Category: Podcast

Storytime: The Devil’s Marriage

Frontispiece for “Forgotten Books of the American Nursery”— The Devil and the Disobedient Child.

What would you do if your mother promised to marry you to the first person who climbed up a pole to catch a pumpkin?

That’s exactly how it happened in this old Louisiana folk tale, called “The Devil’s Marriage.”

Things go from bad to worse for a young girl who finds herself married to the devil… Fortunately, she gets sympathy from his mother and manages to escape through a series of homespun trials!

“The Devil’s Marriage” is one of the Louisiana folk tales collected by Alcee Fortier, a famous researcher and professor at Tulane University in the late 1800s. Fortier was renown for his publications on the French literature of Louisiana and France and his studies on Louisiana Creoles, Acadians and Isleños.

For more of his collection of folk tales, see Louisiana Folk Tales: In French Dialect and English Translation, 1894.

Thank you to Magpie Baccinelli for narrating this Louisiana folk tale for Confetti Park!
Music Medley: Fish Scales
Confetti Park is a community radio program out of New Orleans. We feature local storytellers and songs that kids love, songs created for kids, or created by kids, right here in Louisiana. This medley of kids music shows the diversity of Louisiana musicians.

Songs featured in this episode, in order:

We’re Going to Confetti Park – Confetti Park Players
Miss Mary Mack – Confetti Park Players
Shrimp & Gumbo – Dave Bartholomew
Humpty Dumpty – Louis Ray
Following My Mom Around – Imagination Movers
Oscar de la Oyster – Don Hoffman and the Louisiana Pollywogs
Hot Tamale Baby – Buckwheat Zydeco
King Cake Babies – Alan Dyson
Brahms’ Lullaby – Steve Riley, Yvette Landry & Richard Comeaux
Get Along Home – Kandice Chester
Narration – Papillon
Let’s Go! – Papillon
Iko Iko – Confetti Park Players

For more information about these artists, and kids music in Louisiana, visit https://confettipark.com

The Confetti Park podcast and radio program, hosted by Katy Hobgood Ray, features music and stories spun in Louisiana. It showcases songs that kids love, songs created for kids, and songs created by kids. Sparkling interviews, in-studio performances, delightful music medleys, jokes, local author storytime, and a little surprise lagniappe make for an entertaining show!

Subscribe on iTunes

The radio program version launched on April 4, 2015 in New Orleans on WHIV FM and is supported by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and Music Rising at Tulane University.

Current broadcast schedule:
- WHIV 102.3 FM in New Orleans every Saturday at 12:30 p.m. (Listen via Live Stream)
- KSLU 90.9 FM in Hammond every Sunday at 12 p.m. NOON
Community radio stations, interested in carrying Confetti Park? Contact Katy Ray.
Music Memory from Duane Pitre

In this episode of Confetti Park, we hear a formative childhood music memory from Duane Pitre, American composer, sound artist, and guitarist.

Photo of Duane Pitre by Sharon Pye.

Duane tends to focus on one thing at a time and learns it inside and out—whether that thing is skateboarding, composing experimental music, or playing guitar. (The former pro skateboarder says he has an “obsessive personality” in this 2012 ESPN article about his journey through the worlds of skateboarding and music.)

Currently, Duane is focusing on studying classical guitar.

Duane, who was born and raised in New Orleans, says his parents regularly attended rock and heavy metal concerts, and ensured that he was immersed in a healthy soundscape of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Allman Brothers. (In fact, Duane was named for Duane Allman.)

In Duane’s music memory, he reveals how a single note can emotionally affect a listener. Duane was only 5 or 6 when he put on a vinyl record of the self-titled Black Sabbath album. The mood was set by the thunderstorm, the church bells, and then the music came in…. with the tritone.

Little Duane was terrified, and immediately turned off the album, but the seeds of wonder were planted.

“It was an experience I will never forget,” says Duane. “It was the earliest musical experience of me hearing something and it really affecting me in some way…. It made me aware of the power of music.”

Thank you, Duane, for sharing this fascinating memory with Confetti Park!
Storytime: A misadventure in beekeeping by Dan Hobgood

Today’s featured story is the childhood memoir of a Louisiana beekeeper. This is Dan Hobgood, of Shreveport. He owns the company Bee-Goods, which is headquartered in the north part of Sportsman’s Paradise (that’s one of Louisiana’s nicknames). The bees are raised in the gently rolling hills of Ida, Louisiana on the family homestead nestled near a pine forest. The bees feed on wildflowers, wild berries, clover, goldenrod, and buckwheat, as well as garden fruits and vegetables such as squash, melons, persimmons, and figs.

Dan is originally from south Louisiana, and he regularly travels to regional farmers markets to sell honey and other bee products (currently he is fermenting honey vinegar), including the Crescent City Farmers Markets in New Orleans. Whenever he comes to NOLA, he visits his daughter in Algiers Point: Katy Hobgood Ray—the host of Confetti Park!!!

Dan came to beekeeping in recent years, but in this childhood memoir about growing up in Bogalusa, he recalls his first misadventure in beekeeping. Perhaps bees have always been his destiny!

Learn more about the importance of honeybees, and the importance of restricting pesticides in farming, here.
Music Memory from Anthony Dopsie

Anthony Dopsie of the Zydeco Twisters. Photo by Sally Asher

In this episode of Confetti Park, we hear from Anthony Dopsie, accordion player with Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr. & The Zydeco Twisters.

Anthony explains his role in the band (“I put the choo choo to the boogaloo!“) and he shares a childhood memory about growing up in a musical family. The Dopsies are Louisiana royalty—Anthony’s father was Rockin’ Dopsie, Sr., famed zydeco accordionist. (Check out this interview with Anthony’s brother, Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr.)

Says Anthony: “What got me into music was I started knowing that my dad was famous. He was just my Daddy, you know…. But when I got older and started seeing my dad on TV, and all the kids would want to come by, I said, ‘Well, that’s my dad, and I want to be like him one day!’”

Anthony also offers some good advice to kids about how to carve out your own niche in this world. Take a look around, and think about who you are, where you come from…..what are the things you really love—that maybe you take for granted? Maybe the answer is right in front of you.

“I really love my music. I really love my culture,” says Anthony. “I advise all the kids today to never forget where you come from. It starts off as a kid…. we all started from a flower. You keep watering that flower, one day that flower is gonna grow.”

What colorful, beautiful flowers we grow in Louisiana!
Music Medley: Vampire Frostbite
Confetti Park is a community radio program out of New Orleans. We feature local storytellers and songs that kids love, songs created for kids, or created by kids, right here in Louisiana.

This medley of kids music shows the diversity of Louisiana musicians. Songs featured in this episode, in order:
- Pretty Purple Possums – Angela Mannino and the Louisiana Pollywogs
- Growing Up – Imagination Movers
- Cotton Fields – Lead Belly
- Cotton Fields – Buckwheat Zydeco
- Gimme Gimme Ice Cream – Jeremy Lyons
The Confetti Park podcast and radio program, hosted by Katy Hobgood Ray, features music and stories spun in Louisiana. It showcases songs that kids love, songs created for kids, and songs created by kids. Sparkling interviews, in-studio performances, delightful music medleys, jokes, local author storytime, and a little surprise lagniappe make for an entertaining show!

Subscribe on iTunes

The radio program version launched on April 4, 2015 in New Orleans on WHIV FM and is supported by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and Music Rising at Tulane University.

Current broadcast schedule:
- WHIV 102.3 FM in New Orleans every Saturday at 12:30 p.m. (Listen via Live Stream)
- KSLU 90.9 FM in Hammond every Sunday at 12 p.m. NOON
Community radio stations, interested in carrying Confetti Park? Contact Katy Ray.
Storytime: Gumbo, Fried Cheese, the Saints and Drew Brees by Patricia Reece

Every year when the leaves start to fall, I visit my Grandpa and we have a ball.

With snoballs, streetcars, beignets, and the Dome, New Orleans is a place he is proud to call home.

So begins this adorable love letter to New Orleans, as told through the eyes of a child who is visiting her grandfather.

Many of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and wonderful attractions of the city are featured in this aural tour of New Orleans. From the Audubon Zoo to City Park, from the Mississippi River to the Lake Pontchartrain, Patricia Reece of Slidell, Louisiana gathers up the aspects of New Orleans that she has learned to cherish through a loving, nurturing relationship (and friendship) with her grandpa.

For Patricia and her grandfather, nothing can beat Gumbo, Fried Cheese, the Saints and Drew Brees.
Music Memory from Jayna Morgan

New Orleans jazz vocalist Jayna Morgan shares a music memory from her childhood in this episode of Confetti Park.

Jayna, who sings with the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band and the Swing Setters (among others), recalls the happiness of sharing music with her mother. When Jayna was a child, they would go fishing together, and whenever they would sit on the wharf, her mother would sing to her.

Sharing songs as a family can build a lifetime love of music, as we have seen with Jayna. She is a very active entertainer on the South Louisiana scene. In addition to performing with several bands, she is also a booking agent at 11th Commandment Records, owner of Fleur Decuers, and her in her spare time, a swing dancer and Lindy hopper.

Check out this interview with Jayna and the Swing Setters, a group that plays kids music jazz-style.
Music Medley: Porcupine Kiss
Confetti Park is a community radio program out of New Orleans. We feature local storytellers and songs that kids love, songs created for kids, or created by kids, right here in Louisiana.  This medley of kids music shows the diversity of Louisiana musicians. Songs featured in this episode, in order:
- Dump Truck – Imagination Movers
- A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea – Johnette Downing
- (Not About) The Things You Do – Mr. Michael’s Class with Young Audiences of Louisiana
- Iko Iko – Buckwheat Zydeco
- Iko Iko – Dr. John
- Fais Do Do – Yvette Landry
The Confetti Park podcast, hosted by Katy Hobgood Ray, features music and stories spun in Louisiana. Sparkling interviews, in-studio performances, delightful music medleys, jokes, local author storytime, and a little surprise lagniappe make for an entertaining show!
Guitarist David Rosser shares some early childhood musical memories

David Rosser on guitar. Photo by Sally Asher

In this episode of Confetti Park, we hear a childhood music memory from David Rosser, a talented guitarist and multi instrumentalist who lives in New Orleans. Dave shares about how his big brother was one of his greatest musical influences—and how they bonded and he learned from listening to records—especially the Beatles!

Dave has toured the world several times with different musical groups. He also produces, records, and mixes at his studio, Chateau Daveaux. Among those who he has performed and/or recorded with are the Afghan Whigs, the Twilight Singers, Mark Broussard, Ani Di Franco, Gal Holiday, Terry McDermott, Mark Lanegan Band, and the Gutter Twins.

Lucky for us, Dave Rosser is a featured guitarist on the Confetti Park Players CD, featuring a children’s choir based in Algiers. Check out his work behind Mr. Okra and the kids on “Have You Seen the Okra Man?”
Storytime: The Ice Cream Cow by Mel Lecompte, Jr.

What do you do with a cow that does not moo?

Westwego’s own Mel Lecompte, Jr. explores this conundrum in his colorful children’s tale, The Ice Cream Cow. Here he narrates for Confetti Park! Available for purchase on Amazon

Living on a farm with her friends the Chocolate Chip Chicken and the Soda Pop Duck, the Ice Cream Cow has a problem. While there are many things she can do — such as hop like a kangaroo — the poor cow does not moo. Kids will love the rhythmic tale of the cherry-topped, polka-dotted bovine and the quest for her true voice. Savvy parents who read this story to their little ones will enjoy scanning the illustrations for inside references meant to keep big people’s eyes in the book and not on their watches.

Mel is an elementary school teacher, an award-winning journalist and cartoonist, a musician and an entertainer (check out his band Mel and the Moodoggies), and a dad who writes and illustrates his own books, including T-Boy and the Terrible Turtle.
Music Memory from Tom Stagg

Tom Stagg experimenting with an iPod.

In this music memory for Confetti Park, jazz researcher and music promoter Tom Stagg shares how he became fascinated with New Orleans music in 1949, as a youngster growing up in England. Blame it on Louis Armstrong! He moved to New Orleans in the 1960s.

Tom Stagg is one of the owners of the New Orleans music label 504 Records, which he established in 1979. (Before that, his label was called NOLA Records.) The label specializes in traditional jazz music of New Orleans. For years, Tom was instrumental in organizing tours for New Orleans musicians such as Kid Thomas, John Handy, Emanuel Sayles, Andrew Morgan, Louis Nelson and Alton Purnell, and later, Fats Domino and Dr. John.

Tom himself was a musician for many years (bass, piano) as well as a professional wrestler! He is also from a musical family—his mother was a vocal soloist and his father was a dance band drummer.

Thank you, Tom!