Pinky’s Alley

In typically-turbulent-adolescent years, my go-to-music experience was radio. On Monday nights my family gathered around the radio and listened to “Cities Service Band of America; it was entirely brass band music (my dad was a trumpet player). We also had a radio in our kitchen; one day my dad’s foot caught the extension cord, snatching the radio to the floor.  The bakelite casing shattered, leaving only a bare radio chassis; it was unsightly. The station selector and radio still worked, so I was happy to receive the remains of that radio.

That skeleton-of-a-radio was my conduit to a love of Dixieland Jazz; on Saturday nights, after “bedtime” I tuned to Radio station, WWL New Orleans. There, Pinky’s Alley played Dixieland Jazz in “The Blue Room” of the Rosevelt Hotel; WWL, a “Clear Channel” station broadcasted throughout the nation, without interference from other radio stations; that is why I could receive WWL in Deepstep, GA!

“On December 31, 1935, the Blue Room opened and was, for decades, the premiere music venue in the city. The performers in the earlier years of the Blue Room included Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Sammy Kaye, and Guy Lombardo.” (Thanks to my little NOLA Crazy Cajun buddy’s father—she said I could call her that—, Carlos Mladenoff, for this information!)

 What a musical windfall! There I first heard what became my favorite Dixieland Jazz number, “Basin Street Blues;” ”Muskrat Ramble”also joined my choices, then many others; Pinky’s Alley became my own private “Play List,” on Saturday nights. I did not know until years later thatI was”audience” among the underworld underbelly in the Rosevelt Hotel, and the infamous, late governor Huey Long’s illicit machinations.

Those were my adolescent years; while I was not as troubled, as King Saul, music soothed my soul also; it was Dixieland music from Pinky’s Alley . Music plays an important role in human life; It not only has healing qualities, but also  heraldic bearings, When the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem, King David called forth a virtual orchestra in musical celebration! A plethora of different kinds of musical instruments added to that grand celebration.

Neil Diamond puts the spirit of the matter into modern phrasing;

Song sung blue, everybody knows one
Song sung blue, every garden grows one
Me and you are subject to
The blues now and then
But when you take the blues
And make a song
You sing ’em out again

Today, reflecting on my eclectic musical tastes, it seems here I composed an Ode to Pinky’s Alley; now a long lost entity . As Neil Diamond said, “…everybody knows (a song)…“So, today I leave you, with the words of Rogers and Hart;

“… I always knew
I would live life through
With a song in my heart…”