Reefer Songs With Kermit Ruffins

The
weight of history is piling into the present, spilling onto painted murals on
the exterior walls and framed photographs of jazz legends within the crowded Mother-in-Law
Lounge. Here at the famously vibrant New Orleans bar, which doubles as a live
music venue and a shrine to local R&B singer Ernie K-Doe, another local
hero Kermit Ruffins is preparing to open his weekly set.

The jazz trumpeter, vocalist and composer performs regularly around his hometown and hosts Monday gigs at Mother-in-Law Lounge, which he took over operating in 2011. At Ruffins’ lounge in the historic Treme neighborhood, the murals of K-Doe — whose chart-topping hit “Mother-in-Law” gave the bar its name — are only the most obvious way that history is coloring the present.

The Treme neighborhood is the birthplace of jazz music, with many historians pointing to New Orleans’ cornetist Buddy Bolden as being the first champion of the genre in the late 1800s and early 1900s with his swinging and improvisational music. After the Jazz Age of the ’20s and ’30s, with bandleaders like Louis Armstrong moving jazz dominance up to Chicago, jazz continued to thrive and develop in New Orleans. The band that Ruffins started in his 20s, the Rebirth Brass Band, embodies this continued development. When it debuted more than 30 years ago, Rebirth fueled a brass band revolution. With the group, Ruffins toured the world, returning home to embark on a solo career, headlining a jazz quintet known as the Barbeque Swingers.

Nowadays, Ruffins, who played himself on the HBO series “Treme,” is a staple of the neighborhood. He often can be found barbequing outside or performing at his bar, where the welcoming space flows with a cadre of Ruffins’ musical friends who frequently join him in impromptu sets.

Inside the Mother-in-Law Lounge, Ruffins pays homage to one of his idols, Armstrong, with a large photograph. The lives of Armstrong and Ruffins intersect in more than one place: jazz, New Orleans, brass bands and outspoken advocacy for what Ruffins prefers to call “the reefer,” but what Armstrong called “the gage.”

In New Orleans, as with all romantic American cities, the past dances with the present and sometimes, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. When Armstrong was arrested for cannabis possession in the 1930s, he became one of its earliest advocates. Today, in a state where cannabis remains inaccessible even to medical patients, Ruffins continues to advocate for a plant with a deep historical connection to the traditional music he brings to life.

After
seeing Ruffins perform at the Mother-in-Law Lounge, I caught up with him over
the phone the next day. The trumpeter was calling from Houston, where he also
has a home, along with another bar, Axelrad, where he tells me there is a craft
beer that “smells just like marijuana.” We spoke about the consequences of
Louisiana’s anti-cannabis laws on black families, the first time he smoked  marijuana, and just how much inspiration he’s
pulled from an old CD of “reefer songs.”

One of your idols
Louis Armstrong was arrested for cannabis possession and wrote the song
“Muggles” about the gage. What are your thoughts on marijuana’s contributions
to the history of jazz music?

I’m quite sure that back in the days when jazz was invented in New Orleans, marijuana was a big relief. You know what I mean? So far as the daily events of racism, I’m quite sure it was very important to have that joint at the end of the day — just going to the neighborhood and rolling a joint, sitting down and smoking and preparing for the next day to make money for your family or make music or what have you.

How
does cannabis influence your art?

I might have started [smoking] at right about 15 years old. I’m 54 now and I don’t think I’ve missed a day of it since then. I’m positive that it had a strong influence when I started the Rebirth Brass Band in ’82. As far as writing tunes, it’s just been a big influence on the creativity of the music and the culture and just the change of the music — where it changed from the old brass band style to the style that The Rebirth came out with, which was just a little bit more peppy, more than anything, but the same music.

What
was your first experience with cannabis? You said you were 15?

Yeah, right, about 15 years old.

What
did you do, smoke with your friends or…?

If
I remember clearly, I think a guy was growing it in the backyard next to my
house in the Lower Ninth Ward and I think me and a couple of friends jumped the
fence and snatched the plant. We didn’t realize what we were doing, it wasn’t
even ready yet and we just chopped it up and smoked it. So I’m not sure that…
umm.. [laughs] we got the effect that
we thought we were going to get. But as far as we were concerned, we were high
[laughs].

Many legendary jazz artists have songs about cannabis and you also have a song called “Hide the Reefer.” Was it important to you to write a song about cannabis and, if so, why?

Well, the main thing was my manager back in the day with The Rebirth, her name was Allison Miner. She started the Jazz and Heritage Festival along with Quint Davis and when she started managing me, the first thing she did was gave me a CD called “Reefer Songs.” That CD was the highlight of my life because we traveled the road so much in Europe, every summer for like 15 summers in a row, and we were always in vans, in trains, in vans and trains and vans and trains, you know? So, that was the soundtrack of my European tours when I first started traveling with The Rebirth Brass Band, my original brass band. Those tunes just gave me a drive, so when I finally broke away from The Rebirth and decided to go on my own, every CD I recorded I decided to do one of those reefer songs. Eventually, I wrote one of my own.

“Hide
the Reefer” is a great one, too. It’s a classic.

Aw,
thank you. There was a guy named Creeper who was a neighborhood guy. I think he
served in the military for a long time. The Treme neighborhood had so many
characters [back in the day]. I mean, just hundreds of characters walkin’ down
the avenue on any given Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday right about noon. The
whole neighborhood would help Creeper out with anything he needed. You know,
give him money for food, give him a little reefer, a beer — whatever he needed
— and he would sometimes have a real sloppy kind of mouth so nobody wanted to
pass him the reefer. So, when he came up the street, we’d be like, “Hide the
reefer, here come Creeper.” That’s the way that song evolved.

What
is your favorite slang term for marijuana?

Reefer
— I think because of the reefer song CD. I called it weed before that. My
favorite joke is to say my wife left me for the reefer man… I sure miss him.

What are your thoughts on medical marijuana in Louisiana?

We
better hurry up and legalize it. The state can use all that money and we can
stop incarcerating people and losing lots of money and breaking up families. One
arrest can lead a family into a bunch of money situations to the point where
you can’t afford rent and you have to move in with your mom and that causes
chaos, so it breaks up families. Within two or three months, it can totally
destroy a family. What has been going on in America is poor black citizens, often
because of marijuana charges, really can’t afford that. No family can afford
that — to pay an attorney, to pay your bills, and get on probation for six
months and then pay the city or the state $50 every week to get drug tested.

I
mean, I went through that, to the point that I got busted for a little reefer
and I had to go through it for six months and had to pay so much money for drug
testing, so much money to the lawyer, so much money to the courts. I was lucky
that I had a profession where I could afford to still take care of my family
and not get tossed on the street, but it ruined so many lives back in the day.

The
state really needs to release anybody that’s still in Angola [the notorious
Louisiana State Penitentiary] on marijuana charges, you know? It has to be
reversed right away. Other than that, there’s going to be no justice. It’s so
sad they’ve got elderly old men back there for a bag of marijuana that are
still in jail. It just doesn’t make sense at all. I guess back then, nobody
really gave a sh*t, but thank god that it’s changing.

What’s
next for you? What have you got going on?

We’re
hoping to put out a bunch of CDs and basically take care of family, friends and
my neighborhood.

TELL US, did you know the history of marijuana was
closely connected with the history of jazz?

Originally published in Issue 37 of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE

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