Ragtime and Good Times: Antonia P. Gonzales, the Cornet-Playing Madam

Flick through the first half of any jazz biography and the tales which fly past your eyes are almost invariably those of hardship—riding the rails, sleeping on sofas, music for meals. One of my favorite examples of the genre, Wingy Manone’s Trumpet on the Wing, has the one-armed jazzman barely scratching together a living for almost all of its length, before bumping into Bing Crosby and finally finding fame on the radio and in Hollywood. But not everyone in Jazz Age New Orleans had it so tough. For while jazz musicians were blagging their way into bands and swapping their services for room and board (both of which Wingy did), there were also those to whom men were only too happy to keep forking over huge wads of cash: its brothel madams. Storyville was named for Sidney Story, a city alderman who penned the bylaws decriminalizing sex work in an area originally known as “The District”—but which soon became known to all by the alderman’s name, much to his annoyance. Bound by North Robertson, Iberville, Basin, and St. Louis Streets and within walking distance of a train station (handy), madams operated houses of ill repute there without fear of prosecution between 1897 and 1917. These well-heeled women included the likes of Lulu White, who famously festooned herself with diamonds (as recalled in the 1978 movie Pretty Baby) and Willie “Countess” Piazza, who was wealthy en