"In them days they call that music the Hoodoo's noise"

pdf scan available over at the internet archive

About seven in the evening, on the eve of every holiday, the atmosphere in Perdido became charged and tense. The blacks began to spruce up a bit. The young bucks had all arranged to meet in the very heart of the quarter. The late-rising strumpets had their alcoholic "breakfast" at Matranga's on the corner before launching their nightly activities, and all the street urchins danced in vacant lots.

The appearance of the musicians carrying their instrument cases was greeted by the ecstatic clamor of all the denizens. Frantic women blew kisses at them and extended brazen invitations in the plainest language.

"I lives over there - third house, last room on the second flo', I'll be waitin' for yo' after the dance!"

"Lay off my man, you no-good wench!"

"Can't be your man, 'cause he's got a married wife!"

Funky Butt Hall, here assembled all the toughs and lazy sluts of the locality. To this day the denizens of Perdido have not forgotten that ill-smelling establishment. Its very name betrays a wanton etymology, graphically characterizing the awful smell that always pervaded the air after the dances were over. They were totally unrestrained in their lewdness, and the black dancers' sweaty bodies heightened the general atmosphere of depravity.

King Buddy Bolden and his gang were to be the main attraction. A crowd pushed and jostled at the bar, with many a drunken and half naked wench emptying her whisky glass at one gulp between puffs of smoke from a fat cigar.  On a platform at the end of the hall a five-man orchestra was going full blast. The cornetist under a white derby faced the dancers and blew a cascade of savage rhythm on them. The drummer pounded his drums unmercifully, whipping up the frenzy of the crowd.

The band resumed its syncopation with incredibly wild and savage blarings. The couples seemed to go crazy, a sort of frenzy took hold of the musicians and spread like wildfire throughout the hall. A tall Negro with broad, muscle-bound shoulders began to toss his partner about like a sack of oats. The music stopped abruptly like a wave breaking on the shore, and Louis had the sensation of teetering on the edge of a cliff. A female voice shrieked out: "Oh! Shake that thing!" Then the rhythm began again, implacable, steady, deafening. Women dripping with sweat mopped their arms and shoulders. 

Toward one o'clock in the morning, when the respectable people had left, the young bucks who had been uptown came back with their women; eyes circled by dissipation, faces streaky with powder, lips heavily smeared, and as drunk as fiddlers, these wenches began to stir up a rumpus and to clamor for Buddy Bolden to play their favorite tunes.

'It's gettin' late. All good gals done gone home to sleep. Now the stinkers can get ready to dance. I hopes that they ain't left their behinds at home, 'cause they got to shake 'em plenty for to keep time with this here music.'

Buddy swung his trumpet back to his lips. The women howled with joy. Every corner of Funky Butt Hall was bursting with ragged rhythm.

At two o'clock the bouncers began to round up the kids who were sleeping against the platform. Worn out, drunk with rhythm, Louis would stagger into the night.