One thing New Orleanians know is that you don’t go outdoors on New Years’ Eve. Toast that special someone at the nightclub. Stay inside the bar. Curl up on your couch and watch the ball drop if you have to. Just don’t stand around outside.

People have been shooting guns skyward to celebrate the new year in New Orleans since the 1800s. What goes up must come down, and the chance is very good that someone will be hit when it does.

But tradition is tradition, and on New Year’s Eve 1912, it was young Louis Armstrong’s job to uphold it. That was the night when he loaded his stepfather’s pistol with blanks and fired it off at the intersection of Rampart and Perdido Streets. That was also the night eleven year-old Louis got arrested.

Tradition though it may have been, it was still illegal, and Louis got caught. He would go on to spend quality time in the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. It may not have seemed like a positive life change at the time, but the Waif’s Home was where Louis first crossed paths with music teacher Peter Davis. Davis molded Louis into the musician who would become a star and remained a friend and influence for the rest of Louis’s life. In 1965, 53 years after Louis’s first lessons under his wing, Peter joined his former student for a duet broadcast nationwide on an episode of I’ve Got a Secret (part one | part two).

SEE

Some spaces from young Louis’s life, a few of which “Ain’t Dere No More”:

Louis’s childhood neighborhood
(Gravier St. and Perdido St. between Lasalle St. and Loyola Ave.)
What is now a serene if sterile park in front of City Hall was, in Louis’s time, a crowded stretch teeming with people. Louis played his horn at clubs and saloons along both strips. He wasn’t the only one. More than a few founding fathers of jazz lit up saloon and theatre stages in the neighborhood. Most of it met the wrecking ball long ago.

Rampart and Perdido Streets
This is the intersection where 11 year-old Louis fired his New Year’s shot (and got arrested).

S. Rampart and Perdido streets. The intersection is where young Louis fired his pistol on New Year’s Eve 2012. The building on the corner once housed the Eagle Saloon (see its entry below).

The Colored Waif’s Home circa 1912
(301 City Park Ave.)
When Louis came to live there after the New Year’s Eve incident, the Home was located 301 City Park Ave. That building is no more. In its place now is a New Orleans Fire Department facility. A later school location in the Milneberg neighborhood is often mistakenly believed to be the site where Armstrong stayed, but it was here.

The Karnofsky Tailor Shop
(427 S. Rampart St.)
The Lithuanian Jewish Karnofsky family who lived and worked here were kind to young Louis when few others were. They hired Louis as a child to gather rags for their business. Louis played with their children, ate meals at their home, and developed a love for the food and the family that would be lifelong. He stayed in touch with the Karnofskys well after he became famous, kept matzos in his kitchen, and wore a Star of David necklace for the rest of his life.

427 S. Rampart Street, once the Karnofsky Tailor Shop

The Iroquois Theatre
(413 S. Rampart St.)
A vaudeville theatre and movie house where young Louis won a talent contest.

Eagle Saloon
(401-403 S. Rampart St.)
In this space some of America’s greatest names in jazz played their earliest shows: Sidney Bechet, Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, and Armstrong himself alongside childhood hero Joseph “King” Oliver. It’s especially important in the history of Buddy Bolden, whose band took on the name “Eagle Band” after Bolden was committed to the state insane asylum. That, as they say, is another story.

Little Gem Saloon
(445-449 S. Rampart St., http://www.littlegemsaloon.com/)
Here’s a bright spot in the S. Rampart St. wasteland of jazz history. The Little Gem Saloon, late night haunt of jazz greats after their own shows elsewhere were finished, has been entirely renovated and, as of this writing, is operating once again as a restaurant and event space.

445-449 S. Rampart Street, once and still the Little Gem Saloon (and highly recommended by the author in its current incarnation for both food and music).