Louisianians are not interested in ideologies or principles but in the fundamentals -- the whir of slot machines, the pounding of horses' hoofs, and the clink of ice in a Sazerac cocktail.
-- Historian T. Harry Williams, 1960
Danny Barker knows all about the fundamentals. At 82, the jazz banjoist and guitarist has seen a lot of changes in his hometown since he went north, played with Louis Armstrong and toured with the Cab Calloway orchestra. But the fundamentals don't budge. "New Orleans people are unique," he says, sitting in his shirt-sleeves on the front porch of his white shotgun house....
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