Danny Barker & Louise "Blue Lou" Barker

Danny Barker and Louise "Blue Lou" Barker. 1909-1994 and 1913-1998. , Panel 1 , Danny Barker and Louise Dupont were married in 1930 and moved to New York. "Blue Lu" Barker spent a decade recording for Decca, Apollo and Capitol, specializing in the blues and saucy songs such as her husband's "Don't You Make Me High" and Here's a Little Girl."

Panel 3 , Daniel Moses Barker grew up in the French Quarter as part of the Barbarin clan one of the most illustrious Creole musical dynasties in New Orleans. His maternal grandfather, Isidore Barbarin, was a member of the Onward Brass Band, and his uncles Paul, Louis, and Lucien were all drummers. While still a teenager he organized a spasm band, the Boozan Kings, dropping clarinet lessons to take up ukulele and banjo. As a banjo player he worked with various New Orleans bands in the 1920s. In 1930 the couple moved to New York, where Danny found work with Dave Nelson and Harry White, then with Sidney Bechet, Fess Williams, Albert Nicholas, Jelly Roll Morton, and Henry "Red" Allen. He picked up guitar to attract more big band work, which led to associations with Lucky Millinder (1938), Benny Carter ( 1938-39 ), and Cab Calloway (1939-46). During the New Orleans revival of the 1940s Danny Barker recorded Creole songs like "Eh, la Bas" on Circle with James P, Johnson, Albert Nicholas, and Pops Foster, and made the first recordings of Mardi Gras Indian tunes such as "Indian Red " on his King Zulu label. He continued to work in New York at nightclubs both as a sideman and a leader throughout the 1950s, but the lure of New Orleans became too much to resist. In 1965 he moved back home and took a job as Assistant Curator at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, a position that he held for ten years. The author of two books on jazz, Danny Barker became a spokesman not just for jazz but for the city of New Orleans itself.

Panel 4 , After their return to New Orleans, Danny also stayed busy as a musician and Grand Marshall of the Onward Brass Band, which had been recently revived by his uncle Paul. Perhaps his most treasured contribution after returning to New Orleans, however, was his work with children in the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band during the 1960s and 1970's. Barker found a way to interest kids in the brass band tradition by combining an emphasis on discipline and self-respect with a sense of fun, and the results are evident in a brass band renaissance that is still going strong. , Photo Caption , Images courtesy Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University. Exhibit design and Production by Dale Anthony Smith