THE MOTHER-IN-LAW LOUNGE

The worst person I know (Mother in law, mother in law)
She worried me, so (Mother in law, mother in law)
If she’d leave us alone we would have a happy home
Sent from down below (Mother in law, mother in law)
—from 1961 number one hit written by Allen Toussaint and performed by Ernie K-Doe

In 1994 Ernie K-Doe opened the Mother-In-Law Lounge on Claiborne in New Orleans. When Ernie died in 2001 at age 65 his widow Antoinette continued to operate the popular haunt, even through Hurricane Katrina which almost destroyed it, but when she passed away in 2009 its future was uncertain. Operated on and off by daughter Betty Fox in the years following her parents passing, New Orleans trumpeter Kermit Ruffins reopened the lounge in 2014. Daniel Fuselier, a self-taught artist from Metairie, dubbed “the Michelangelo of the Mother-In-Law Lounge” by the Times-Picayune, began his work on the outside in 2006 and has been painting and reworking it ever since.