Kermit Ruffins is an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and composer from New Orleans. He has been influenced by Louis Armstrong and Louis Jordan and says that the highest note he can hit on trumpet is a high C. He often accompanies his songs with his own vocals. Most of his bands perform New Orleans jazz standards though he also composes many of his own pieces. Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Ruffins is an unabashed entertainer who plays trumpet with a bright, silvery tone, sings with off-the-cuff charm and never gets too abstruse in his material."
Ruffins at the 2007 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
Ruffins (left) with the late Danny Barker at French Quarter Festival, circa 1990
Ruffins at Tipitina's, February 2006
Ruffins at Old Mint, shown before a set at the Satchmo SummerFest, August 2007
The Ninth Ward or 9th Ward is a distinctive region of New Orleans, Louisiana, which is located in the easternmost downriver portion of the city. It is geographically the largest of the 17 Wards of New Orleans. On the south, the Ninth Ward is bounded by the Mississippi River. On the western or "upriver" side, the Ninth Ward is bounded by Franklin Avenue, then Almonaster Avenue, then People's Avenue. From the north end of People's Avenue the boundary continues on a straight line north to Lake Pontchartrain; this line is the boundary between the Ninth and the city's Eighth Ward. The Lake forms the north and northeastern end of the ward. St. Bernard Parish is the boundary to the southeast, Lake Borgne farther southeast and east, and the end of Orleans Parish to the east at the Rigolets.
Monument arch specifically commemorating all 9th Warders who served in World War I is in the Bywater neighborhood of the 9th Ward
Flooding after Betsy, 1965
The school a young Ruby Bridges found herself integrating into at the peak of the Civil Rights Movement.
22 December 2005 view inland from the inner (southern) of the two major breaches in the lower side of the Industrial Canal levee & floodwall into the Lower 9th Ward, one of the more famous of the multiple levee failures which devastated much of the Ward at the time of Hurricane Katrina