“I got the bread pudding and wondered how it was physically possible to get a pound of butter into a half pound of dessert. I would have ordered two if I had not been ashamed.

I was dead sober as I got up from the table but staggered a little, besotted by the good life. As I passed the Bayou Bar, I heard not a soft tinkle of piano music but a cacophony of guitar, organ, piano, saxophone, and more.

…This was blues, R and B, soul, and jazz—a uniquely New Orleans sensation led by a man in a little straw fedora who was singing with everything he had.”