Blaine Kern, the float maker

By Keith Spera
New Orleans Advocate

As Blaine Kern Sr. eyed the gaggle of tourists filing into Mardi Gras World’s gift shop, he flipped on his Mr. Mardi Gras grin, his calling card for nine decades and counting.

"I'm the guy who started this whole joint 70 years ago!" he announced, the opening line of his sales pitch for "A Tree in the Sea," the new children's book he created with his fourth wife, Holly.

The tourists smiled, listened politely, and moved on to the next attraction. Mardi Gras, it seems, is bigger than Blaine Kern.

Once upon a time, he might have disagreed.

What Popeyes kingpin Al Copeland was to chicken, Kern is to Carnival: a brash character who came from nothing, launched an unconventional empire in New Orleans, and lived large as a result.

Wrestle anacondas in Peru? Buy an aircraft carrier in Spain? Build a gondola over the Mississippi River? Marry a woman nearly 50 years his junior?

Kern has done that. He also almost single-handedly ushered in the modern era of Mardi Gras.

Blaine Kern Artists, the studio he founded in 1947, crafts the floats for more than a dozen of Carnival's most prominent parades, including Rex, Endymion, Muses, Bacchus, Orpheus and Zulu. Kern pioneered such parade razzle-dazzle as giant prop figures, double-decker floats, multi-unit floats, splashy lighting and animatronics. Inclusivity was another of his innovations.

Now 90, he is no longer directly involved with the studio's operation. But he still keeps tabs on the company and is still the legendary figurehead. Tourist buses still park beneath his name, spelled out with imposing, 6-foot-tall black letters on the exterior of Mardi Gras World’s massive riverfront studio/warehouse.

In decades past, his ego was just as imposing. But age has mellowed him. So, too, did several brushes with mortality, and a legal battle, resolved in 2015, that transferred full control of the studio to his son Barry Kern.

But in his reluctant retirement — and thanks in part to his wife’s gentle prodding — Blaine Kern has rediscovered who he was long ago: an artist.

Growing up poor

On Wednesday afternoon, Kern shuffled past Orpheus floats inside the Mardi Gras World warehouse, his jacket discreetly emblazoned with “Mr. Mardi Gras.” He exchanged warm greetings with artisans, tour guides and gift shop employees.

"This little girl ... she's a helluva sculptor," he said, introducing a young woman flecked with Styrofoam dust.

"Coming from you, that means a lot," gushed Alexandria McCrosky, whose mother, Tina, has painted Kern floats for more than 20 years.

In a chamber near the gift shop stood a different breed of Styrofoam sculptor: Pixie, a robot named for longtime, much-loved Kern Studios administrator Jerelyn "Pixie" Naquin, who died in 2010. A similar high-tech robot sculpts Space X rocket fuselages; Pixie sculpts Muses' float-sized rubber duckies.

Imagine if Kern had possessed such a robot when he started out.

"He was the robot,” Holly Kern said.

He grew up poor on Algiers Point with three sisters, now deceased. Their father, Roy, was a painter who liked to fish and drink. Blaine still remembers watching his dad fashion a primitive float atop a garbage wagon in 1932 for the inaugural Krewe of Alla parade on the West Bank.

Drafted into the Army in 1945, Blaine was shipped out to Korea at the end of World War II. He returned home to Algiers nearly two years later.

In exchange for medical services for his mother, he painted a mural for Dr. Henry LaRocca, the captain of Alla. LaRocca was so impressed that he invited Kern, then 19, to decorate Alla’s floats.

Recognizing a potentially lucrative business, Kern founded Blaine Kern Artists Inc. in 1947. Alla was his first steady client; he became the krewe's captain in 1957, a position he held for five decades. 

Blaine Kern Artists, the studio he founded in 1947, crafts the floats for more than a dozen of Carnival's most prominent parades, including Rex, Endymion, Muses, Bacchus, Orpheus and Zulu. Kern pioneered such parade razzle-dazzle as giant prop figures, double-decker floats, multi-unit floats, splashy lighting and animatronics. Inclusivity was another of his innovations.

Now 90, he is no longer directly involved with the studio's operation. But he still keeps tabs on the company and is still the legendary figurehead. Tourist buses still park beneath his name, spelled out with imposing, 6-foot-tall black letters on the exterior of Mardi Gras World’s massive riverfront studio/warehouse.

In decades past, his ego was just as imposing. But age has mellowed him. So, too, did several brushes with mortality, and a legal battle, resolved in 2015, that transferred full control of the studio to his son Barry Kern.

But in his reluctant retirement — and thanks in part to his wife’s gentle prodding — Blaine Kern has rediscovered who he was long ago: an artist.

Growing up poor

On Wednesday afternoon, Kern shuffled past Orpheus floats inside the Mardi Gras World warehouse, his jacket discreetly emblazoned with “Mr. Mardi Gras.” He exchanged warm greetings with artisans, tour guides and gift shop employees.

"This little girl ... she's a helluva sculptor," he said, introducing a young woman flecked with Styrofoam dust.

"Coming from you, that means a lot," gushed Alexandria McCrosky, whose mother, Tina, has painted Kern floats for more than 20 years.

In a chamber near the gift shop stood a different breed of Styrofoam sculptor: Pixie, a robot named for longtime, much-loved Kern Studios administrator Jerelyn "Pixie" Naquin, who died in 2010. A similar high-tech robot sculpts Space X rocket fuselages; Pixie sculpts Muses' float-sized rubber duckies.

Imagine if Kern had possessed such a robot when he started out.

"He was the robot,” Holly Kern said.

He grew up poor on Algiers Point with three sisters, now deceased. Their father, Roy, was a painter who liked to fish and drink. Blaine still remembers watching his dad fashion a primitive float atop a garbage wagon in 1932 for the inaugural Krewe of Alla parade on the West Bank.

Drafted into the Army in 1945, Blaine was shipped out to Korea at the end of World War II. He returned home to Algiers nearly two years later.

In exchange for medical services for his mother, he painted a mural for Dr. Henry LaRocca, the captain of Alla. LaRocca was so impressed that he invited Kern, then 19, to decorate Alla’s floats.

Recognizing a potentially lucrative business, Kern founded Blaine Kern Artists Inc. in 1947. Alla was his first steady client; he became the krewe's captain in 1957, a position he held for five decades. 

At the dawn of the super-krewe era 50 years ago, Blaine charged $5,000 per float. In 2013, Endymion's dazzling, 370-foot-long, nine-part re-creation of the Pontchartrain Beach amusement park made its debut. The price tag? $1.5 million.

Mardi Gras floats account for only half of the Kern company’s tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Under Barry Kern's stewardship, Kern Studios has expanded globally, constructing elaborate props and parades for such clients as Disney, Six Flags and Universal Studios. This weekend, Universal Studios in Orlando kicks off a 68-day Mardi Gras celebration featuring Kern floats.

Those three-dimensional, black-and-white-spotted cows that populate Chick-fil-A billboards across the country? All were born at the Kern Studios complex in New Orleans.

Opening Mardi Gras World to visitors created a major tourist destination. The facility is also leased for private functions, such as the Buku Music + Art Project each March.

Grand visionary

In the early days, Blaine got his hands dirty, drawing and painting floats. He eventually ceded such tasks to the company's growing stable of artisans, assuming the role of grand visionary.

Being Blaine Kern was its own full-time job. He started referring to himself as “Mr. Mardi Gras” after a trip to Portugal. In 1988, the Rex organization issued a proclamation making it official. “I'm not going to fight that," Kern said. Instead, he trademarked the term.

He could be loud and boisterous, and he rubbed some people the wrong way. More showman than businessman, administration was never his forte.

Not all his schemes panned out. He built much of the 1984 world’s fair in New Orleans — including the famous bare-breasted mermaids at the entrance — only to get stiffed by the fair’s financial failure.

The gondola he strung across the river for the fair never attracted enough riders to be viable. He lost money on the failed Jazzland amusement park in New Orleans East. In the 1980s, he partnered with a New York real estate tycoon named Donald Trump to develop property on the West Bank; the project fizzled.

And then there was the aircraft carrier.

The light carrier USS Cabot, known as the "Iron Woman," saw heavy action in World War II, surviving kamikaze hits. It was transferred to the Spanish navy in the 1960s and rechristened Dédalo.

In the 1980s, Kern bought the decommissioned ship for $1. He planned to turn it into a museum and casino docked at Mardi Gras World; investors included his pal Harry Lee, the longtime Jefferson Parish sheriff.

It cost $344,000 in fuel to sail the ship to New Orleans; Kern also had to fly nearly 400 sailors home to Spain. The Cabot lingered on the Mississippi riverfront for years. But, Kern said, he and former Gov. Edwin Edwards couldn’t cut a deal on a casino license. In 1999, the carrier was sold at auction for scrap.

Kern fathered five kids during the first two of his four marriages. But in his own estimation, “I was young, filthy rich, and an (expletive) of the first magnitude where women were concerned.”

But very late in life, he finally found what he was looking for.

Two 'old souls'

He and the former Holly Brown have been a couple for 16 years; they were married in 2010 in Hawaii. Now 41, she knows his stories by heart and tries to edit his more impolitic utterances.

Their conspicuous 49-year age gap, they say, is no impediment. “We’re both old souls,” Holly said.

“She was raised by her grandparents,” Blaine noted.

They met in 2002 after being seated across from each other during a Bacchus event at Brennan’s. Young and pretty, she owned a dance studio, Planet Dance, in Metairie, and was going through a divorce.

Blaine was drawn to her blue eyes and creativity. “She’s a choreographer, she dances, she sings — she’s a genius,” he said. “She’s exceptional.”

After she and Blaine started dating, he lobbied her to give up her dance studio to focus on him. For two years, she refused. "That would be like me asking him to give up art," she said.The cost of all those trips came up in the legal dispute between Blaine and Barry that first flared in 2010. Just as Tom Benson's family battled over control of the Saints, the Kerns clashed over Carnival. Their power struggle was major news in New Orleans.

“Unfortunately, what was a family issue became a very public issue,” Barry Kern said. “Everybody in New Orleans feels that they own a piece of Mardi Gras. Because of that, a lot of things that happened to us, which in other families and businesses would have been private, were public.”

The leaders of Bacchus, Rex and Endymion, not wanting the production of their parades to be disrupted, brokered a temporary truce between father and son.

In 2015, the conflict was finally resolved for good. Blaine sold his 50.1 percent stake in Blaine Kern Artists to Barry, putting the son he'd groomed as his successor firmly in charge.

More than two years later, Blaine and Barry insist, all is well.

“My relationship with my father and Holly is much better than it was when all that negativity was happening," Barry Kern said. "We’ve all had time to let things go.

“I think she cares for him, and he cares for her. When a relationship like that starts, people will be circumspect. But it’s different than what I thought it initially was. From my perspective now, they have a really good relationship.”

Creative juices revived

Case in point: The couple's collaboration on "A Tree in the Sea."

Holly had wanted to author a children's book ever since a first-grade teacher at St. Catherine of Siena School praised her writing. But Blaine initially dismissed her proposed storyline — about a friendly tree in the sea that saves fish from sharks — as "ridiculous."

She was hurt, and indignant: “The king of whimsy is telling me there'd never be a tree in the sea? This is a children’s book!"

He thought the project was beneath him: “I didn't feel like illustrating a book. My company’s worldwide. This was, like, nothing."

Holly conceded that "it was not the time. He was busy traveling the world and being Mr. Mardi Gras."

He’d also fallen out of the habit of drawing. “I’d lost confidence in myself,” he said.

In 2016, they realized one of Kern’s dreams by attending Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The trip reignited his creativity. “He was like a kid in a candy store,” Holly said.

Back home in Harvey, she encouraged him to paint an undersea scene in a guest bathroom. (He eventually agreed to cover the mermaid's prominent breasts with a seashell bikini top.)

With his creative juices flowing, she resurrected her book idea. For months, they debated the content. Finally, Kern put colored pencils to paper, conjuring up an undersea world with an older Neptune and a younger, buxom mermaid.

River Road Press published “A Tree in the Sea” last fall. The couple is already planning their next book.

Not that they lack for activities. Kern still needs to stay busy. “He hates the ‘r’ word,” Holly said. "Retired."

His father “is a lot more low-key than 10 or 15 years ago, but he’s not like many other 90-year-olds,” Barry Kern said. “His age never had anything to do with the way he thinks and feels and lives. He’s not a person that was acting his age, ever. He’s been referred to as Peter Pan many times.”

Last fall, Kern reigned over the Krewe of Boo Halloween parade. Also in 2017, he and Holly traveled to Cuba, where, in 1960, he had staged a mini-parade for Fidel Castro.

He hopes to ride in a car in several Carnival parades this week, depending on the weather.

"He's going to want to mingle with the crowd," Holly said. "For him to sit in a car and not interact with people, that's torture."

The couple realizes that time is not on their side. Before he got a pacemaker in 2008, Holly resuscitated him with CPR at least three times. "Breathing life into somebody, that really strengthens your bond," she said.

These days, they spend time at home with their five small dogs and three cats. At the gym, Blaine pedals a stationary bike for 40 minutes. He draws. Holly is teaching tap dancing again. They post wacky videos of themselves on Facebook and Instagram.

“We have fun,” Holly said. “We’re creative people, and goofy people. But we’re on a social media break right now. Our time together is limited. We need to spend time face to face.”

Still looking ahead, Blaine doesn’t spend much time on reflection. But does his Mardi Gras legacy make him proud?

“It does and it doesn’t,” he said. “Let me tell you why. People walk up to me and hug me and congratulate me. Somehow, I don’t feel like I deserve it. I’m very Catholic. God’s given me this talent, but it’s embarrassing a little bit.”

This is the new Blaine Kern talking. Ten years ago, he still craved attention.

“He’s a totally different person now,” Holly said. “I like this Blaine Kern a lot better. That (court case) changed both of us. It’s made us better people, more spiritual.”

Kern used to strut into church hoping to be noticed. Now he's more likely to keep his head bowed.

“So many people know me and they’re waving at me … it’s disconcerting,” he said. “I don’t like it. I’d hate to be a movie star.”

But being Mr. Mardi Gras? That he still enjoys.

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Mardi Gras prevails over weather

The weatherman predicted thunderstorms at noon, so I wasn't hopeful for daylong Mardi Gras day festivities. I got a phone call from a friend at 7:45 a.m., saying she was bailing on the Zulu parade - too cold and windy to catch coconuts.

I leisurely made a pot of coffee and continued watching for weather updates.

At 9:30 a.m, I got a call from another friend, saying let's go. It isn't too late to meet the St. Anne's parade, I said. They move so slowly. I've arrived on Royal Street at 11 a.m. before and it still hadn't arrived. (St. Anne, a casual foot parade, starts way up in the Bywater and makes its way down through the Marigny and French Quarter before disbanding. Last year, a wedding took place en route, so that slowed it further.)



I adapted my costume for inclement weather and mounted my bicycle for the trip. My rhinestone glasses would serve as a windshield if winds got too strong and chartreuse nylon raincoat would keep me from being completely drenched. (I had some passing thoughts about how inappropriate this behavior was for someone almost 59, but that evaporated when I saw others much older in much more ridiculous costumes.)

French lindy-hop dancer

Much to my amazement, the rains held off most of the day with just a brief shower around 1 p.m. We saw the entire St. Anne Krewe and then followed the Krewe of Cosmic Debris to the levee.

After that, it was a march up Bourbon Street to Frenchmen Street and another menagerie, including some miscreants from my lindy-hop crowd.

Krewe of Cosmic Debris

'25 Years Wasted' sets the tone

Carnival has begun! And the most fun parade, in my humble opinion, happened last night.

The past couple of years, Krewe du Vieux (not View or Voo as many pronounce, but French for "old" as in Vieux Carre, translation: Old Quarter aka French Quarter) Whew! and that rhymes with vieux.

This is a walking parade of crazy, Marigny/Bywater residents who march down Royal across Toulouse and up Decatur Streets at a leisurely pace at the start of Carnival season. This year, the satirical theme was "25 Years Wasted," which highlighted Wall Street, Sarah Palin, BP, our very own waste collection service and a number of other trashy topics. The King was Don Marshall, Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation executive director.

Marching spermes

Seventeen sub-krewes interpreting the Wasted concept in their own rite included: Krew of C.R.U.D.E., Krewe of Space Age Love, Krewe of Underwear, Seeds of Decline, Krewe of Mama Roux, Krewe of L.E.W.D., Krewe of Drips and Discharges, Krewe of K.A.O.S., Knights of Mondo, T.O.K.I.N., Krewe Rue Bourbon, Krewe of C.R.A.P.S., Krewe of PAN, Mystic Krewe of Spearms, Mystic Krewe of Comatose, Mystic Krewe of Inane and Krewe du Mishigas.

After driving miles, searching for a legal parking spot, I finally ended up in front of the Baptist Missionary Church in the Treme. A bit out of my realm, I was fortunately among many other parade-goers tromping back toward the French Quarter route. I enjoyed a beverage with friends who own a house on Bourbon Street, but quickly leapt into action when I heard the first trumpets blare.

When I couldn't get close enough to document the parade photographically, I jaunted over to Decatur to patiently await the parade's return. It was explained to me by a fellow wearing an Afro wig and flowered blazer - a 70's costume I presume - that marchers were moving more slowly this year because the weather was more accommodating.

I stood with a couple of bewildered Japanese tourists who were unsure what to expect. The tourist bureau had told them this particular parade was unauthorized. I explained as best I could. Also with us was a conventioneer from Connecticut with a video camera. When the first batch of skateboarders went buy, he said, "Is that the parade"? No, I said. There won't be any doubt in your mind when the parade actually arrives.

A charming Tulane law student joined our group. She said the costumes were reminiscent of Steampunk. Huh? She'd had had a date with somebody who was into Steampunk, which incorporates 19th century fashions and futuristic technology into an alternate sci-fi reality.

I'll let the pictures say the rest.

Mardi Gras Sunday

After a solid afternoon of shouting for beads at the Uptown Toth parade, I could not pass up seeing Drew Brees heading up the Bacchus parade that night. He truly looked like our Prince Charming, crowned and dressed in gold, while flinging beads to the cheering masses along St. Charles Avenue. James Gandolfini was fun as King of Bacchus, but he plays a gangster, after all, and Brees is a true hero.


There's something inexplicably thrilling about Mardi Gras parades. Even if you aren't a Saints fan (isn't everybody these days?), you gotta love the marching bands. Who knows how all those schools refitted their bands with smart, colorful uniforms and sparkling musical instruments post-K? St. Augustine High School's Purple Knights, considered to be one of the most thrilling bands, played "Beat It" in honor of Michael Jackson who died earlier this year.
At Thoth, earlier in the day, Cajun horsemen got a chance to show off as well as high-steppin' gals in cute costumes. I caught more beads than my neck would allow me to carry, as well as a feather boa, doubloons, flowers and chocolate candies for Valentine's Day.

I saw my pilates instructor, Christine, riding horseback, despite having been thrown off and on crutches just a couple of months ago.

A bit about the spectacular high school bands:

With two days left before the band's first Mardi Gras parade, band leader Wilbert Rawlins wasn’t about to let his troupe of young musicians relax.Pacing before dozens of rapt and silent teenagers sitting with their instruments in hand, he instructed: “At this point, we should be working on the relentless pursuit of perfection. Just showing up to practice does not make us perfect.”



Rawlins waved his hand dismissively at the array of trophies won by O. Perry Walker’s band through the decades, reminding the students never to rest on past laurels. 



“If you’re in here you’ve got to be willing to work,” he said. “One slip of the tongue, that’s one less person. One slip of the hand, that’s one less person. We need everybody.”



In the cramped band room of the West Bank charter school, that “everybody” is more than 100 students strong. It includes novices who only recently picked up an instrument and students with so much musical experience their horns feel like extensions of their hands.


Such large, ambitious marching bands have become a relative anomaly in a city famous for its second-lines, brass bands and musical luminaries, however. More than four years after Hurricane Katrina, band leaders say they are fighting to ensure the tradition thrives in a dramatically altered public school landscape. 



The decline of that tradition, they fear, would mark the loss of an activity — a passion — that, over the decades, has kept scores of the city’s teenagers connected to school. The best band directors realize that strong marching bands can bolster strong academic programs in the long run, particularly if the music and academic classes are well integrated. And in some cases, “if you keep an instrument in a kid’s hand, it will keep a kid from picking up a gun,” said Elijah Brimmer, a longtime band director in the city.



Several forces have depleted the ranks of the city’s marching bands. First, fewer students now live in the city, as the overall population has dropped since Katrina. And several high schools with vibrant marching bands, including Kennedy High School near the lakefront, did not reopen after the storm.



Moreover, the city’s public high schools tend to be much smaller than before the storm. And many remain in a state of flux as some of the low-performing schools phase out grade by grade, with new programs taking their place.



With a few notable exceptions, including Sophie B. Wright and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. charter schools, the city’s middle schools no longer have marching bands, depriving the high school programs of their usual pipeline. 



And at some of the new high schools, creating marching bands has — for good reason — taken a back seat as administrators work to build strong academic programs.



A handful of private and public schools still have powerhouse bands, including Walker and St. Augustine High School. Still, some Carnival krewes were desperate for local bands this year, Rawlins said.



“We got so many calls from krewes asking us to march,” he said. “They were like, ‘We need someone to fill this spot and this spot. Can you suggest someone, please?’”



Carnival parades are required by law to feature at least seven marching bands, a tradition that has helped foster a vibrant band culture at many of the city’s schools for decades.


“Hopefully, in the very, very near future we can get more students from the middle schools and junior highs to come in and help bring our programs alive,” said Keith Thomas, the new band director at John McDonogh High School.



John McDonogh’s band will not march this year, giving Thomas time to recruit new members and better prepare the current musicians.



“They are just not ready to be on the street yet,” he said.



Thomas noted that many students lost sight of the tradition after so much personal turmoil, including the post-storm scattering of relatives, mentors and band leaders who inspired many children to pick up an instrument in the first place.



“We have kids who really don’t know what they want to do,” he said. “One day they want to march and the next day they don’t. You’ve got to sell it. You’ve got to make them believe in the program.”



Like a family


Band helped Dalisha Hebert believe in herself again after the quadruple blows of Katrina, the deaths of both her grandmothers and her father's murder. 

Hebert, a junior at Walker, recalled: “I felt so much anger and grief that I didn’t care what anyone said. If my Dad wasn’t telling me something, then I didn’t listen.”



That changed when Hebert met Rawlins and joined the band.


Hebert started off playing the trumpet, persevering even though she couldn’t read music at first. “Sometimes I used to take the horn home and play anything just to hear noise come out of it,” she said. “I used to call and be like, ‘Mr. Rawlins, how does this part go?’ It could be like 9 at night and he’d answer.”



After her freshman year, Hebert followed her gut and her fascination with the French horn section. “I was so stuck on them that I couldn’t look anywhere else,” she said. 

She excelled at the new instrument and, at the same time, her grades in school improved as she grew more motivated.



Hebert and LeAura Landix, a senior who plays the trombone, said the marching band feels more like a family than an extracurricular activity.



“Your decisions that you make right now are going to affect your children,” Rawlins told the students one recent afternoon. He reminded them a minute later that, like a family, the band’s ties are unbreakable.



“Have you ever seen me put somebody out, I mean really put somebody out? When I put someone out what I’m saying is, ‘You need this. You love this. This is your life.’”



‘Declining interest’


With the exception of John McDonogh, most of the state-run Recovery School District’s high schools will march this Carnival season, as will historically strong bands under the auspices of the local School Board, such as Warren Easton.



But Brimmer, the band director at Cohen High School, said some of the RSD’s programs are hanging on by a thread.

“I can see a declining interest,” he said.



Brimmer, who came out of retirement to revive Cohen’s program, plans to retire for good at the end of this school year. He worries about what will happen to Cohen’s band and music program after his departure.



“It’s competing against other programs like football and track. Everybody is fighting to get the kids who want to stay after school and work with some type of program,” he said. “Unless they stress music, the program will go down.”

Still, there’s some reason for optimism.



A group of local musicians started The Roots of Music program for middle school-age students in 2008, offering after-school musical and academic instruction and a marching band. And some leaders at relatively young charter middle and high schools, including Green charter in Uptown, say they plan to add marching band programs that could debut as early as next year. That should ease the difficulties faced by high school band leaders, who say the vast majority of their students come with no musical training.



A few parade krewes, including the popular Muses, say they can still find enough local marching bands for their parades. But others have had to rely more on out-of-town bands in recent years, said Warren Serignet, who coordinates several New Orleans parades. 



“Quite a few of the krewes are not using local bands because they cost too much,” he said, noting that the $2,300 price tag for many New Orleans high school bands is nearly double what it costs to bring in a band from out of the region.


“The only local (public school) band that I have is George Washington Carver with Tucks,” Serignet said. “I can go out of town and get them for less with just as many (players).” 



Recovery School District officials said the price did not rise this year and that most of the money covers expenses such as transportation and insurance; extra funds go to support ongoing costs such as uniforms and instrument repair. O. Perry Walker, for instance, spends nearly $1,000 on buses for each parade and another $800 to have the band uniforms cleaned, not to mention the cost of feeding the students before each event. Moreover, many local bands have no money to support their programs apart from what they earn from the parades.



Band directors like Brimmer believe the marching tradition will survive in the city’s public schools, but on a much smaller scale. At least a few schools will retain powerhouse bands. But gone will be the days when a premier New Orleans band — with well over 80 students and a style and sound unparalleled in any other city — follows almost every float.



On the streets


Three hours before their first parade of the season, the Walker marching band members prepared ­— some frantic, others poised and relaxed.


The musicians changed out of their khaki pants and into navy pants with orange stripes down the side. Students fueled up on cold cuts and water for the five-mile walk. Tuba players shined their instruments to a gleaming silver. By hand, a parent glued orange sparkles on each majorette’s white boots. 



Rawlins looked every student up and down, telling one: “You need to get your shoes clean. That’s unacceptable, unacceptable.”



He singled out another young man whose uniform was unpressed and unfastened. “It looks like it’s from the Mission, not a finely tailored tuxedo.”



Despite the last-minute glitches, the students made it on the bus and to the Uptown start of Oshun well before the parade rolled.


“Tighten it up, tighten it up,” Rawlins said as the group disembarked from the buses. “You’re all on public display now.”



The students lined up on the broad Napoleon Avenue neutral ground, the drum majors and the rows of trombones, trumpets, clarinets, tubas and more. Classmates from Walker and members of the Cohen marching band stopped by to admire the sight.



When the parade got under way, the Walker band marched down Napoleon past the TV crews, rounding the corner into the admiring throngs on St. Charles.



In this parade, at least, no other band compares.

“There used to be a bunch of schools with big old bands,” said Troy Lynn, a Walker band parent. “Now it sometimes feels like we’re about the only ones left.”





Sarah Carr can be reached at scarr@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3497.



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