New Orleans enters the play through conversation rather than a staged visit: it is a destination Levee proposes and a place he recalls from an earlier experience. The city becomes a measure of musical identity and worldly familiarity, while Levee’s story of Lula White’s gives that promised outing a darker edge.

A Destination in the Band Room

After Irvin and Toledo leave the studio, Levee asks Slow Drag whether he has ever been to New Orleans. Slow Drag questions what there is in the city that he would want, and Levee turns the answer into a challenge: he treats a musician’s unfamiliarity with New Orleans as a mark against his standing. Their exchange makes the city a point of comparison between the men, not merely a place on a route. Slow Drag answers that New Orleans offers nothing he cannot get in Fat Back. Levee mocks the comparison, grouping Fat Back, Arkansas, and New Orleans as places Slow Drag treats as interchangeable. The teasing establishes Levee’s confidence in his own knowledge of the city and his readiness to use that knowledge to unsettle the older musician.

Levee’s Recollection of Lula White’s

Levee next asks Cutler whether he has been to Lula White’s in New Orleans. Cutler has visited the city but does not recognize the name. Levee recalls having seen a man killed at the establishment after the man mistreated one of the women there. The memory gives the proposed destination a history of danger, even as Levee presents it as part of the city’s nightlife. Levee says he had asked about New Orleans because he planned to take Slow Drag to Lula White’s and introduce him to a woman he knows there. The plan is prospective; the play does not show the journey or establish that it takes place. New Orleans remains an imagined excursion, described through Levee’s promise and recollection.

Familiarity and Teasing

Cutler replies that Slow Drag does not need Levee to find him a woman and can look after himself. He then turns the teasing back on Levee, warning him to watch his own companion around Slow Drag. The exchange shifts attention from Levee’s proposed hospitality to the band members’ banter about independence and romantic competition. These brief references define New Orleans through contrasting claims: Slow Drag dismisses its appeal, Cutler has been there without knowing Lula White’s, and Levee speaks as someone familiar with the club and intent on sharing that familiarity. The city’s significance in this passage lies in how the men use it to measure experience, status, and the promise of a good time, while Levee’s account prevents that promise from seeming wholly carefree.