Note: Copyright Graeme Smith, the owner of this site.

Dedication

There’s a song that goes ‘down Highway 10, past Lafayette’. Yes, it says more, and there’s Baton Rouge and a few other places before you get there—but I’ve wanted to go to New Orleans for a long time. So this book is dedicated to a place I’ve never been, and to the day I can turn that ‘never been’ into the first day it isn’t true. To New Orleans, to Hank Crawford, to Edward ‘Kidd’ Jordan, to Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton (New Orleans Blues)—and to the day I first ride the Canal Street line to the cities of the dead.