Atlantica - 01.02.2006, Side 49

WITNESSED a
“That’s not what worries me,”
answers the Dr. Potts’s organist,
James, originally from Wisconsin.
“What worries me is that there are
now twice as many musicians here
who want to work, and we already
all work for nothing but tips any-
way.”
But if the influx of musicians hurt
his financial future, he was at least
empathetic to his fellow musicians.
“If those guys want to play – and a
lot of them can play well – they can
get in.”
The suggestion was that other
musicians might move on to give
those leaving New Orleans a chance,
though with my organist friend and
his wistful looks toward the tip jar, I
couldn’t be sure if he was asking for
traveling money or just more tips.
“Yeah, people are going to help
these guys out,” Robert Dr. Feelgood
Potts tells me, just after informing
me that, if you do a Google search,
you’ll see many Dr. Feelgoods, but
only one Dr. Feelgood Potts. “You’re
going to see New Orleans musicians
everywhere in the US. Maybe it’s a
good thing to come out of this.”
The band returns to the stage and
breaks into the most standard of
blues songs, a number first played
by Mississippi native Robert Johnson
as he prepared to leave his home
following the Great Migration in
the 30s, and a song I hear at every
concert I attend during my nine-day
visit to the south.
Delivered in the boisterous, bar-
room style that the Blues Brothers
gave it when they first covered it in
1980, it’s easy to forget the meaning
of the song. “Sweet Home Chicago”
– a city Johnson adopted well before
he actually visited it – encourages a
girl to join him as he flees Mississippi
for a new home.
Chicago wasn’t even Johnson’s
destination in the original song.
Seeking out stability, he originally
sang that he would head to Chicago,
and go from there “on to Des
Moines, Iowa.”
The irony of “Sweet Home
Chicago” is that there is nothing
sweet about being forced out of
your home, or out of the home of
your grandparents, except – maybe
– the sound of singing about it and
mourning the experience. a

AT L A N T I CA 47
Icelandair flies to Orlando, Florida,
two times per week.
The French Quarter, New Orleans.
042-047 New Orleans.indd 47 22.2.2006 10:19:21