Not much has changed throughout the years except for the people. It is a neighborhood dive bar that has been around for over 60 years. Vaughan’s Lounge is something to experience at least once or twice. If it’s crass it’s also egalitarian: Bourbon Street today is among the more integrated spaces in town.Go for: Low key vibe, live music and the spirit of the neighborhood Its economic impact on the city is in the billions. In any case millions of visitors to the strip each year find the spectacle they’re looking for, exotic but approachable, with a more permissive atmosphere than they feel at home.

In the 2000s, the To Be Continued Brass Band took matters into their own hands, breaking into the scene by playing on the corner of Bourbon and Canal Street every night. Still, some venues persisted in hiring reputable artists. Hand-wringing about the quality and nature of live music on the strip has been more or less constant since the 1950s, and not without reason. Several clubs sticking with live music offered low wages for bands to play songs familiar to visitors. The street became a pedestrian mall, filled with go-cups and Mardi Gras beads year-round. In recent decades, as the city relied increasingly on tourism to prop up its economy, the market dictated more changes: Modern stripping supplanted burlesque and DJ booths replaced bandstands. Even after the passage of civil rights legislation some clubs resisted integration, and audiences on Bourbon Street remained largely white for years afterward. The only black people on Bourbon Street at the time were there to work (musicians were generally considered hired help some had to wait in storerooms between sets). The resulting loss of revenue at the clubs, meanwhile, scaled back entertainment budgets.

Crime - organized and not - was pervasive on Bourbon Street, and Garrison’s crusade scored some political points. This freewheeling era came to a close, in the eyes of many patrons, with District Attorney Jim Garrison’s vice raids in the early 1960s. Bands often performed in floor shows featuring burlesque dancers (who stripped to varying degrees), comedians, and other entertainers. It took off as an entertainment district in the 1940s, when wartime activity brought waves of visitors to New Orleans. Fasnacht attributed this to her insistence on maintaining an atmosphere suitable for the “cufflink set.” Her political savvy and her family’s longstanding relationships in the city’s bar business probably didn’t hurt.Īfter closing Dixie’s in 1964, the Fasnacht sisters moved a few blocks down Bourbon Street, where they continued the lavish Mardi Gras celebrations that they’d become known for at the bar.īourbon Street, one of the most famous streets in the country, is only 14 blocks long, running through the middle of the French Quarter. The police raids that dogged establishments frequented by gay customers were less disruptive at Dixie’s than elsewhere. Local bigwigs including businessman Clay Shaw were patrons, as were Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal. In the heart of the French Quarter, the clientele included assorted bohemians and artists like the photographer Jack Robinson, who documented the community that formed around the club. In 1949, Dixie’s moved here, to what was at the time a quiet block of Bourbon Street, and the Fasnacht sisters took up residence above the bar. It is now on display on the second floor of the New Orleans Jazz Museum at the Old U.S. Visiting celebrities added their signatures to it over the years. It depicted dozens of musicians and artists, from Louis Prima to Lena Horne to Salvador Dali. The author Lyle Saxon, a regular at Dixie’s Bar of Music, introduced the Fasnachts to the painter Xavier Gonzalez, who produced a 29-foot long painting for the barroom in the 1940s. Before opening her club, she toured the country with her all-female jazz band called the Southland Rhythm Girls. Nicholls School in New Orleans alongside the Boswell Sisters, who went on to national fame as a vocal group. Her house band included a pianist named Dorothy Sloop, whom Fasnacht called Sloopy-the nickname reportedly went on to inspire the number one hit song “Hang On Sloopy.”Īs a child in the 1920s, Fasnacht studied music and the arts at Francis T. A clarinetist and bandleader, Miss Dixie regularly provided the entertainment herself. Miss Dixie opened the club with her sister, Miss Irma, in 1939 (its original location was on St. A generation before the Stonewall Riots, it served as a safe space for the gay community in New Orleans and attracted visitors from around the country. By design or not, today it is considered among the most important gay bars in American history. Yvonne Fasnacht, known as Miss Dixie, said she didn’t conceive of Dixie’s Bar of Music as a gay bar.

Music bar new orleans