Backstreet Cultural Museum celebrates its ‘Grand Opening’

5th July 2022   ·   0 Comments

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

The Backstreet Cultural Museum, “A Powerhouse of Knowledge,” will say goodbye to the old and hello to the new as it celebrates its grand reopening at 1531 St. Philip Street. On July 9, 2022 a second line with music by Benny Jones and the Treme Brass Band will take off at 4 p.m. from the museum’s original location at 1116 Henriette DeLille Street and head up St. Philip Street to North Robertson Street where festivities get going at Tuba Fats Square just kitty-corner from its new locale. Naturally, like any party in New Orleans, refreshments will be served.

Folks will be able to get a “sneak peek” at the exhibit that focuses on Black street cultures, including Mardi Gras Indian suits and memorabilia from jazz funerals, social aid and pleasure clubs, second lines, brass bands, baby dolls and skull and bone gangs. The museum will officially open for business on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, when it will again be available for walk-in and pre-booked tours. Those haven’t happened since Hurricane Ida when a huge limb of a pecan tree came down on the back of the rented, already-in- ill-repair original building, once the Blandin Funeral Home, where the museum was housed. The Backstreet Cultural Museum, 1531 St. Phillip St., will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays.

Executive Director Dominique D. Francis, who is the daughter of the Backstreet’s founder, the much loved, late Sylvester Francis, has signed a one year lease on the new building with an option to renew. A “handshake” agreement to locate in one of the houses in the New Orleans African American Museum enclave failed due to city permitting snafus.

There’s no missing the new spot at 1531 St. Philip that looks brighter and more festive everyday. At the same time, murals that were created for “house floats” during the canceled Carnival 2021, act as remembrances to beloved members of the in the community who have passed. A bench, which at one time might have been utilized as a church pew, stands outside ready for visitors to the museum. Donated by Hank’s Bar, artist Oscar Jackson of the Dumaine St. Gang Social & Pleasure Club had previously decorated it with images of the noted New Orleans musicians Uncle Lionel Batiste and Louis Armstrong.

Renovations had already been completed on the structure both inside and out. It offers one large, 975 square foot room where Dominique and her “team” have been installing the displays many of which had been kept in temperature controlled storage.

“The biggest challenge is going to be placement and being able to keep all of the new items and receive new ones,” Dominique says. “My answer to fix that challenge is that I’m going to be doing a three to six month rotation. The one thing that will always be there (in the museum) is the photograph of my great-great grandmother from 1949,” she adds speaking of the striking, black and white photo of a masked Anita Thomas, the Big Queen of the 8th Ward Hunters.

Longtime residents and those who often came to the neighborhood when it buzzed with bars and music clubs could be confused by the address of the building on the corner of St. Philip and N. Robertson. Back in the day, when, incidentally, the area was usually referred to as the 6th Ward, the destination was considered 1533 St. Philip St. Trumpeter and vocalist Kermit Ruffins even celebrated the locale in the title of his 2001 album, 1533 St. Philip Street. At the time, Ruffins had recently opened his club, Kermit Ruffins’ Jazz & Blues Hall at the very spot. According to official city records, the address where the Backstreet Cultural Museum will now call home is 1531 St. Philip St. That number is in large numerals on the St. Philip Street side of the building. Above the corner door, however, the numbers 1533 stand prominent as a reminder of the buildings historic past as a happening place in the neighborhood.

Benny Jones, a longtime 6th Ward resident, who watched its many incarnations, recalls that in 1950s and ‘60s 1533 St. Philip Street was called Joe Washington’s Bar, named for the proprietor. It was a place people from the neighborhood would go regularly just to hang out. Then it became a barroom known as the Tap Room. Melvin “Greasy” Davis, who, incidentally, is the father of Dirty Dozen trumpeter Gregory “Blodie” Davis, took over and named it Melvin’s Bar where there would be music primarily for private parties. “I played there and it was a stop for second lines and jazz funerals,” Jones remembers. “They would all stop or break-up there. Indians used to come around there too.”

The building then took on an historic name by becoming the Caldonia with some calling it the Caldonia Two. The legendary original Caldonia Club, whose owner gave regular pianist Henry Roeland Byrd his stage name Professor Longhair, was located in the part of the Treme neighborhood that was tragically razed in 1971 to create Armstrong Park. During its second incarnation in the 1980s and ‘90s when it relocated to 1533 St. Philip Street live music filled the room. Benny Jones then lived just next door in a small, since demolished, house on the North Robertson St. side next to the bar’s patio.

The nightspot changed hands again and was called Trombone Shorty’s though the now world renowned musician was just a little kid when his mother, the late Lois Andrews, named it after him. The doors of 1533 St. Philip Street closed following its rather short life as Kermit’s Jazz & Blues Hall.

On her father’s death on September 1, 2020, the torch of maintaining the legacy of the Backstreet Cultural Museum was passed on to Dominique. Forced to move following the destruction of the museum’s original home, she remained determined to keep the Backstreet in the Treme neighborhood where the culture lives on despite gentrification. For example, on the same day as the grand opening, funeral services will be held at the nearby Treme Community Center for the legendary and highly influential Ray “Big Chief Hatchet” Blazio of the Wild Apaches Mardi Gras Indian tribe, who passed away on June 17, 2022 at the age of 82. A Black Indian procession is destined to traverse the Treme neighborhood. Two days earlier on Thursday, July 7, 2022, family and friends of the late Ms. Marion Colbert, the “Queen of the Banana Tree,” who greeted everyone with a smile and advice to “shake the devil off,” will celebrate what would have been her 94th birthday on Henriette Delille Street.

Dominique will soon be at the door ready to give tours of the Backstreet Cultural Museum that has found a welcoming home in the heart of the Treme just blocks from its original location. In a circle of life that’s not unfamiliar in New Orleans’ close knit communities, her father, Sylvester Francis, once stood at the same spot as a doorman when the locale was Kermit Ruffins’ Jazz & Blues Hall. In spirit, Sylvester will be there standing next to his daughter when she cuts the ribbon at the grand opening on this important day in the history of the Backstreet Cultural Museum.

For more information go to www.backstreetmuseum.org.

This article originally published in the July 4, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.