Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music: Bo Dollis

Theodore Emile “Bo” Dollis was born on January 14, 1944 with an extraordinary gift that eventually made him a sacred figure in New Orleans and a fabulous symbol of the city’s unique culture everywhere else. Dollis had a voice that set him apart. He had a native ability to sing that was apparent from early childhood. He had no formal musical training, and he didn’t come from one of New Orleans’ legendary musical families, but when he sang in church people noticed. At home, Dollis proudly exercised his vocal talents to the delight of friends and visitors and over time developed a soul singer’s voice, full of passion and intensity with a rasp that gave him a wild edge.

Dollis grew up on Jackson Avenue in Central City, where the esoteric African-American society of Mardi Gras Indians offered an alluring and vaguely dangerous brotherhood. The gangs were organized into hierarchies for their street excursions—Big Chiefs, Spy Boys who scouted for opposition gangs, Flag Boys who relayed that information to the Chief, the Wild Man who literally scared people away from the procession. Dollis became fascinated with the elaborately beaded costumes a neighbor fashioned for Mardi Gras and St. Joseph’s Day and started hanging out at a backyard Indian practice in the neighborhood. Dollis’ parents feared the reputation for violence that had built up over the years as gangs from different sections of the city engaged in bloody turf wars. They forbade him from joining up with a tribe, but Dollis secretly sewed his own Indian suit out of fragments from his neighbor’s old costumes and marched on Mardi Gras with the Golden Arrows when he was 13 years old.

The mystical power of the word at the heart of Mardi Gras Indian ritual resided in Dollis, whose preacher’s powers made him stand out after he joined the Wild Magnolias. Though he was a relative newcomer, Dollis quickly rose from Flag Boy to Big Chief in 1964 largely because of his singing ability. As Big Chief of the Wild Magnolias, Dollis helped refashion the nature and practices of Mardi Gras Indian culture and protocol through the 1960s, preserving the traditional ritual texts but changing the nature of the competition between tribes and bringing the Indians to a wider audience. Bo Dollis was part of a new breed of Mardi Gras Indians that eschewed violence and sublimated the competition between gangs into a contest of costumes, the prettier and more elaborate the better.

Mardi Gras Indian culture made a dramatic breakthrough to the outside world in 1970 when Dollis and his childhood friend Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles organized a Mardi Gras Indian second line as part of the inaugural New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which took place across the street from the French Quarter in Congo Square. New Orleans had just emerged from the social restrictions of segregation. It was a truly historic moment for a city scarred by the American original sin of slavery to have an African American secret society lead an integrated public parade to a spot where their ancestors had been sold as chattel. The voice of Bo Dollis called the way into the Promised Land.

Dollis also took a bold step toward opening Mardi Gras Indian culture to the outside world that same year when he and the Wild Magnolias made a commercial recording of their hitherto secret liturgical music, cutting a 45 rpm record produced by Jazz Fest founder Quint Davis, “Handa Wanda.”

The first Wild Magnolias recordings were fairly representative of what the gangs sounded like as they paraded down the street playing small percussion instruments and chanting. But in performance, they had begun to be accompanied by keyboardist Willie Tee, who wrote arrangements for the chants and put together a psychedelic funk backup for them with his band the Gaturs. In 1974 they released the legendary Wild Magnolias album, backed by a New Orleans all-star band that included Willie Tee, his brother Earl Turbinton, Jr. on saxophone, Snooks Eaglin on guitar and Alfred “Uganda” Roberts on percussion. This band’s performance at the Bottom Line in New York made the Magnolias headline news.

Eventually the Wild Magnolias evolved into two performance styles, traditional parade music and a funk/R&B concert band. Over the years, Dollis has led these bands with his commanding vocal presence and by writing some of the most important new compositions in the Mardi Gras Indian canon, including “Handa Wanda” and “Smoke My Peace Pipe.” As a result, the Wild Magnolias have become the most celebrated Mardi Gras Indian tribe, building an international audience and opening up the music’s conceptual borders to the point where Japanese guitarist June Yamagishi joined the band.

Through it all, the keening cry of Bo Dollis’ voice has called the Indians to the parade. But today Dollis can no longer rely on that magnificent instrument. Incapacitated by a stroke and weakened by heart surgery and a three-times-a-week regimen of dialysis treatments, he has difficulty speaking and suffers from memory lapses. His afflictions have not dampened his cheerful spirit, though, and when we arrived at his home above the beauty parlor run by his wife Rita, he greeted us with a warm smile and a firm handshake. It was a sunny fall day and the strong afternoon light illuminated scores of feathery tufts that fell from the Indian suit Dollis’ son Gerard donned for the photo shoot. His speech was halting, but Gerard sat beside him, prompting his memory at times and filling in some historical detail.

Were your parents music fans?




You got introduced to the Indians by a neighbor, right?




Did you start writing songs for the Indians right away?


It was a ritual.

So you think some of that ritual is lost.




Dollis: Everybody wants to be chief. [laughs]








Maybe they can stop the violence again like you guys did.

Were you close with Tootie Montana?



But surely some of the Indians are keeping it alive.