Interviewer: Help us get the idea of New Orleans around 1950, early Fifties, what was going on there musically that was starting to aim toward the new music.
Price: Well when I was kid in New Orleans, during that period, say '49, '50, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Amos Millburn, Smiley Lewis was on the scene.
Price: Fats Domino had just started to record, had a local record called "Fat Man".
Price: And Dave Bartholomew was the big man in town.
Price: And, ah, I had the little local band out in, in Kenner which is like seven miles out of New Orleans, my little brother Leo and I and we played all the little local proms and the local clubs in the area of Kenner.
Price: And we sort of like by not being musicians, qualified musicians we played things that we, actually appeared from the heart.
Price: And, ah, the music was changing.
Price: What happened was, we heard a record by Billie Ward I think and the Dominos, Roy Brown, Mr. Google Eyes, started to change from the big bands from the Erskine Hawkins and from the Roy Miltons of course the Jimmy Liggins and the, his brother Joe Liggin, T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Creighton.
Price: This was a music worth listening to.
Price: And Muddy Waters was slipping into the scene, John Lee Hooker and another guy called Willie Maeburn.
Price: But the biggest change of all during that period was "Rock Around The Clock" in 1951 by Bill Haley.
Price: These were some white boys playing rhythm but they was using brushes and stuff like that.
Price: And that was I imagine the biggest change, ah, in my generation of music.
Interviewer: What were you listening to on the radio? Tell me the story about how you had a car and you'd hear WLAC.
Price: And, of course, during that period I had, I had the newest car in town.
Price: My brother was being shipped to Korea and he gave me a new Dynaflow Roadmaster Buick.
Price: My care was bigger than the mayor's then kind of.
Price: So, we were able to listen to radio, ah, ah, because I had the car.
Price: And I would, to listen to the music that we liked, the, the names that I just named, would come from WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee either by John R.
Price: or Ernie's Record Mart.
Price: But we had to wait till 10:30, 11 o'clock at night to hear this music.
Price: And we listened to it.
Price: And then during that period in the daytime there was from like, ah, maybe 2 o'clock in the evening until 3, 2:30, we would hear Poppa Stoppa and another jockey called Ernie the Whip, not Ernie, ah, ah, Ernie, Ernie, ah, man, I can't think of this ...
Interviewer: Are you thinking of Jack the Cat?
Price: Jack the Cat, - do it again? Jack the Cat, Poppa Stoppa and Jack, Jack the Cat was beginning to play rhythm and blues records but they played a lot of country and western music as well.
Price: So they'd play or two; you might hear Louis Jordan, you might hear Louis Armstrong, you might hear, ah, Duke Ellington or at that same time as he was on air.
Price: Number one is, it was race music and you did not hear, there was no charts and there were no rhythm and blues there were actually the songs had no titles.
Price: And we were just, it was called music.
Price: Of course I forgot a great guy during that time.
Price: Nat King Cole and the Three Blazers was coming along and Nat was again new music.
Price: It didn't really have a format, it just was all throwed in and called music.
Price: That, that's exactly what it was called.
Interviewer: Tell me about the New Orleans' music scene in terms of how it was segregated.
Interviewer: Were whites listening to black bands? Were blacks listening? How strict was the segregation?
Price: Well the kind of music that we're talking about in terms of now known as rhythm and blues and rock and roll, now white people didn't listen to it 'cause it was not around.
Price: What they listened to, if it was black it would have been Louis Armstrong, probably Ella Fitzgerald singing with, ah, with Bing Crosby and that kind of stuff was called black music.
Price: I, ah, I don't even think Count Basie was considered black music.
Price: Duke Ellington was white.
Price: Cab Calloway was considered a white music but played by blacks.
Price: And of course you had the Woodie Hermans and things like that.
Price: There was no mix.
Price: The only thing was integrated at that time was the radio band and that was about it.
Interviewer: The only thing integrated? Hold on for a second.
Price: The only thing integrated during that period of what I'm speaking of now in, in music terms was the radio band.
Price: There was no such thing as blacks and whites getting together.