Remembering Pableaux Johnson
(January 8, 1966 - January 26, 2025)
I was scrolling through Instagram while watching the Chiefs/Bills Conference Championship game last night when an enigmatic post about Pableaux Johnson referred to him in the past tense. Similar updates from mutual friends started dropping into my feed like raindrops and I reached out to two different friends who confirmed the worst. That afternoon in New Orleans, Pableaux Johnson had suffered a heart attack and collapsed while while shooting the Ladies and Men of Unity second line parade, and died after being taken to a nearby hospital. He was 59.
Our last exchanges were mutual Happy Birthday messages (with his “brotherman” salutation)—he turned 59 on January 8 and my odometer flipped to 56 on Friday. And don’t think the maudlin humor (some might say poor taste) of the name of last Friday’s Birthday dispatch regarding getting old doesn’t haunt me as yet another friend is gone (not to mention the darker finality evoked in the name of this very publication and the title of my book of the same name).
There are hundreds of people in New Orleans and around the country who knew Pableaux better than me and I don’t think any testimony I might add on what a special human he was will surprise anyone because he touched so many people in so many different ways.
I do regret never sitting around his grandmother’s kitchen table at his home in New Orleans for his legendary Monday-night gathering over red beans and rice, cornbread, and bourbon (I also sadly missed the one he staged here in Brooklyn years ago when he brought the road show to NYC).
I can’t think of New Orleans without thinking of Pableaux, who served as an ambassador, unofficial mayor, advocate, and chronicler of the Crescent City. He welcomed me with open arms, and a bear hug, upon my first trip there in the sticky summer of 2012, stealing me away from the stuffy conference rooms of Tales of the Cocktail for an hours-long personal tour through New Orleans riding shotgun in his car.
I’m not sure if it’s public or private, but my friend Michael Oates Palmer shared a moving and powerful tribute to his friend Pableaux this morning on the Facebook that is as beautiful as it is heart-breaking knowing we’re all now spinning around on a world without Pableaux. His friends have created a Friends of Pableaux space to collect photographs, stories, memories, and “Pableaux-isms” to share with this family, and you can read more in his obituary in The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate.
Pableaux was a great supporter of my writing and we spent a lot of time chopping it up concerning the trials and tribulations of living life as a freelancer in an ever-changing landscape. I was honored to have him as the second guest in the LAST CALL Dive Bar Jukebox series. And since there are thousands of new readers here today than there were back in July 2022, I wanted to share his Dive Bar Jukebox as a memory for those who have been here since the beginning, as a sample of why he was special for those who didn’t know him.
Plus it’s Monday, the traditional day for making Red Beans and Rice in New Orleans, and I imagine there will be many pots of Camellia beans simmering on stovetops in his honor and memory today in New Orleans. He was even kind enough to share his recipe for his signature dish along with his excellent playlist of “genre-crossing cover songs.”
Crank up the playlist this evening and get cooking!
My love and condolences to Pableaux’s family and friends.
Rest easy, brotherman…
Dive Bar Jukebox with Pableaux Johnson
(This was the second dispatch in the Dive Bar Jukebox series and originally ran on July 29, 2022.)
Welcome back to Dive Bar Jukebox, where every Friday bartenders, writers, chefs, musicians, and a cast of cool characters stop by to talk about their favorite dive bars and share a hand-picked, annotated 10-song playlist for your weekend listening pleasure.