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Gwen Thompkins

Gwen Thompkins is a New Orleans native, NPR veteran and host of WWNO's Music Inside Out, where she brings to bear the knowledge and experience she amassed as senior editor of Weekend Edition, an East Africa correspondent, the holder of Nieman and Watson Fellowships, and as a longtime student of music from around the world.

The Record
8:28 am
Sun February 3, 2013

A Small-Time Wordsmith Hits It Big In Nashville

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Credit Scott Saltzman / Courtesy of the artist
Once a poet and an English teacher, Jim McCormick has become a powerhouse Nashville songwriter.
Credit Scott Saltzman / Courtesy of the artist
Credit Courtesy of the artists
McCormick (right) with singer-songwriter Brantley Gilbert. Gilbert's song "You Don't Know Her Like I Do," which McCormick co-wrote, hit the top of Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart in the summer of 2012.
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Originally published on Sun February 3, 2013 6:21 pm

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Music Interviews
2:03 am
Sat January 5, 2013

Preserving The Home, And History, Of New Orleans' Piano Professor

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Credit David Redfern / Redferns
Professor Longhair performs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, circa 1970.
Credit Jason Saul / WWNO
Professor Longhair's daughter Pat Walton Byrd poses outside Tipitina's, a New Orleans venue named after one of her father's compositions.
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Originally published on Sat January 5, 2013 2:10 pm

On the tough side of Terpsichore Street in New Orleans stands a duplex — a two-story, wood-framed building with wood floors, high ceilings and a nice fireplace. But this old house is empty: no furniture, no walls, no electricity, no toilet. Iron bars hide the windows; there's a lockbox on the door. The facade is three different shades of blecch, blurgh and blah.

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Dead Stop
3:13 am
Thu July 5, 2012

Beyond The Music In St. Louis Cemetery No. 2

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Credit Pat Jolly / AP
Ernie K-Doe poses outside his Mother-In-Law Lounge during Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 2001. He died a few months later and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.
Credit Courtesy of Rob Florence
Antoinette K-Doe (second from the left) stands with friends around a statue of her deceased husband, Ernie, at the St. Louis No. 2 tomb. Antoinette is buried in the tomb, and her mother — Ernie K-Doe's second and favorite mother-in-law, Leola Clark — is shown in the portrait. Clark is buried in the tomb, too.
Credit Masahiro Sumori / Wikimedia
Earl King on stage at the 1997 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He died a few years after Ernie K-Doe, and now the two share a tomb.
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Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 10:25 pm

There's so much water in, around and underneath New Orleans, that the dead spend eternity in tombs above ground.

Most of the tombs now have a similar design: On top, there's space for a wooden coffin or two, and at the bottom lies a potpourri of decanted family remains. Sooner or later, whoever is up high must vacate and settle lower, making room for the newly dead. That's how families stay together — in a desiccated jumble of grandpas, grandmas, siblings and cousins.

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