RIPMJAZZ
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The Second Line

The Second Line was the long-running organ of The New Orleans Jazz Club. Published consistently for 59 years, it is an invaluable source of information on music in New Orleans, historic and contemporary, as well as music in the New Orleans traditions as played elsewhere.

The New Orleans Jazz Club was founded in 1948 out of the ashes of the defunct National Jazz Foundation, previously established in 1944. As described in very early issues of The Second Line, the idea for the creation of a club arose among four men who met along the Zulu parade route on Mardi Gras Day, 1948: radioman Albert Diket, cornetist Johnny (Hyman) Wiggs, Doland Perry, and Gilbert Erskine. Membership in the Club soon climbed to 25 and by 1950, 265 active and 175 corresponding members. [The Second Line 1, no. 7 (October 1950): 3] As noted by New Orleans historian J. Mark Souther, members of the New Orleans Jazz Club were drawn from the city’s white elite, including president Edmond Souchon, a prominent surgeon. The Club did not admit Black members due to racial segregation and elite conventions in New Orleans. [See J. Mark Souther, New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006): 107 ff.]

The Club’s goals, as stated in the first editorial of The Second Line, reflected the budding revival of interest in New Orleans Jazz in the very early 1950s: to establish a jazz festival (later realized in 1970 as the New Orleans Jazz Fest by George Wein), to create a “mammoth jazz concert,” sponsor jazz concerts, recordings, and a sound movie. The early issues of The Second Line naturally report on the Club’s growing activities to realize their goals, along with short articles on New Orleans musical history. For instance, Mrs. Ell Landry (a composer who published under the name Ray V. Muir) writes on her memories of the blues musician Lead Belly (Leadbelly) [November 1950], as well as numerous articles on George Lewis, Baby Dodds, and more. Debates over bebop, stemming from an article by Marshall W. Stearns, reverberated through the decade, along with increasing numbers of articles on Dixieland or New Orleans jazz music and musicians across the United States.

Through the 1960s, The Second Line maintained a pace of some 6 issues per year, generally 24 to 30 pages each. As the amount of live music grew in New Orleans, fostered by the growth of tourism and recognition of New Orleans’ musical heritage, the number of local musicians and performances reviewed increased. Correspondingly, there was less interaction with the jazz press outside of New Orleans. The establishment of the New Orleans Jazz Museum was celebrated in The Second Line as a goal fulfilled. The 1970s opened with the debut of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and throughout the 1970s The Second Line published increasing numbers of remembrances of musicians and Club members as a new generation became active. 

Record reviews began in earnest in the 1980s along with greater coverage of venues throughout New Orleans. The music historian Karl Koenig published research articles in most issues, in addition to reviews. The 1990s and 2000s saw declining numbers of issues per year published, many years with only a single annual issue. After publishing two issues in 2002, only a single, final issue appeared in 2009. The editor, Fred Hatfield, accounted for the gap by citing the loss of two key members and Hurricane Katrina, which decimated New Orleans in 2005. By 2009, items from the New Orleans Jazz Club Museum still were awaiting a return to the city, but the club’s journal would make only a brief reappearance before it too was washed into history.

“The official journal of the New Orleans Jazz Club, The Second Line was started in April 1950 to celebrate individuals ‘who have taken up the cudgels for Jazz’, including musicians, promoters, teachers, and enthusiasts. The focus of The Second Line was centrally on the New Orleans scene and the annual October jazz festival, but it also profiled regional varieties of jazz from southern California to Florida, as well as noting its popularity in Canada, England, and Austria. It is worth spending a moment on this magazine as a forum for showcasing regional music.”

Martin Halliwell, American Culture in the 1950s (2007)

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