James Carville

“I was once asked, if I was ever elected president, who would I hire to play my at inauguration. My immediate answer was Ernie K-Doe. This perceptive, simpatico book … explains all my reasons why.”
—James Carville, political commentator and professor of political science, Tulane University

K-Doe on K-Doe: “I’m cocky but I’m good”

“I’m cocky but I’m good!”
—Ernie K-Doe

Eric Overmyer

“I love this book. Ben Sandmel has captured and conveyed the loopy genius, linguistic and musical, that was Ernie K-Doe, self-anointed Emperor of the Universe, and a character par excellence in a city full of larger-than-life characters. Ernie K-Doe put them all in the shade, and Ben Sandmel tells you how. The prose is lively, the quotations generous, the photos and graphics spectacular. This is one of the five essential books on New Orleans culture. You gotta get it.”
—Eric Overmyer, cocreator of HBO’s Treme

K-Doe on K-Doe: bad motor scooter

“On the second month, the twenty-second day, nineteen and thirty-six, eight-fifteen in the morning time, Charity Hospital went to rumblin’ and a-grumblin’! The building started to bendin’, the walls started shakin’, and the doctors said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s happening?’ The people told them doctors, ‘A boy-child is being born on the third floor, at this particular time!’ And I believe about that time the doctor had done finished what he had to do, and the nurses had done washed this beautiful body of mines down and brought it to my mother, and I believe my mother looked up at my father and said, ‘Huh! What we gonna name the boy this morning?’ And my father looked down at my mother and said, ‘Hush! You can’t name him nothin’ but one thing, that’s Ernie K-Doe Jr., and he’s gonna be a bad motor scooter!’”
—Ernie K-Doe

Mac Rebennack

“Ben Sandmel tells K-Doe’s story for real here, plus the stories of lots of other cats that I knew and gigged with and loved. This is a very cool book.”
—Mac Rebennack (Dr. John), Grammy-winning musician and songwriter and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee