9th Ward Daily Photo via rl reeves jr

St Claude Avenue is named after St. Claudius of Besancon. Claudius was born around the year 603 and worked as a border guard prior to becoming a priest. ‘Claude’ grew fame as a teacher and ascetic eating only one small meal a day. He lived to the ripe old age of 93 and his existence was marked by a devotion to “manual labour, silence, prayer, reading of pious books, especially the Holy Bible, fasting, watching, humility, obedience, and poverty.”

We spend an inordinate amount of time educating ourselves on New Orleans’ rich history of street names.

If you’d like to read more about St Claude you may do so here.

9th Ward Daily Photo via rl reeves jr

We’re on a major Sugar Boy Crawford kick tonight in the Florida Development of New Orleans 9th Ward. Sugar Boy was born in Central City and went to Booker T Washington High School before breaking out in the local music scene in the early 50s.

He was still a school boy.

He wasn’t much older when he penned Jock-A-Mo, one of the great New Orleans party anthems and, according to Crawford, mistitled. ““It wasn’t my idea to call the song Jock-A-Mo — Leonard Chess did that.” “If you listen to the song, I’m singing ‘Chock-A-Mo’. Not ‘Jock-A-Mo’. When Leonard listened to the session in Chicago, he thought I said ‘Jock-A-Mo’. When I saw the record for the first time I said: ‘That’s not the title, it’s Chock-A-Mo.”

9th Ward Daily Photo via rl reeves jr

It’s the birthday of Kate Douglas Wiggin. She had a great quote about kids: “Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility.”

Don’t go thinking the crew at Scrumptious are a bunch of religious freaks either. We just like that particular quote.

9th Ward Daily Photo via rl reeves jr

Put Charles Brown’s ‘When Did You Leave Heaven’ on the hi fi this evening. Then imagine paying your $5 cover to see Mr. Brown playing in a dim, smokey nightclub in Over The Rhine Cincinnati in the early 70s 25 years after he had his monster hit ‘Merry Christmas Baby.’

9th Ward Daily Photo via rl reeves jr

Listening to Memphis Slim’s ‘Grinder Man Blues’ tonight. I took this photo last fall on Almonaster, the upriver border of the 9th.