From Trumpets to Strumpets the New Orleans Burlesque Festival

We’re all familiar with the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the French Quarter Festival, two of the Crescent City’s most popular celebrations of music. But every September the focus shifts from trumpets to strumpets at the New Orleans Burlesque Festival. This year, the 11th annual bawdy bash takes place Sept. 13-15, at two venues, the House of Blues, 225 Decatur St., and the Civic Theatre, 510 O’Keefe Ave. “We’re bringing our audiences the most beautiful and talented stripteasers from coast to coast, dancing to the sounds of a hot New Orleans jazz band,” says festival founder Rick Delaup, dubbed by the Times-Picayune as “the godfather of New Orleans’ modern burlesque scene.” As far back at the dawn of the Great Depression, striptease shows have been staged in the City that Care Forgot. In the 1930s, the Dauphine Club featured dancers cavorting on stage in nothing but fig leaves. In 1942, Izzy Hirst and Harold Minksy opened the Casino de Paree on Bourbon Street, according to girlie show historian Rachel Shteir. After the war, Manhattan street photographer Weegee (a.k.a. Arthur Felig) compared Bourbon Street to “the Bowery with a cover charge where the strippers strip around the cl