Walkin’ To New Orleans: Jivin’ Gene

Mardi Gras is a little over a week away, and we thought we’d take a leisurely stroll eastward to the Crescent City.  But along the way, let’s visit with some of the great musicians we have been lucky enough to encounter in past years.  The fertile crescent that stretches atop the Gulf of Mexico from Austin to New Orleans is inhabited by some of the greatest musicians in the country.  You know about Austin and we’ll get to New Orleans in time, we promise.  But first …

We start in Port Arthur, Texas, hometown of Janis Joplin, the Big Bopper and the Winter brothers (Johnny and Edgar).  If you grew up there in the 1950s or the 1960s, rock and roll is in your blood – it was certainly on the radio back then, and it was definitely in the air.  I grew up on a quiet street in Groves, Texas (snuggled next to Port Arthur) and did all the usual things a kid did in the early 1960s.  But every once in a while the quiet was cracked by the ring of a rock and roll band rehearsing in a garage a few doors down.  After investigating, I learned that the garage belonged to our neighbor Gene Bourgeois, known as “Jivin’ Gene.”