American neighborhoods that had once been included.
“They don’t want African Americans in this city,” attorney Mary Olive Pierson told The Advocate last year. “That’s what it looks like to me.” Pierson had previously represented the city of Baton Rouge when it opposed the 2015 proposal.
Notably, the real St. George was an immigrant who, as legend has it, killed a dragon in order to save a city. He is now considered a symbol of multiculturalism, revered by both Muslims and Christians alike, the patron saint of both England and Ethiopia.
Political polarization in Shreveport, Louisiana. Source: FiveThirtyEight.
Political polarization in Lafayette, Louisiana. Source: FiveThirtyEight.
Sprawling Into Silos:
The footprints of Louisiana’s major urban areas began a dramatic retransformation in the late 1960s, which, not coincidentally, was also when the state’s public schools were finally being forced to comply with court-ordered integration (and when a substantial number of Louisiana’s private schools were founded).
It was also the same time during which the country was being reshaped by the most significant and ambitious infrastructure project in its history: The construction of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, a $521 billion, 48,191 mile-long network of concrete that would fundamentally change the way Americans understood their country and their own hometowns.
In 1950, the population of Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans was slightly more than 100,000; by 1980, it had more than quadrupled. During those intervening decades, specifically between August of 1957 and May of 1975, all 274 miles of Louisiana’s stretch of Interstate 10 had been constructed, with most of it completed in the late 1960s. It is impossible to imagine Jefferson Parish or, for that matter, the majority of today’s Baton Rouge without I-10.
All of that concrete paved the way for vast new neighborhoods designed and marketed to entice white middle-class families out of cities and into the suburbs.
Even cities and towns where the interstate would not arrive for decades found themselves swept into the trend of sprawl-development.
In 1960, Alexandria, Louisiana, for example, was approximately nine square miles with a population of around 45,000 people. By 1980, the city had tripled in geographic size, up to 27 square miles, while its population remained stagnant. Interstate 49 would not open until 1996, cutting through the center of the city’s downtown and, in the process, requiring the demolition of nearly 90% of its inventory of historic properties. Yet Alexandria did not sprawl because of the interstate but because of larger political, cultural, and behavioral forces that the interstate engendered.
I’m familiar with Alexandria not only because I was born there, but also because my paternal grandfather along with his uncle and, to a certain extent, my late father were partly responsible for developing the bulk of the city’s residential sprawl. A decade ago, when I worked as an assistant to the mayor, I found myself frequently researching, writing about, and discussing the ways in which the emphasis on sprawl resulted in a concomitant public disinvestment from the most marginalized and vulnerable neighborhoods.
Alexandria is not large enough to earn a ranking on FiveThirtyEight’s list, but I suspect that if it were, it’d place alongside New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Lafayette. Its story is not unusual at all. To be sure, all of these cities had always been racially divided. Before there was the interstate, there was the railroad, which in countless cities across the country and especially in the Deep South became synonymous with the line of demarcation between white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods. In many cases, the interstate traces alongside the same line, as it does in Alexandria and in much of Lafayette.
In other words, the interstate didn’t create the kind of racial segregation that characterize Louisiana’s larger cities, but it most certainly exacerbated it. There is already ample scholarship on how sprawl was typically a publicly-subsidized scheme designed to facilitate the mass out-migration of white, middle-class families from increasingly diverse, urban inner-cities, but the fact deserves emphasis in Louisiana, where the urban/rural divide is so profound and where white conservatives, in particular, are often led to believe a fantasy in which their suburban paradises were purely driven by the free market and the inner-cities were built by Uncle Sam.
Taxpayers financed nearly the entire operation, and to a large extent, they still do. This isn’t a radical opinion, nor is it a rejection of free market principles. It is merely a basic statement of fact. In rural communities, the USDA is often the only reason families can purchase a home, and in big cities, public housing projects are a way for wealthy private developers to become even wealthier.
“There is still the question of why these things persist now, 51 years after the Fair Housing Act,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, told FiveThirtyEight. “Part of the reason is the federal government continues to connect its housing policies to private-sector housing producers. The programs, to the extent that they do exist, are yoked to the private sector, which not only has a history steeped in racial discrimination but has made contemporary practices that are connected to that. This is not ancient history.”
She is right.
In Louisiana, the government throws billions of dollars away every year in order to subsidize some of the world’s most profitable corporations, and conservative lawmakers, who usually style themselves as champions of local control, typically oppose measures that could challenge those subsidies, whether it’s related to approval of tax exemptions or the establishment of a for-profit charter school. In recent years, lawmakers have found ways to use a taxing mechanism designed to combat blight into a scheme to underwrite expensive hotel developments and massive retail centers in the middle of nowhere but still directly off of the interstate.
While Louisiana should rightfully celebrate its diversity, there is a real danger when our communities become so dramatically and fiercely polarized. Local governments become dysfunctional, and public service becomes a career only attainable by those who traffic in division. People lose perspective; they lose a collective sense of pride and decency; they manage to never learn the definition of the word “neighbor.” They forget that schools teach real children and hospitals treat real patients.
We should be legitimately concerned about Louisiana’s strikingly polarized cities, because instead of signifying something positive about our future, it only serves as a reminder of a past that remains very much present.
Today, as the suburbs contract and as cities continue to be rediscovered and reimagined, we must also guard ourselves against a second wave of displacement. There is both a tension and a balance between affordability and livability, but there is no public good, for example, in allowing a small handful of wealthy investors the opportunity to threaten entire communities by transforming affordable housing into expensive short-term rentals or in tearing down a vast swath of an inner-city to make room for an interstate overpass.
That’s Right, You’re Not From Texas. But Texas Wants You Anyway.
There is one other thing Louisianians should especially consider, because for the past two or three decades, it has been a favorite go-to talking point used by the state’s wealthiest corporations and industries.
Contrary to what many of us have been told, no, young people are not abandoning Louisiana for Texas because the Lone Star State doesn’t have a state income tax. (That may be why Californians are moving in droves to Austin and Dallas before realizing the state’s exorbitant property taxes).
I have spent roughly half of the past twenty years living in Texas and the other half living in Louisiana, so I speak from experience: We’re not losing young professionals to Texas because of taxes or because anyone is spooked by lawsuits against oil and gas companies or because their state government runs a smoother operation. That’s all ludicrous (and Texas’ state government is measurably more dysfunctional than Louisiana’s).
We’re losing people to Texas because Houston is the most diverse city in the entire country, because Austin is weird and vibrant, and because Dallas is bold and vastly more cosmopolitan than it likes to let on. During the past nine years, Dallas’ population has grown by more than a million; currently, on average, every single day, 246 people move to Dallas, more than any other city in the nation. Five years ago, that distinction belonged to Houston, when 269 new residents showed up every day. Austin may be a smaller city, but throughout the past decade, it has routinely attracted a daily supply of more than 100 new weirdos.
There is really no grand mystery: Innovative, ambitious, and culturally diverse cities are the engine fueling Texas; the state already figured out the idiocy of tying its economy to the whims of the global price of a barrel of oil. And while, yes, the state government is still largely controlled by cartoon cowboy conservatives, cities shape public policy much more frequently and usually more profoundly than the legislature, which meets only once every two years.
If you traffic in bigotry- if your politics is largely a mixture of anti-immigrant bluster and rants about why the Black Lives Matter movement is unfair to white people- I have some bad news: You don’t have any shot at governing a booming, entrepreneurial, diverse, and modern American city like Houston or Austin. Try the suburbs instead. Heck, even George W. Bush is represented in Congress by an African American Democrat.
So, yes, there are several lessons Texas can teach Louisiana about how to future-proof its workforce and celebrate inclusion over polarization. Successful cities don’t have the time or the inclination to allow a group of homophobes to turn a reading event at a local library into a moral crusade. When Dallas decided to remove their lawn ornament to Robert E. Lee (much to the credit, it should be said, to the example set by former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu), they didn’t feel compelled to coddle the delicate feelings of the city’s white supremacists. The city council passed an emergency ordinance, and crews began prepping its removal almost immediately. When an opponent filed a temporary restraining order, they were able to get the complaint dismissed within a day. Then, they showed up with a flatbed and a crane and hauled the stupid thing away, permanently.
Sure, ugliness sometimes rears its head. Voters in Houston, for example, rejected an anti-discrimination ordinance a few years ago, the consequence of a brazenly false and hateful campaign that suggested the law would result in an increase in child abuse and sexual assault. But it should be noted that, at the time, Houston’s mayor was Annise Parker, an openly gay woman who had been elected to three consecutive terms in office before term limits made her ineligible for a fourth term.
The state isn’t immune to political corruption either. A couple of years ago, members of the Dallas Independent School District were ensnared in one of the largest public bribery scandals in the nation’s history. But in fairness, the whole thing was orchestrated by a Louisiana businessman. Last week, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, and no one in Louisiana bothered to notice or to care.
Texas is not perfect, far from it, in fact, but there is one, simple thing Louisiana can learn from its neighbor, best articulated by Lyle Lovett. Quoting:
See I was born and raised in Texas And it means so much to me Though my girl comes from down in Georgia (clearly, Julia Roberts) We were up in Tennessee
And as we were driving down the highway She asked me baby what’s so great How come you’re always going on About your lone star state
I said that’s right you’re not from Texas That’s right you’re not from Texas That’s right you’re not from texas But Texas wants you anyway
Two of Louisiana’s largest auto insurers – Progressive and GEICO – charge blue collar and unemployed drivers and those without a college degree significantly more for coverage than these insurance giants charge customers with higher salary and education levels. The two companies account for about a quarter of the $4.8 billion that Louisiana drivers spend on auto insurance every year.
According to new research, the companies typically charge between 7% and 15% more to good drivers who didn’t go to college and don’t have high paying jobs. The harshest penalties cost good drivers hundreds of dollars a year: Progressive raised its premium quote to a Baton Rouge resident by 18% – $244 per year – because he was out of work, and GEICO raised the rates on a safe driver who didn’t finish high school by $726 a year, or 60%, compared with a driver with a Master’s degree.
“You see a real bias against drivers in Louisiana just because they don’t have the right pedigree for some of these insurance companies, even if they have a perfect driving record,” said Douglas Heller, a nationally recognized insurance expert, who conducted the research for the Bayou Brief. “It is really outrageous that the state’s Insurance Commissioner allows these big insurers to punish Louisianians because of their job title and level of education. Why should lawyers and bankers get better prices than auto mechanics and store clerks?”
* For basic auto liability coverage for a 30-year-old male driver with a perfect driving record, living in Baton Rouge. All other factors are held constant in each test.
The research highlights a problem that impacts a significant proportion of Louisiana drivers, yet one that was apparently unknown to Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon. In testimony before the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee last month (and shown in the video below), Commissioner Donelon claimed that insurance companies in Louisiana are not allowed to use a driver’s occupation when setting rates, but he was corrected by his own chief actuary during the testimony. He then proceeded to assert that insurers could not use a driver’s education level for pricing, only to be corrected by his Department’s actuary again.
Rather than advocating to make illegal these unfair pricing practices that he thought were already prohibited, Commissioner Donelon stood with insurance companies and the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) to lobby for the so-called Omnibus Premium Reduction Act, which focused almost exclusively on limiting the ability of people injured in accidents to get their claims paid and which failed in the state Senate last week.
Thus far, his department has not offered any reform that would make insurance prices fairer for average Louisianians.
“Getting rid of the insurance penalty for having the wrong job title or not going to college won’t alone solve high insurance rates in Louisiana, but it would be a start. Pair it with getting rid of the credit score penalty and we’d be making some real headway. Unfortunately, the powers in Baton Rouge want us to believe that you can fix auto insurance rates without changing insurance company behavior, but that’s just not true,” said Heller. “It’s ironic that these insurance companies have been claiming to fight for working folks by bashing lawyers in the state Capitol, but then giving a special premium discount to lawyers all while pummeling financially-strapped Louisianians with higher rates.”
