Big Al Carson Redeems Bourbon Street (Well…)

In case you weren’t aware of this, New Orleans locals basically try to forget that Bourbon Street exists.  When out-of-towners want to go there, my first response is always, “Why”?  Then there are inevitably questions like, “Well, do you ever go the French Quarter?” (as if Bourbon is the Quarter).  Of course we do.  We just don’t hang out on Bourbon.  No offense intended to tourists who have apparently never seen alcohol before, but it’s not a very pretty scene.  So we tend to hang out on Frenchmen, on St. Claude, or somewhere uptown for our music.  But there are exceptions, of course.  The best place to catch blues and jazz singer Big Al Carson is on Bourbon, at the Funky Pirate Blues Bar.  And catching him is worth dodging tourists wielding “big ass beers” and hopping 2 ft wide puddles of Hurricane-returned-unto-the-Earth.  Big Al has a huge heart and spends time loving just about every woman in the place (I’m leaving a little slack, because it’s possible he doesn’t love every woman–but it’s also possible that he does).  He’s amazingly gracious, enormously talented, and a true New Orleans treasure.  Make the trip.  He’ll be there, bathed in green light, backed by his rock solid band, delivering the goods:

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 27th, 2011 at 10:53 pm. It is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.