All along this street of pleasure there were dance halls, honky-tonks, and cabarets, and each one had its music. My old friend, Tony Jackson, who composed 'Pretty Baby' and 'Some Sweet Day', used to play piano at a house run by Miss Antonia Gonzales, who sang and played cornet. The largest of the cabarets on Basin Street [New Orleans] was the Mahogany Hall, owned by my aunt, Miss Lulu White, and when my mother died, I went to live with her and became her adopted son. I'd go to sleep to the sound of the mechanical piano ragtime tunes, and when I woke up in the morning it would still be playing. The saloons in those days never had the doors closed, the hinges were all rusty and dusty. Little boys and grownups would walk along the avenues, swaying and whistling jazz tunes.