What follows is a distilled interview from 2003 with Mr. Arthur Raymond Smith in New Orleans.

On living in New Orleans

I was born on November 14, 1932. I’ve been here all my life. I just made seventy years. My mother’s one and only. I could have left here by singing. A friend of mine, he left here in ’71 to California. He’d send me letters over and over. He’d say, “Smith, why don’t you come. Say, with your voice you could go big. Ya know, work in the movie and go big with the stars. Billie Holiday and all of them.” He said, “I’ll send you a roundtrip ticket to L.A. If you don’t like it, you can go back.” But I stayed with my mother. Thank God for that.

When did your mom pass away?

Twenty-four years ago. My grandmother has been dead 57 years.

Do you live in their house?

Oh, no. (points to the van) It’s such a red taper. This house I kind of gave up on. That’s August 1962 (points to a picture of himself pasted on the front door). Twenty-nine years old. Look at the teeth then. Well, the features, the face is mainly the same. That’s me. That’s 40 years ago.

On the neighborhood

This was an exclusive neighborhood way back there, when my mom was born in 1909. My grandma born 1892. Her sister born 1890 and sister died at 62-years-old. At that time, they bring the bodies in the house. That was an old tradition a long time ago. At the time, two or three nights. And the doors would stay open all night. And you’d eat and drink coffee and cheese and cracker sandwiches and bologna sausage. It was a tradition which you could trust people. And they had booze too. Some people’d drink so much they couldn’t even go to the funeral the next day (laughing). My grandmother’s mass, we left that house at 8:30 that morning to be at the cemetery for nine o’clock.

On planning for death

I will be buried where my mother’s buried in the poor section. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. In the poor section are the two graves I ever owned. My mother used to tell me when she was living that, “After I succumb, they’ll be nobody else to do for you what I have done.” And I find it to be a fact.

I did the house to their memory. My mother’s and my grandma’s memory. I was a sickly kid, and my grandmother was very, very nice to me. Incidentally, I was born on her birthday. The day she made 40 I was born. And she was really proud of me.