Category Archives: On the Market

Trois noire de Nouvelle Orleans

(Three Black Women of New Orleans)

This novella by Karen Celestan traces the lives of three New Orleans women - CeCe, Sonya, Charlayne – all from disparate backgrounds and experiences, yet intertwined by culture and society. Their stories explore class and intra-racial conflict as the sights and sounds of Crescent City culture swirl around each one - uniting them and ripping them apart.

Softcover edition – $12 

 Unfinished Blues: Memories of a New Orleans Music Man

by Harold Battiste Jr. with Karen Celestan

Published by The Historic New Orleans Collection ¤ June 2010 ¤ www.hnoc.org ¤ $28.95 ¤ Cloth – 198 pp. ¤ 63 color illustrations ¤ 8 x 10 ¤ Also on amazon.com

Copies signed by Battiste are available – $35

 Unsigned copies – $25

Chasing the dream from New Orleans to Los Angeles and back, Battiste thrived in the jazz, blues and pop scenes. The creative force behind a bevy of number-one hits—Barbara George’s “I Know (You Don’t Love Me No More),” Joe Jones’s “You Talk Too Much,” Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”—and the sage who launched the careers of Dr. John and Sonny & Cher, Battiste worked behind the scenes of the music industry for more than half a century. With Unfinished Blues, his voice is heard, unfiltered, at last.

Battiste’s musical sensibilities were formed—and his racial consciousness raised—in the churches, classrooms and jazz joints of New Orleans. A graduate of Dillard University’s music education program, Battiste confronted discrimination as a teacher in Louisiana’s segregated public school system. In the early 1950s, he founded All for One, the nation’s first African-American musician-owned and -operated record label. His commitment to education and uplift has never wavered: in recent decades, he worked alongside lifelong comrade Ellis Marsalis to build the renowned jazz studies program at the University of New Orleans. He can count among his friends and protégés many of today’s leading young jazz musicians—Nicholas Payton, the Marsalis Brothers, Jesse McBride and other members of a “next generation” keeping the New Orleans sound alive.

unfinished blues is richly illustrated and features excerpts from Battiste’s personal letters and journals. Battiste and co-author Karen Celestan collaborated on his memoir for over 10 years.

The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. (BCALA) presented the 2011 Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation to unfinished blues for excellence in scholarship.