Barbarin History
In late spring 2002, the New Orleans Magazine printed a glowing tribute to the
Barbarins and their contribution to New Orleans music.
The Barbarin Family History - A Musical Dynasty
from New Orleans Magazine, May 2002
The Barbarins are a dynasty of New Orleans jazz. Some five generations
have carried the music from the first flowering of jazz to the present
day. This month the Friends of New Orleans Cemetaries commemorated the
life of the patriarch, Isidore Barbarin with a tribute at St. Augustine
church followed by a brass-band march to St. Louis cemetery No 1 where
a plaque at Barbarin's tomb was unveiled.
Rob Florence, author of New Orleans Cemetaries and president
of FNOC, says this will bae an annual event honoring a departed musician.
Isidore Barbarin was born September 24, 1872 into a French speaking
household of gens de couleur. He played trumpet and mellophone
in the Excelsior Brass Band and later the Onward Brass Band. The earliest
known document written by Louis Armstrong is a letter of Sept 1 1922, written
to Barbarin. Armstrong, who had just arrived in Chicago to join the
band of his mentor Joe Oliver, is responding to a letter from Barbain which,
alas, has not been found. Armstrong calls the older musician "pops"
and says " I was glad to hear from youI heard all about you all having
those funerals-I'm sorry I aint down there to make some of them with you
all."
It is easy to imagine Barbarin, by then 50 years old, writing a paternally
encouraging letter to a 21 year old Armstrong, still a little homesick
from the hometown and friends left behind.
Barbarin was married to Josephine Arthidor (her brother Louis played
clarinet in the Onward). They had nine children, and three of their sons
became musicians: Paul, Louis and Lucien. Paul played drums for the
Creole Jazz Band in Chicago before Armstrong's arrival and helped Oliver
get his position in that band of which he eventually assumed leadership.
Isidore Barbarin earned his reputation on the mellophone, an alto horn,
in the Onward, the most fabled brass band in New Orleans from 1900 until
the end of World War I. The Onward's winter uniforms were blue with
a black side stripe. In summer they wore white pants, blue jackets and
white caps. Joe Oliver and little Louis Armstrong were among the succession
of players who passed through Onward's early ranks, forging an idiom that
bridged streets and sacred spaces. Barbarin stood about 6 feet tall.
In the words of his grandson, Danny Barker, he was "always neat and well-groomed.
He wore dark suits tailored to his exact measurements and soft black shoes.
He had extra-large brown eyes which were very piercing and remindful
of a water spaniel."
Barbarin worked hard to support his large family. He was a driver fo
the horse-drawn buggies that undertakers used as hearses until automobiles
arrived. In 1901, Barbarin was manning the cash register at Francs
Amis ("Free Friends"), a popular benevolent society hall in Treme, where
a dance was underway. A white man at the dance got angry when he learned
that his dance partner was a transvestite. He pulled out a pistol and started
blasting. Three people went down in a blaze of bullets. Barbarin, hit in
the stomach, spent 17 days in the hospital, but doctors never found the
bullet. He went home to his pregnant wife, lived well and continued marching
in parades for eight hours at a stretch.
Playing mellophone in funerals and driving a buggy hearse were compatible
vocations. Most musicians had day jobs. Wearing his dark suit and top hat,
Barbarin sat on his perch as a mortuary coachman, ever the stoic.
"No matter how much a bereaved family of people were carrying on, crying,
screaming, moaning, fainting, in a hysterical pandemonium, he never moved
a muscle:, wrote Barker in A Life In Jazz. "He sat as if his mind and thought
were miles away. Yet some of those funerals were so highly dramatic they
would make strangers looking on cry. He was not a regular church going
man. I guess he was constantly about churches, religious services, preachers,
priests, hospitals, death, cemeteries: everything concerning a mortal's
last hours on earth".
In the early 1900's, the Barbarin family lived in Treme. Paul Barbarin,
the son who became the most influential of the family's second generation
jazzmen, recalled in an oral-history interview: "Back in those days all
the undertakes hired out the carriages for all kinds of affairs. Many's
the night my father sat up on the carriage outside the old Opera House.
All the great music inside. All those people in fine clothes, furs and
jewels, and him a musician sitting outside in the rain with an old blanket
over him waitin' for them to come out. We lived just a couple of
blocks away on Toulouse Street, but after the opera he'd drive the folks
home, then go back to the stables, clean the harness, wipe down the horse
and walk home in the rain."
The elder Barbarin rode the buggy until 1925, when the horses were dropped
and hearse service became motorized. By then he had moved his big family
farther Downtown into the 7th Ward, a hearth of Creole culture.
Barbarin died in 1969 at the age of 88 and had quite a brass-band funeral
himself.
Barker identifies 26 musicians fo the first two jazz generations who
were related to the Barbarin line by blood or marriage
The Barbarin clan is like a tree with many branches. Barkers mother,
Rose, was a daughter of Isidore and Josephine. Rose's music making brothers--Paul,
Louis and Lucien--were Danny's uncles and functioned rather like older
brothers. Lucien J. Barbarin has been listed as a drummer in one family
account. His son, Charles R. Barbarin was a trumpeter.
His grandson, also named Lucien, is a trombonist and now lives in Slidell.
At last report he was performing with Harry Connick Jr.'s Big Band, winning
rave reviews for a concert in Seattle. His ancestor would be proud.
A very nice biography of Lucien's Famous Great Uncle Paul Barbarin (Also known as Adolphe Paul Barbarin )
can be found at: http://www.redhotjazz.com/Barbarin.html
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