Thread by @BeingNOLA

OK, here's my favourite NOLA hotel story, and one of my favourite stories about the city. It's long but worth the pay-off and us Brits come out of it badly. It's 1957, and world famous British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham is in town to conduct the Louisiana Philharmonic…

He is an enormous star. Like, Elton John famous. He books into the boutique hotel Maison de Ville...

The hotel backs onto the courtyard of the Court of Two Sisters, which has a famous Jazz Brunch every day, live Dixieland jazz playing all morning and afternoon. Most people quite like it…

Beecham did not. He asked for the music to be played more quietly so he could nap, and a request was made, and denied. He asked again, again he was told it was impossible. He let rip with some choice insults about the music…

The hotel manager was a firebrand of a woman, a real hot ticket. She was called in on her day off. On arriving at the hotel she went straight to his room and told him he had to leave…

Utterly insulted, he and his wife, Lady Beecham, relocated to the Roosevelt Hotel. Anyway, news of his dislike for the local music got to the press (via the hotel manager, we can only assume) and the result was an uproar…

The concert was largely boycotted, and the next day’s Times-Picayune ran comments from the local musicians playing on Bourbon Street and around the city...

This column records some of the local reactions from musicians, and it is very New Orleans:

Among the many highlights of that report, a local jazz trumpeter, Wingy Manone, sitting in with an orchestra and asking the first trumpeter to move up.
Orchestra trumpeter: "But you can't read (music)!"
Wingy: "Yeah, but when the lights go out, I'll be the only one playing."

I also very much love this quote."Singing waiter, Frank Faye, was equally vituperative (about Beecham), "He's no bargain, the schmoo. Let him work his side of the street and we'll work ours!"