Uncle Lionel Batiste: New Orleans Personified

The Soul Queen of New Orleans... Who Also Founded a Radio Station

We've already told you about Irma Thomas, the Soul Queen of New Orleans. But there's another woman who deserves the title of Queen in a different domain — Deidre "Deejay" Roper... actually, let me tell you about someone most New Orleanians don't know nearly enough about: Uncle Lionel Batiste.

Lionel Batiste was born in New Orleans in 1931 and became one of the most recognizable figures in the city's cultural landscape. He was the bass drummer and assistant leader of the Tremé Brass Band, and for decades, he was a fixture of the second line tradition — marching through the streets in his signature outfit of a sharp suit, a sash, and a watch on each wrist.

Uncle Lionel didn't just play music. He was the embodiment of the second line spirit — the joy, the swagger, the pure New Orleans-ness that makes the city's street parades unlike anything else on Earth. When he marched, people followed. When he smiled, the whole block smiled back. He was the living, breathing soul of a tradition that goes back more than a century.

He appeared in the HBO series Treme, playing himself — because there was no one else who could play Uncle Lionel. He was featured in countless documentaries and photographs. He became the image that came to mind when people pictured a New Orleans second line: the dapper older gentleman with the bass drum, leading the parade through the streets of Tremé.

Uncle Lionel died on July 8, 2012, at the age of eighty-one. His funeral was one of the biggest second lines the city had ever seen — thousands of people following the brass band through the streets, dancing and crying and celebrating a life that had been lived exactly the way a New Orleans life should be lived. Uncle Lionel Batiste was New Orleans personified, and when he died, a piece of the city went with him.