"She was extremely proper, very much a lady and very much part of the spirit of the way the French Quarter once was."
Peggy Scott Laborde
New Orleans historian and filmmaker
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NEW ORLEANS Yvonne Fasnacht, who spent much of her life playing jazz and welcoming aficionados to her French Quarter Club Dixie's Bar of Music on Bourbon Street has died at 101.
Known as Dixie, the elegant and sophisticated Fasnacht toured with the Southland Rhythm Girls, playing Dixieland Jazz in the 1930s.
In 1939, she and her sister Irma opened the first of several bars, all bearing the name Dixie's. The Bourbon Street edition was described as a place where rich and poor, famous and not, gay and straight felt comfortable.
According to the Preservation Resource Center's publication, "Preservation in Print," Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Rock Hudson, Danny Kaye and Gore Vidal were among those who visited the bar.
"Miss Dixie and her sister, Miss Irma, ran the bar for many years," said David Cuthbert, a former Times-Picayune reporter who interviewed Fasnacht when she was in her 80s. "Uptown, downtown and the back of town, everyone met at Dixie's." The bar was one of the first that catered openly to gays, said New Orleans historian and filmmaker Peggy Scott Laborde on Wednesday.
"She has one of the first places where gay men could go and be truly comfortable. It was always a very decorous place though. She wouldn't stand for any hanky-panky."
Fasnacht referred to her gay clientele as the "cufflink set," Laborde said, and was considered a hero by many. In the 1950s, homosexuals in New Orleans were trying to establish the now-famous gay Mardi Gras balls, Laborde said. One of the early balls was held in nearby Jefferson Parish, and was raided. Laborde said that Fasnacht bailed the men out of jail.
"She said she just took all the money out of the till and went and got them out," Cuthbert recalled.
Fasnacht's name means "Fat Tuesday" in German, Cuthbert said.
In French, Mardi Gras translates to "Fat Tuesday," the final day of the pre-Lenten celebration.
"She used to say, 'Mardi Gras never ends,'" he said. "And for her, it didn't."
Well into her 90s, Fasnacht lived in her apartment on Bourbon Street, still dying her hair red and dressing elegantly.
"She was extremely proper, very much a lady and very much part of the spirit of the way the French Quarter once was," Laborde said. Fasnacht's funeral was Wednesday.
