The soundtrack to Mardi Gras, from its first wave to its golden age
On Mardi Gras Day 1949, at the height of his popularity, Louis Armstrong returned to his hometown of New Orleans to fulfill what he described to Time magazine as "a thing I've dreamed of all my life . . . to be King of the Zulus." Standing atop a mule-drawn float and tossing coconuts to huge crowds along the parade route, Armstrong reigned as the ceremonial king of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the city's first — and, then, only — Black parading Carnival organization.
Armstrong's appearance as King Zulu was a media sensation around the world, bringing unprecedented exposure to New Orleans's Carnival traditions — and generating controversy among the national Black press, for his donning of the krewe's traditional black greasepaint — while setting a new standard for celebrity involvement in Mardi Gras parades. It also had a galvanizing effect musically, inspiring a small but substantial wave of songs about Carnival and helping to kickstart the entire notion of Mardi Gras music. Previously, popular songs enjoyed coincidental success if they became favorite tunes during a given Carnival season — akin to today's "song of the summer" — but until King Armstrong got the world's attention in 1949, there were very few songs made for and about Mardi Gras. In the years following, however, New Orleans artists released a string of seasonal tunes that reflected the range of popular styles brewing at the time, from traditional jazz to rhythm and blues to mambo.
The growing demand for Black and Afro-Caribbean dance music would soon transform popular culture around the world with the explosion of rock and roll in the mid-1950s, and these first-wave Mardi Gras recordings were part of that process. Some songs achieved lasting success and remain at the top of the Carnival-music firmament, others
