Alligator Ball Introduction

INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANION BOOKLET

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The Alligator Ball was the predecessor, grand-daddy, forefather, and pre-Mamou of what became The legendary nite-spot, Tipitina's. Leger-de-main.

There came together a group of people in that pre-time whose deepest burning soul desire was to have the greatest parties they could, or I could, Imagine. You could sense Something Going On. And they had a Great Love of New Orleans music, it being their home.

Such an Affinity for a Good Time amongst these folk was way down in their fiber, in their grain, in their locale. This Impulse seemed to seep up through the mud of the levees, out of the waters of the Blessed Mississippi, coming downstream, downstream, carrying with it the good forces and fertile soils and best wishes of half the continental United States, whooshing by our feet and our lives. (I'm talking about a river of water 1/2 to a mile wide constantly moving with such energy and intensity that the eddies and currents would create on the surface depressions of convection, like dents in the water several feet wide, deep-inverted nodes of non-confluence.)

This Great River created our land. That's Right. There would be no New Orleans or southern Louisiana if the River hadn't come along and put it there. Like the "Hose-Bath of the Gods" this River whipped around, as if your little brother had let it loose, for a hundred thousand years, spraying down the swamps for hundreds of miles in each direction with muddy water, building half the parishes in the State on top of what otherwise would be continental shelf.

This lmpulse also seemed to seep in through the sap of the trees, out through the Spanish moss; glow inside the sugar cane, bubble up in the molasses, stand proudly in the rice paddies. Run wild in the Swamp between the irises and palmettos, enrich the grain of the cypress wood with iridescent minerals, and vitalize every growing thing in that land.

And in that Land bursting with Growing Things are the many moving things and inhabitants enjoying its fruits. All made of Mississippi Mud.

Of course a lot has been said about the sunny wet days following a big rain up in the forests and fields of Tangipahoa, bright spring days with giant Gulf of Mexico clouds for a backdrop, as being another contributor to this Impulse; the sort of place where Youth and Vitality can mingle with the Purity and Freshness of recently cleansed Nature to Catalyze into Infinity...and where many little streams (Tchefuncte, Boga Falaya,..) slip their way south to Lake Pontchartrain, that serene, somber curtain of geographical separation that helps shield the New Orleans culture from influences that were not born at or Below-Sea-Level. Down here we all crawled out of the Mud.

So this Impulse, this Spirit of the Alligator sprang alive running-when-its-feet-touched-the-ground sometime, I figure, during the reign of the almost-sovereign R. M. Nixon, leading to the founding of the loosely confederated but always dedicated Absolutely Mystical Krewe of Alligator, Poppa Gator da Fo'teenth presiding, residing and deciding the next application of that Spirit by way of the Group of Fo'teen, leading by many and curious ways to the First of Them All, The Alligator Ball, at Mardi Gras 1973, featuring Professor Longhair and the Meters.