Doreen Ketchins
speaker
125 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Doreen Ketchins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I grew up in the Treme, and yeah, a lot of people are familiar with that neighborhood because of the TV series. And I grew up in the house that I was christened in, actually. It was a church, and I was christened in that very house. And then it became a whole bunch of other things. But yeah, right in the middle. And my parents had a sweet shop, and they named it after me. Yeah.
And that's a whole other New Orleans traditional story in itself.
Yeah, it was amazing. We were at my favorite subject, which was music. And there was a talk of a pop quiz. And it's like, they said we're going to have a pop quiz when we go back. And I'm like, we ain't never had no pop quiz, you know. Well, of course, we got back up and there was a pop quiz. And I got the stink eye from so many people, you know.
But the quiz was as such because there was like 30 kids in the classroom. And he'd go down the line, he'd ask one question, and if you got it right, you passed. If you got it wrong, you failed. And I looked out the window and I said, oh God, he'd get me out of this, I'll do anything.
And about two minutes later, the principal came on the loudspeaker, and she said, anybody interested in joining the band, report to the band room immediately. And I'm like, oh my goodness gracious. I raised my hand, of course everybody else raised their hand too. But by God's grace, he picked me. And we were running down the hall, and I was so happy.
And we went to the band room, and we spent all our time in that classroom. But when I got to the band room, it was a huge room, and it was beautiful. They had music notes and pictures of instruments all over the walls and stuff like that. And I saw the flute, and I was like, oh, wow, look at that. I said, I'm going to play the flute.
And the band director, Mr. Berthelot, he started out introducing different instruments and saying different things. And then he asked, he went row by row asking, what do you want to play? Well, I already knew what I wanted to play because the flute was so sleek and so silver and so beautiful. But the girl in front of me, she said, the flute. And the girl next to her, she said, the flute.
And it went on and on about seven to nine times. And by the time he was getting close to me, I was like, well, I don't want to play that now. It's a pretty common instrument, you know. And the clarinet was right next to it. So I said, I'll play that. And that's what I played with clarinet.
Of course, they had about five or six other girls that said clarinet because they were boy-girl instruments and girl instruments, you know. Right, right. But I was the first one, so I was all right with that.
We were in college, and he knocked on my practice room one day. I went to this performing arts school called NOCA, you know, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. And I used to practice in this closet, the janitor's closet. And in the janitor's closet, you could hear the clarinet all through the school. But since it was a performing arts school, nobody complained, you know.
And one day, Ellis Marcellus knocked on my door. And he said, hey, you sound pretty good on that. You know, you ever thought about playing some jazz? And I'm like... No. And he said, well, why don't you listen to some jazz clarinetists and see what you think? You know, I'm like, okay. And Ellis Marcellus always did intimidate me, you know.
Yeah, so, you know, I was like, he said, well, why don't you take a listen and, you know, let me know what you think. And I'm like, okay. And see, I wasn't enthused because that's homework, you know. In addition to everything else I had to do, now I got to go to the library because, you know, you can't just take out your phone and go and look for, you know, I got to go to the library.
I got to check this out and all this other stuff. But I did because I knew he was coming back, you know, and I listened and I heard a lot of clarinetists, you know, George Lewis, you know, Pete Fountain and, you know, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw. And I respected what they did, but we were different.
You know, I was concentrating more on tone and technique and they were more concentrated on jamming, you know, bending the notes and not really concerned about tone and stuff like that, you know, so it wasn't my thing. And so, you know, a few days later, he knocked on the door again, and he said, well, what did you think? And I was like, you know, it's really not my thing.
I can appreciate what they're doing, but it's not my thing. And he said, well, you're entitled to your opinion. And as I tell you that, I can still see him saying that. Before he closed the door. And I just, I thought the world was going to end because I just made Mr. Marcellus angry, you know. He wasn't angry. He was just chilling, you know. And then I went to Loyola.
And just to cut the story short, I was practicing in the practice room. And, you know, there was a knock on the door. And I looked at the door. It was in a cubicle. So, you know, the doors were glass. This gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous dude was knocking on the door. And I'm like, may I help you? And he said, almost verbatim, I kid you not, he said, you know, you sound really good on that clarinet.
You know, you ought to try playing some jazz. And I was like, okay.
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. .
Right? So, you know, straight tone, fill the horn up with air and stuff like that. And, you know, when you go high. So, but when I play jazz, you know, I still consider those qualities, you know, the quality of the tone and the quality of the technique and stuff like that. But, you know, guys would do it. You know what I mean?
Showing 21–40 of 125 · page 2 of 7
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