The Mardi Gras Indians are legendary for their lack of predictability. Writing from an anthropological perspective, Kathryn VanSpanckeren has interpreted the processions of the Mardi Gras Indians as an archetypal journey of the hero who prepares to meet, confront, and overcome a challenge and then return to the community stronger, wiser, and with a greater ability to solidify the unity of the group: “The tribe’s wandering journey like the parade is a quest involving going forth to battle and returning victorious. Its route is unpredictable.”26 What’s more, the “call, setting forth, confrontation, combat, and return in triumph—song cycles embody a communal vision in which the hero wins a boon, not for himself, but for the entire community he embodies.”27 Chants proclaiming one’s greatness, dance movements meant to embody prowess, and challenges of daring and insults in the tradition of heroic boasting prior to undertaking epic battles are part of the processional script for many African American street-masking and parading traditions.
Community members over the years established a tradition of forming support groups in which tragedies and triumphs could be shared. They called these small collectives social aid and pleasure clubs. Some of these celebrate their communion through annual second-line parades. Helen Regis has characterized these gatherings as public processions that “transform urban space, creating an alternative social order that private clubs actualize by ‘taking it to the streets’ in those very neighborhoods ordinarily dominated by the quotidian order of inner-city poverty and spatial apartheid.”28 These processions often consist of club members, a brass band, and thousands of supporters expressing the experiences and collective concerns of the group in their sociopolitical and aesthetic reality. They do so following the script that seems common to African American material-culture practices. The ritual play of the second line consists of “fierceness and clowning, respectability and signifying, freedom and the memory of slavery.” All of these “figure into the discussion of parade performance.”29
Mercedes Stevenson, who masked as a Baby Doll with two of her close friends in the early 1970s, and who is the current Big Queen of the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians, provides a window into the world of the impromptu processions that were part of children’s lives in her Twelfth Ward neighborhood.30 The children in the neighborhood would form a line behind a young man some years their senior. He led them downtown, a journey of a good distance from their homes. Most of the time he sang “Tone the Bell”: “We would be dancing and hollering like him. People would be looking at us. We would go all the way down town to St. Bernard Avenue. He would have all of us behind. We would be dancing down. He did that for years.” Toning the bell was part of African American Protestant culture. Church bells had differing tones depending on what message was being sent out. But to tone the bell was to send out a particular communication. The song “Tone the Bell” has the refrain “so glad, done got over, done got over at last.” It speaks on multiple levels of the hardships encountered in this world and how, through baptism, faith, and ultimately death, the singer makes it to heaven to speak with Jesus and God to tell of all the troubles that life on earth imposed.
Stevenson “grew up with the second line.” A neighbor, Arthur “Pawran” Dillon, known for his dapper dress and his philanthropy, would hire two members of the Olympia Brass Band just so the children could dance and parade. Perhaps his devotion to the children was an extension of his community commitment as a member of social and pleasure groups, notably the Young Men Olympians, a benevolent association, and the Prince of Wales, a pleasure club. Stevenson remembered the formal second-line parades of the social and pleasure clubs with affection and a sense of agency:
We would just get together and start parading. We started from the 12th ward and we would march down to where a lot of bars were in the neighborhood. Musicians went around in a truck and they would get out and play and dance. We would follow them on foot. We knew where they were going. At that time the Prince of Wales Club which started about 1923 would follow the parade. Some members would dress like policemen and ride on horses. A man named Samuel would hire a carriage and ride in it and be a captain. It would be all Black people. It was a lot of fun because it was the people who knew people. They did not have much, but what they had they use to share. It was a fun thing for Black people because they always knew music and they always loved music. It was the thing that kept them going during segregation. It was what the Blacks had for themselves and now it has grown bigger and bigger. It is beginning to be recognized.
Stevenson was able to witness the uptown Baby Dolls, who were women of her community and respected ones at that:
When I was coming up I use to watch Geneva Tapps, Martha Tapps, and Mozella [last name unknown]. They would be so much fun.31 They would be in those short dresses. They had bloomers underneath and they would pull their dresses up. We would follow them to the White bar room. The owner would open up the doors to them because it was Carnival. They would be dancing and be all on the counter. They would wear short dresses, baby doll hats, ruffles, stockings to the thigh. They had garters on the stockings pulled to the knee and bloomers. It was satin, pink, blue, and yellow. When we masked in the 1970s, I made our costumes something like that but we wore socks and we had ballerina shoes.
When they weren’t masking on Carnival, I know they did housework. At that time folks did not have too many good jobs just working for White people in their houses, cooking, taking care of their children and doing their laundry.
They were good time women. They liked the good times. They drank. They use to make their own wine—let the grapes age and— when it was bootleg they made their own liquor. They played cards and had fish fries. They charged twenty-five cents for fish, potato salad, bread, and macaroni. Sometime they would make either file gumbo or okra gumbo. They played the gramophone and you would think you were in a joint somewhere. They would cut up. They’d have the house rocking. They knew how to party and how to enjoy themselves. They were popular women. People liked them. Those three were always together. They died around the 1970s.
In the 1970s, Stevenson and her friends Caroline and Eloise decided to mask.
The first year we dressed in pants. We decided we weren’t going to do this next year. We decided to dress as Baby Dolls. Caroline’s color was pink and Eloise’s was green. My color was gold. I did all the sewing. Carol asked, “What are we going to do with our shoes?” We got a clear material like a table cloth and we fixed them up. We made the bonnets from like a long time ago. We got a pinafore and put the bow in the back. The dresses were short. We had socks on like the babies. Everybody would say, “Oh here come the Baby Dolls.” People were taking pictures and Caroline use to pull her dress up. My daughter Mary Kim was eight and her friends thought we were cute. While we were walking around, we danced. We cherished that dancing.
After three years, George Landry (or Chief Jolly), the man who started the Wild Tchoupitoulas and who had been masking alone, asked Mercedes, Caroline, and Eloise to come and mask with him.
He said, “ya’ll mask every year, why don’t ya’ll mask and come with us.” Carol said she always wanted to be an Indian anyway. We got together and got the colors together. Caroline and Eloise masked until 1977. I stayed with them in 1987 with Charles Taylor from the 7th ward. Now most of my family is Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians.
THE GOLDEN SLIPPER BABY DOLLS AND THEIR LEGACY
Walter and Alma Trepagnier Batiste had a large family. As parents they used art, culture, and masking to keep their children—Miriam, Norman, Lionel, Walter, Rodney, Ferdinand, Henry, Arthur, Alma, Elvidge, and Felicia— engaged and under their watchful eye. Alma formed the Golden Slipper Club,32 a group of women and men that masked as Baby Dolls and as the Dirty Dozen. These Baby Dolls followed the ritual pattern of the African American community, parading in their neighborhood, singing Creole and ribald songs, and stopping for refreshments at maskers’ homes to the delight of the children who waited in anticipation for them to arrive. As sh
e aged and became more devoted to her spiritual life, Alma stopped masking. After her parents died, as did those who had masked with them, Miriam felt a void. In the late 1970s, Miriam decided to mask. She gathered together her sister, Felicia, her brothers, nieces, and nephews to bring back their family tradition. The news spread like wildfire, and as many as eighteen women joined her and her family.
Jerry Brock, the co-founder of New Orleans radio station WWOZ, had the opportunity to witness the revival of the Batiste family tradition.
We met at 7 AM at Felicia Shezbie’s house on Orleans Avenue. A huge breakfast with eggs, pork chops, gumbo, biscuits, gravy, greens, rice and desserts was the morning meal.
Following breakfast Precisely Batiste led a prayer for our safety and to have a beautiful day. Then we hit the streets.
We paraded from 8 am Fat Tuesday until 2 am the following morning. There was a loosely organized route with rest periods. We strutted through huge crowds on Claiborne with ease and grace. They played old ribald songs, jazz tunes and Creole songs. Everyone loved the Baby Dolls and thousands of revelers cleared a path for the Baby Dolls and the Dirty Dozen.
In the middle of a gigantic crowd, a space would magically open and there would be a three-legged card table barely standing with a fifth of Jack Daniels for the Baby Dolls and Dozen. It was more surreal than a Fellini film. The next stop might be gumbo and sandwiches.
A lesser-known but striking group of Baby Dolls from further downtown were known as Satan (spelled Satin) and Sinners. Film footage shows Satan with his red union drawers and with white cotton boxers worn outside. Along with his long red tail and his red horns he carried a decorated umbrella. A man carried a sign saying “Satin and Sinners” and the Baby Dolls followed three abreast strutting in red satin baby doll outfits.
Others have claimed that the Baby Dolls were just prostitutes who masked on Mardi Gras. But that seriously oversimplifies it. They were hard working people caught up in the life they were dealt but made the most of. They stuck together and created an ironic twist unlike any other.
These people, born into a repressed condition, turned it around and made a brilliant creation of live art. The joy they spread changed the path of culture worldwide. The Baby Dolls were a welcome and unique part of an African-American renaissance centered in New Orleans.33
THEY CALL ME BABY DOLL
A note on the use of monikers is in order. Danny Barker described the process by which children were given nicknames that followed them literally from the cradle to the grave. The “pet names” were based on how a mother felt about her child. These were generally flattering terms of endearment. Older people, he asserted, were not so generous.
“Let me see him.” Then they pin a nickname on you. “That’s little Egg Head.” “Why you call my child Egg Head?” “He got a Egg Head.” “That’s little Cokey.” “Why you call my child little Coke?” “Because he’s got a coconut head.” They pin a nickname on you right.… If you look in obituaries of the New Orleans Times Picayune you will see, when they list all the people that have passed away, they always put that nickname there, because some people in your life never knew your real name. They knew you by your nickname.34
The practice of naming individuals with additional referents over and above the given name extended to the jazz world. In his article “The Slang of Jazz,”35 H. Brook Webb noted that almost all jazz musicians had nicknames. Not only that, the instruments had nicknames, and a whole vocabulary emerged that described the style of playing of the musician, the style of the band, and the reaction of the audience to the music, including dances such as “truckin’” and the Lindy or the Hop. The name of the dance “truckin’” emerged from men who worked as railroad porters. The truck was their main tool to carry the luggage of the passengers. When they were weary, they would say that they were going to “truck on home.”
The moniker of the Baby Doll likewise emerged in a sense from the occupation of the women maskers. One can almost image Clara Belle Moore saying with a swagger, “Sure, they call me Baby Doll, that’s my name. They have been calling me Baby Doll for a long time.”36 Many generations of Baby Dolls had monikers representing their public identities. Miriam Batiste Reed could not recall many of the given names of the women and men who masked with her mother because they all were referred to by their nicknames. “Mama Goo,” for instance, was the moniker for Alma Borden, a member of Alma Batiste’s Golden Slipper Baby Dolls, according to Reed.
BABY DOLLS AND BEYOND
Those who masked as Baby Dolls rarely did so for a lifetime. It seemed that Baby Doll masking was part of a long career of cultural and ritual participation. Maskers went on to become Mardi Gras Indians, ordained ministers in Spiritual churches, or grand marshals for social and pleasure clubs.
Mardi Gras Indians
Allison “Tootie” Montana, the late Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, was regarded as the Big Chief of all the Mardi Gras Indian gangs regardless of the ward they represented. He was an expert on all the African American masking traditions, having participated in several and having watched the evolution of most. In his words:
I’ve been making masks for more than forty years. I know how to make all the outfits. I can make the skeleton outfit, the baby doll outfit (with black shirts, pink blouses with puffed sleeves, black mask, a black whip, black boots). The men with the Baby Dolls would take two pairs of shoes and make one out of them so they’d be twice as long. I masked with the Baby Dolls about twice, and then I masked with the skeleton about three times before I masked Indian.
During my early years they had the Rosebud Social and Pleasure Club—women who use to mask. Even all the gay people use to mask. They dressed in women’s clothes, expensive lace and stockings. Men use to mask as women, and there were even women who would mask as men. The masks were made out of screen wire. The Million Dollar Babies were women who had money, ten, twenty, and fifty dollar bills in their stockings.37
The Spiritual Church
Miriam Batiste Reed recalled that her mother, Alma, became an ordained minister in the Spiritual church “after she finished masking,” and in effect, so did the entire family. As Reed noted, “that turned us on to singing and we went to a lot of churches.” Louis and Fannie Reimonenq masked in the satin dresses of the Baby Doll with the Golden Slipper Social and Pleasure Club, led by Alma Batiste. And for this couple, too, spirituality transitioned them from Carnival maskers to leaders of sacred rites.
Arnold Louis Reimonenq was born on October 9, 1894, to Jules Reimonenq and Mary Hoel. He was the eldest of seventeen children. After Mary died in 1899, Jules married Lucille (Lucy) Coulon. In the 1910 census, Jules listed his father as French and his mother as being from Louisiana. The couple’s race was reported as mulatto. Jules was a carpenter based out of his home, and Lucy did not list an occupation. Louis married Fannie Buckingham in 1917. According to the 1930 census, they lived at 914 North Robertson. They had an adopted son, Rudolph Cressy (age seven) and boarded a lodger, Richard Smith (age thirty-two). Fannie was not listed as working outside the home. Elaine Gutierrez, Louis’s niece, described her Uncle “Louie” as the patriarch of the family. Everyone turned to him for help with their problems. He was concerned about the family’s welfare from birth to death. He belonged to many organizations and was a leader within the Freemasons, a secret society. Yet, he was also “happy go lucky,” outgoing, and liked to have fun. Like Alma Batiste, Louis and Fannie became increasingly involved in their spiritual lives as they aged. About 1942, Louis founded Calvary Spiritual Church on St. Philip and Liberty streets in New Orleans, now a historic landmark. When Fannie died on November 4, 1951, a wake was held for two nights at the Emile Labat Funeral Home, and she was given the rites of the Eastern Star. Even though Louis was the leader of the Calvary Spiritual Church, the final service took place at St. Augustine Catholic Church. Louis died on August 26, 1967. His third wife, Florence Reimonenq, continued the leadership of Calvary Spiritual Church. Florence was featured in a 1969
Ebony article, “Black Astrologers Predict the Future.”38 She died in 1989.
Grand Marshal
Although the Gold Digger Baby Doll tradition allows Lois Nelson a freedom of expression that borders on ribaldry, when she comes out as the grand marshal over many jazz events, her presentation is solemn. There are two different kinds of grand marshals: one for a jazz funeral and one for a social aid and pleasure club. Merline Kimble noted that she has never seen Lois do the kinds of things she does as a Baby Doll when she is a grand marshal. The grand marshal of the social aid and pleasure club parades on the street in colorful clothes and accessories. Participants form a second line and “dance, march, monkey shine, and do it all. As a grand marshal for a jazz funeral the attire is black and white. The movements are regulated. You have to be in an army type step. You do the dirge. You have to know how to dismiss that body. To let that hearse pass when that body is passing; there is a certain way you have to put your hand behind your back. You do that one two, that kind of step.”39
5
“We Are No Generation”
Resurrecting the Central Role of Dance to the
Creation of New Orleans Music
We are no generation. We represent our ancestors; those that danced before us.
—Davieione (Beauty from the East) Fairley, New Orleans
Society of Dance’s Baby Doll Ladies
IN 1940 ROBERT MCKINNEY asked, “Who is this Baby Doll and why is she referred to as such?” The answer lies in the co-location of the sociopolitical world in which these women were embedded with vernacular cultural traditions. By 1912, New Orleans Black expres sive culture was taking on an enduring form of musicality to shape and influence the century’s artistry and popular culture. Buddy Bolden, a major originator of the “hot” jazz style, innovatively blended blues, marches, and Black spirituals in a manner that appealed to New Orleans’s Black youth. The Million Dollar Baby Dolls were also part of a new “youth culture,” one that would increasingly and self-consciously come to see itself as rebelling against mainstream culture and society.
The "Baby Dolls" Page 12
