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17.) The New Orleans Jazz Club:
In 1958 the New Orleans Jazz Club held its tenth anniversary
celebration aboard the S. S. President. The event was telecast
on Dave Garroway's "Wide, Wide World" on NBC. During the celebration
jazz clarinetist Raymond Burke and his wife Katherine joined William
Russell, the newly-appointed Curator of the Archive of New Orleans
Jazz at Tulane University, to inspect the calliope on the
President's upper deck. Calliopes have been an important part of
riverboat music since the earliest days, frequently used to signal
the arrival or departure of the boats. Fate Marable used to play the
calliope on several Streckfus steamers and wore special gloves to
prevent burning his fingers on the keys, which sometimes got
overheated. Today, Captain Clark "Doc" Hawley of the Natchez
continues the tradition of the calliope and can be heard periodically
throughout the French Quarter, earning him the nickname "pied piper
of the French Quarter."
Photograph from the Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.
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