My Life As A Creole

Creole is a world describing “mixture.” In America, when we use the term, we are mindful of the French-speaking people of color that inhabit or are descendent of Louisiana, both European and African descent. The term is actually from the Spanish word “criollo,” believed to be a colonial corruption of criadillo (bred, brought up, reared). In my travels, I have found references to Jamaican Creole, Haitian Creole, Bahamian English, Sierra Leone Krio, Seychelles Creole and Cuban Criollos.

I adopted my Creole life from roots that I acquired when I met a band in San Francisco. My brother Kevin and I had first visited California to attend the Monterrey Jazz Festival in mid-September, 1975 and we spent our first Thursday night at a San Francisco concert hall, The Boarding House, where Bob Marley and the Wailers had played two weeks before. The Meters were performing there, prior to going south to play in Monterrey.

The Meters original membership was; Art Neville, keyboards, Cyrille Neville, congas, Joseph (Zigaboo) Modeliste, drums, Leo Nocentelli, guitar and George Porter, bass. They had become legend in the New Orleans recording studios, working with composer Allen Toussaint, recording many sessions for sixties hit recordings.

The funky melodies and rhythms that came off the Boarding House stage that Thursday evening drew me and Kevin out of our seats and into their second line as they paraded around the room. We partied with them on into their dressing room during the break and we saw them on Saturday afternoon at the jazz festival. I went home and found their album, “The Meters: Fire on the Bayou,” and learned every note on every song. My favorite became They All Asked For You, a traditional song passed down from their musical fathers in New Orleans parade bands.

I made my first trip to “The Big Easy” the following summer, 1976 to visit an adopted sister, Stephanie Winkfield LeDuff, who had married into a Creole family when she jumped the broom with Peter LeDuff. They lived in half of a “shotgun style” double on Lapeyrouse Street off of Gravier Street, downtown, and Peter’s grandmother, a French speaking matron, occupied the other half.

Peter’s parents, Ferd and Sis LeDuff had built a beautiful home Uptown New Orleans and they showed me so much Southern hospitality and love, that I just adopted myself into their family. We shopped at neighbood markets, toured the French Quarter, the St. Louis and Elysian Fields Cemeteries and ate authentic home-cooking in the kitchens of Creole homes. My soul was hooked for life.