Final December, the Dew Drop Inn, a legendary New Orleans cultural landmark, was restored to its former glory as one of many nation’s most traditionally vital music venues and boutique motels. New Orleans native Curtis Doucette Jr., led by his ardour for historic Black tradition and music, acquired the dilapidated house in 2021 and spent three years restoring it.
From 1939 till the late Nineteen Sixties, the Dew Drop Inn hosted a number of the most iconic Black musicians of our time, legends like Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Marvin Gaye and James Brown. The venue served as an incubator for the delivery of recent appears like rhythm & blues and rock ‘n roll. It acted as a haven for LGBTQIA performers and symbolized the political combat for integration in America.
Initially established as a barbershop and Black enterprise hub by the late Frank G. Paina and positioned throughout from the Magnolia Housing Tasks—which might later be dwelling to rappers Juvenile, Lil Wayne and Soulja Slim—the Dew Drop Inn expanded to incorporate each a premiere leisure house and lodge in 1939. “Should you identify any of the greats from the ’50s and ’60s, they at the very least got here by these doorways,” stated Doucette throughout a tour of the renovated house. “That was Black and white, really, which was unlawful on the time.”
In 1952, after being arrested for breaking the legislation of “serving Negroes and whites collectively,” Paina employed the assistance of the NAACP’s A.P. Tureaud and Ernest “Dutch” Morial to assist show that the restrictions had been unconstitutional, not just for himself however for all nightlife house owners.
Later referred to as “The Groove Room,” the Dew Drop Inn additionally opened its doorways to queer performers like Patsy Valdalia, the self-proclaimed “Toast of New Orleans,” who hosted an annual homosexual ball on the venue.
“There have been two issues that contributed to the demise of this place,” Doucette defined. “One was integration and the opposite was the failing well being of Frank.” Following Paina’s dying in 1972, the membership remained in his household’s possession, however its recognition quickly declined together with the constructing’s construction. After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the Dew Drop Inn was all however completely destroyed.
In 2010, the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Fee designated the constructing a historic landmark, however it could be one other decade earlier than Doucette, with the assistance of Paina’s grandson Kenneth Jackson, would restore the Dew Drop Inn to its authentic glory.
“I’ve had historians inform me that this can be crucial small music venue within the nation, if not the world,” Doucette stated. “It was necessary that we rebuild proper right here the place the unique bones and roots of this place had been planted.”
At present, the Dew Drop Inn boasts 17 elegantly themed rooms that pay homage to the legendary acts who carried out throughout its heyday, an thrilling calendar of musical performances and a tribute to Paina’s entrepreneurial spirit with a staged inoperable barbershop that acts as a museum of the venue’s storied historical past.
