Faubourg Marigny neighborhood's notables include 'Uncle Lionel' Batiste

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) - Keep your eyes peeled on Frenchmen Street for "Uncle Lionel," who lives next door to the Spotted Cat. The extremely dapper 76-year-old stands out in a crowd. And he's more than a Faubourg Marigny legend.

Lionel Batiste was born in Treme, the next neighborhood north.

"I grew up in the 1200 and 1300 blocks of St. Philip with six sisters and nine brothers in the house," he says. "My dad was a blacksmith and a baker. We had all kinds of musical instruments in the house and Dad would play for the kids in the neighborhood _ the only one he didn't was harp. Three of my brothers played guitar, a sister played drums and guitar and I started playing at age 8 _ rhythm sticks and bells. I didn't want to play brass _ you get funny lips from that. And playing a reed instrument affects your teeth and you get sore jaw muscles.

"I started snare drum at 9. I didn't like the aspect of hauling drums but loved the beat that propels the music."

At 15 or 16 he was in the 6th Ward Dirty Dozen Kazoo Band, playing banjo and a kazoo made from a coat hanger, and tap dancing.

Batiste also beat a washtub in lieu of a bass drum _ the instrument he later came to play. He earned his livelihood as a tailor ("I can make anything but a jacket") but is best known for his bass drum, a Raja he cut in half for easier handling and which then offered a higher sound.

You'll see him many evenings in the Frenchmen Street clubs, sitting in with bands to drum or sing. You can also see him in "Sinkline," a 1992 art-house film shot in New Orleans.

You can also shell out a ton of cash and fly to Switzerland for the annual Montreux Jazz Festival: Batiste's stature as a bass-drum jazzman is such that he has been an invited performer there for the past 19 years.

Batiste has recorded with Lloyd Ellis and the Olympia Brass Band and played a decade with the Dirty Dozen Jazz Band.

Though he carries a walking stick with an evil-looking metal dragon on its head _ who wants to get mugged? _ Batiste is a beloved figure on Frenchmen Street. His "Uncle Lionel" nickname is part affection and part recognition of his being a patriarch of a notable New Orleans musical clan: His nephews play as the Batiste Brothers. The musical family includes David Batiste (of David Batiste and the Gladiators), Lionel Batiste Jr. (drums) and Karen Batiste (organ/clarinet).

A more famous patriarch is found across Frenchmen from the Spotted Dog most Friday nights, at Snug Harbor: jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis, whose six sons include superstars Branford and Wynton. The Ellis Marsalis Quartet is one of the few shows in Marigny for which you absolutely need a reservation _ or be resigned to listening from around a corner in the Snug Harbor bar. Snug Harbor is a top-rated club for American jazz fans, and the clientele and look are both five notches up the swank-o-meter from other places on Frenchmen.

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In a brief interview between sets, Marsalis came across as the serious, scholarly musician he is. The Marsalis family has long been prominent in New Orleans' black community. He eschewed Dixieland and made his name as one of the top keyboardists in "modern jazz" of the 1950s and '60s. His tenure at Snug Harbor is long _ "It's hard to put a year on it," he said.

He takes a long view of jazz history in New Orleans. "It's a proletarian town, an old town situated on a big river. There's still a lot of research that can be done. It was a slave-trading city, but commerce had an effect on the rigidity of racism _ it wasn't like on a plantation.

"And if you're from New Orleans, you gravitate toward music _ it's natural to put a hustle together."

Snug Harbor has live music nightly. One repeat headliner is Delfeayo Marsalis, an Ellis son and a jazz trombonist.

Another hustling family from the area is the famous Nevilles, as in Aaron Neville and the Neville Brothers. Sister Charmaine Neville, an R&B vocalist, has a band that plays Snug Harbor shows most Mondays.

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© 2008, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).