I am a little homesick today; nostalgic for the New Orleans I knew as a girl.

I remember I was a budding boogie woogie hound back in old New Orleans. I tracked music down and sniffed it out like it was some rare coin forgotten in the street by revelers too drunk to understand what they had lost. But, the New Orleans I grew up in was nothing like today; there was music everywhere, on every corner, in every club. All the names that are familiar to you now were local cats pumping their hearts out for that big break back then. You could feel the pulse of it as soon as you walked out the door; like some hidden timbre thumping deep within your heart; something which you didn’t quite understand but needed to remedy immediately.

If you couldn't be there, well….

Aaron Neville was a friend of my grandfather's and I remember one night he came knocking on our door with a new 45, asking Glamp to give it a twirl. My grandfather wasn't much into music, probably because of the way they carried on at the bar just two doors down from our house, but he played it as I sat and became enthralled. I fell in love with every incarnation of the Neville Brothers from that moment on; I was hooked on Soul in the worst way. The song was "Tell It Like It Is".



My next memory of Aaron brings me to a hot night club in New Orleans with plenty of room to dance. The Neville Brothers were playing stuff I’d never heard, and yet couldn't live without, like “Vieux Carre Rouge” and “If It Takes All Night.” Everybody was grabbing somebody to dance, and it kept happening night after night after night….

The mixture of the rhythm, the smell of beer and cigarettes, the sweat pouring off Aaron in his signature muscle-adoring tank top, made me a believer. I bought a purple Neville Brother's T shirt off a guy's back that very night ‘cause there were no more and I had to have it to that day. It has a yellow crown atop the Neville name with " Mardi Gras to the World " on the back, and I still have it.

It was a different world back then, my old NOLA; the clubs were small and the Nevilles were very approachable. They would talk to you before returning to the stage to begin another set; stirring that brown rue into their gumbo of seduction for us young lasses.

Do you remember these NOLA nights like I do?

I can tell you this, from that time on, Glamp and " Ma" had a hard time keeping this little puppy on the porch.