The Spotted Cat Music Club

Seven nights a week starting around 6pm, live jazz and swing bands take the narrow stage at 623 Frenchmen St. No cover charge. No food. No VIP section. Just the music and whoever showed up. The room holds maybe 80 people, built around a long bar. The dancing starts early and doesn't stop. Bands rotate nightly but the quality is consistent — the Spotted Cat books working musicians, not tourist acts. This is the place locals bring out-of-town friends to show them what New Orleans music actually sounds like. New Orleans has been a place of many tongues since before the French arrived in 1718. The Choctaw called it Bulbancha — "place of many tongues" — and it was an important trading hub for thousands of years. The French founded La Nouvelle-Orléans at the bend in the Mississippi because it controlled the entire river valley and the portage route between the river and Lake Pontchartrain. The convergence stuck. By the 19th century it was the largest port in the Southern United States. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city rebuilt, and it remains a major destination for live music. The Spotted Cat is where that lineage plays out on a weeknight. Cash preferred.