What does a New Orleans Jazz Funeral have to do with writing?
(You can see all the photos of Keith’s Jazz Funeral here.) I didn’t really know Keith “Fred Flames” Keller — not the way I know people I normally consider my close friends. I’d met him through his brother and my Santa Barbara friend Barry Keller, himself one of the eclectically talented people I love to have in my life, and it was easy to be impressed by him, to think that spending time with him would be a Good Idea. When Melinda and I decided to sell my place in Pointe Coupee Parish and change our Louisiana address to post-Katrina New Orleans, Keith was one of the people I talked to for advice on moving to the city. He was, among all his flashier talents, a builder, the kind who could look at a run down building and see past grandeur and future beauty. He was the kind of man New Orleans needs now. Keith died in mid-life, seemingly healthy one day and then, unexpectedly, dead, gone. When Barry told us there was a jazz funeral being planned for his brother and invited me, as a part-tim
