Louisiana, 5 places we take you
New Orleans music tours begin with jazz, which was born here and never left. Brass bands still march on Sundays, traditional jazz still fills a plain room in the French Quarter every night, and Frenchmen Street has more good bands per block than anywhere we know.
From $1895 tours that go there
New Orleans is the only American city where music is part of ordinary life, not only a night out. Funerals have brass bands, social clubs hold second line parades through their neighborhoods on Sunday afternoons, and the corner bar often has a piano player who has been there for thirty years. The city gave the world jazz, then rhythm and blues through Fats Domino and Professor Longhair, then funk through the Meters.
Our New Orleans tours stay in the French Quarter or the Marigny, so every club is a walk away. Days go to the places where the music started, from Congo Square to the Old Mint, and nights to Preservation Hall, Frenchmen Street and the uptown clubs, with a tour leader who grew up going to them.
5 tours
Nashville, Muscle Shoals, Memphis, Mississippi Delta and New Orleans
Nashville, Florence, Memphis, Clarksdale, New Orleans
Ten days down the road from Nashville to New Orleans, with the studios of Muscle Shoals, Sun and Stax, two nights in the Delta and three in the jazz city at the end.
From $4,890 per person, double room
See the tourNew Orleans, Mississippi Delta, Memphis and Chicago
New Orleans, Clarksdale, Memphis, Chicago
The Great Migration route in nine days: from New Orleans jazz up through the Delta and Memphis, then overnight on the City of New Orleans train to the Chicago blues.
From $4,590 per person, double room
See the tourNew Orleans
New Orleans
Five days in the city that invented jazz, staying in the Marigny a block from Frenchmen Street, with Preservation Hall, a brass band night uptown and the Natchez on the river.
From $2,390 per person, double room
See the tourNew Orleans
New Orleans
Five days timed to the big New Orleans festivals: French Quarter Fest in April, either weekend of Jazz Fest, or Satchmo SummerFest in August, with tickets and shuttles included.
From $3,490 per person, double room
See the tourNew Orleans
New Orleans
A day with a local musician: Tremé and Congo Square in the morning, the Jazz Museum after lunch, and three clubs on Frenchmen Street at night.
From $189 per person, lunch included
See the tourPrices per person sharing a double room; day tours per person. Flights to the start city are optional and priced on each tour.
The places
Two blocks of Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg Marigny, just past the edge of the French Quarter, hold a dozen music clubs. On a weekend night the Spotted Cat, d.b.a., the Blue Nile and Snug Harbor all have bands by eight, and brass bands play on the corners in between.
Unlike Bourbon Street, this is where locals go. Cover charges are low or nothing, with a one-drink minimum, and you can hear traditional jazz, funk and modern jazz in an hour. Our tour leader plans a route through three rooms and leaves you free to stay where you like.
Tours that visit Frenchmen Street
Preservation Hall opened in 1961 in an old art gallery on St. Peter Street to give the older generation of jazz players somewhere to perform. The room is plain, the benches are hard, half the audience sits on the floor, and there are no drinks. The music is traditional New Orleans jazz played by masters, in sets of about 45 minutes.
Around it, the French Quarter is the old city of balconies and courtyards. Our guide walks you through Jackson Square, past the house where Fats Domino played and the old Storyville district on its edge.
Tours that visit Preservation Hall and the French Quarter
Tremé, just across Rampart Street from the Quarter, is one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in America. Congo Square, now part of Louis Armstrong Park, is where enslaved Africans were allowed to gather on Sunday afternoons in the late 1700s and early 1800s to drum, sing and dance, keeping rhythms that fed straight into jazz.
Our guide is a Tremé musician who walks the group past the corner bars, the churches and the Backstreet Cultural Museum, which shows the beaded suits of the Mardi Gras Indians and the regalia of the social aid and pleasure clubs.
Tours that visit Tremé and Congo Square
The Old U.S. Mint, at the downriver end of the French Quarter, struck coins for both the Union and the Confederacy. Today its upper floor holds the New Orleans Jazz Museum, with Louis Armstrong's first cornet, Fats Domino's piano, and a collection of photographs and records that runs from the first jazz recordings of 1917 to the bounce music of today.
The building also has a performance hall with free concerts most weeks, and the WWOZ radio station works from the second floor. The museum is small enough for a relaxed hour and a half.
Tours that visit New Orleans Jazz Museum
Tipitina's opened in 1977 at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street as a home for Professor Longhair, the piano player whose rumba-boogie style shaped New Orleans rhythm and blues. A bust of him stands by the door. It is a dance hall with a big floor and a balcony, and the Neville Brothers, Dr. John and the Radiators made their names here.
Uptown also has the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street, where the Rebirth Brass Band has played on Tuesday nights for decades. We go by the St. Charles streetcar or our van.
Tours that visit Tipitina's and Uptown
Getting around
The French Quarter, Frenchmen Street, Tremé and the Old Mint are within a 20-minute walk of each other.
The St. Charles and Canal lines run uptown and to Mid-City; we buy the day passes.
For Tipitina's and the Maple Leaf late at night, and for the airport, 25 minutes away.
Loading the map
Tour vanAmtrak trainRiverboatShort flight Map tiles: © Esri, HERE, Garmin © OpenStreetMap contributors. Lines join the stops in tour order in simplified form.
What is included
Best time to visit
February brings Mardi Gras, April has French Quarter Fest and the two weekends of Jazz Fest, and October and November are warm and dry. June to September is hot, with hurricane season; early August has Satchmo SummerFest.
At a glance
Questions
We walk it once so you have seen it. The music we take you to is on Frenchmen Street, at Preservation Hall and uptown.
Second lines are open to anyone who walks along behind the band. We plan the Sunday around one when a club parades that weekend, mostly from August to May.
Their suits are at the Backstreet Cultural Museum. They parade on Mardi Gras, St. Joseph's Night and Super Sunday in March, which we time some dates to.
The French Quarter and the Marigny are busy late. Your tour leader walks the group between clubs, and we use the van after midnight.
Your tour leader will push you toward a muffuletta, a shrimp po-boy and red beans and rice; the welcome dinner is Creole.
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