527 City Park Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana 70119
Holt Cemetery is basically a potter's field-- the final resting place for some of New Orleans poor and indigent peoples for over a century. Because it's a cemetery for the poor, people are buried in the ground rather than housed in the mausoleums you see throughout the city's scenic cemeteries. More prosperous dead people rot in fancy tombs, but most of the graves here are personally decorated with bed frames, brightly-painted piles of earthly possessions, wooden headstones, and planter boxes, among other touching displays.
One of the poor indigents in the earth here is regarded as the father of jazz music, cornetist Buddy Bolden. Bolden and his crew starred in Storyville, the black high-living district of early 20th century New Orleans. Unlike Mississippi-bluesman Robert Johnson — an equally mythical figure in American music history — Bolden's music is totally the stuff of legend, since his one rumored recording has never surfaced. He's remembered as a clear-toned, emotive player who embellished his parts. Bolden was institutionalized in 1907, and died in 1931. As befits a man of legend, the precise location of his grave is unknown.
Jessie Hill, singer of the New Orleans R&B classic “Ooh Pooh Pah Doo,” died in 1996 and is buried in a clearly-marked grave adorned with the kind of loving, hand-made marker seen throughout Holt.