"The Battle Field" where knife fights and gun play were common. At the age of about seven he moved to black Storyville. It consisted of dance halls honky tonks and brothels. It was an entertainment district like London's Soho. He grew up with music all around him. He could hear music from outside is house when he woke up and when he went to bed. It is recorded that Louis did attend school at the Fisk school where he learned to read and write. How long he attended this school is another mystery. One fact we do know about Louis is that he was arrested on New Years Eve 1912 for shooting a gun. Louis was around eleven at the time, and this was a very serious offense. He was sent to the Coloreds Waif House a reform school on the out skirts of New Orleans. Here Louis was introduced to organized music in the form of the school band. The school band was run by Captain Joseph Jones in a military fashion that was extremely strict. This is where Louis's life changed from delinquent to a disciplined young man this was also when Louis was introduced to playing a musical instrument. The teacher, Professor Pete Davis, first had reservations of letting Louis play in the school's brass band because he thought Louis was a bad kid. Finally Louis was let into the band, and received his first formal training on an instrument. More importantly than the music training Louis received from Professor Davis were the real life lessons Lois received. Professor Davis had more to do with Louis' self respect and discipline than with musicianship. Even more important was that Louis finally formed a positive relationship with an older male, a father figure, whose discipline Louis was willing to except. “Until this time, he had more or less acquiesced to the life into which he had been born, a world of pimps, thieves, hookers, and gamblers, of random violence and enigmatic jolts of good fortune." (Bergreen P. 75)After time Louis earned Davis' trust and Davis asked...
