J&M Music Shop T-Shirt

Alfie and I went to New Orleans a few years ago to visit her family and spend a little time there. One of the places on my list to visit was J&M Music Shop, a former recording studio where much of the R&B and Rock & Roll from New Orleans was recorded. The original place was there for 10 years, '45 to '55, then it moved to a larger facility down the street. Cosimo Matassa's story is very interesting, and this place hosted some of the absolute best musicians ever to play anywhere. An integrated facility in the segregated south of the late 1940s, making what would come to be some of the earliest "crossover" hit records. Records that genuinely brought people together, showed us the joyful power of R&B music and forged it into Rock & Roll. "Don't You Just Know It" by Huey Smith. Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Earl Palmer, Roy Brown, Professor Longhair, a cameo by a young Jerry Lee Lewis, and of course Little Richard.

I think it may be impossible to state how much Little Richard's music means to me. I listen to it every day. I spend a lot of time thinking about him. There is no precedent for his life. I encourage you to read the Wikipedia entry for Little Richard completely. He is the backbone of Rock & Roll. Rock & Roll as a liberating force starts with him. He is complicated and contradictory, and yet the feeling in his songs is like lightning.

We visited J&M on that trip - I encourage everyone to go. It's just a laundromat now, it was then too save for the tiny studio in the back. They have the terrazzo logo out front, and the historical marker, and inside some framed photos of people who played there. It is one of the holiest places I have ever been.

The place of course has no gift shop, or merch, so I made a T-Shirtof the tile logo.

• 50% polyester, 25% combed ring-spun cotton, 25% rayon
• Fabric weight: 3.4 oz/yd² (115.3 g/m²)
• Pre-shrunk for extra durability
• 40 singles
• Regular fit
• Side-seamed construction
• Blank product sourced from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, or the US