Missing New Orleans

“ Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans and miss it each night and day? ”

I have been a fan of the song “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” for many years. I miss New Orleans – but, I’m certain I haven’t missed it like nearly half of its residents who were forced to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina (August, 2005). It was not until the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that I began to really understand how many persons were missing New Orleans. I knew then that I wanted to record this song.

The song was introduced in the 1947 movie: “New Orleans”. The movie’s music featured both Louis Armstrong and Lady Day (Billie Holliday).

My arrangement features solo trumpet, clarinet (sometimes, two clarinets), trombone (sometimes, two trombones), piano, and acoustic bass. It starts with the seldom-heard bridge section followed by two repeats of the single verse. The melody is regularly passed back-and-forth between the trumpet and clarinet who are panned to opposite sides of the stage.

The trumpet is a single Synful Orchestra trumpet. The clarinet is Kurzweil PC3K8 “Solo Clarinet.” Trombone is Alesis Ion. Piano is Synthogy Ivory. Bass is PC3K8 “Acoustic Bass. I had hoped to find a vocalist to record at least one of the verses. My favorite choice has become hard to engage. I still hope to (eventually) re-record this with a vocal part.

The iMovie-made video is intended to support the music. All but one of the images that I used in the animation are versions of Google Images of New Orleans architecture that I vectorized (“Trace Bitmap”) in the Inkscape SVG editor/program. One image is my tracing of an original, numbered (61/2500) Luttrell print, named “New Orleans” that was a gift to me.

I hope that you enjoy my production of Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?