Uncle John's Band

Well... Regarding the "meaning" of "Uncle John's Band"...

Its an old story. It was down by the river. It could have been any river but it wasn't. It was the Mississippi.
It was down there by the river you see---there was a whorehouse. Now these whores were a pretty tight-knit group, in this house anyway.
It wasn't like "The House of the Rising Sun" or anything like that. Of course it was a bad scene in some ways but then there were ways of mitigating that because these ladies looked out for each other. Well, as it turned out, there were two other "institutions" (if you will) that were right next door to the whorehouse, a jazz club, and an orphange. In those days contraception wasn't always partcularly reliable, and when you make you living as a woman by lying down with men, every now and again something happens.
And whores could get pregnant.
When they did their "sisters" watched out for them and the children were often carried to term. Louisiana is and was very Catholic, after all. Of course there were those who opted out and tried for termination, but you see, in those days that wasn't very reliable either. Very often the ending was tragic.
So that's why these "sisters of the night" looked out for their own.
There was love there in an unconventional world. And the orphanage next door was a Catholic orphanage. So, well, of course children couldn't be brought up in a whorehouse: they had to be protected from all that, and that's what their mothers thought too. And it was pretty smart to set up that orphanage so close by where it was needed. But the thing was, just because a whore had a child and that child went over to the orphanage, it didn't mean the mother always lost track of that child. Some did. Some didn't want to know. Or maybe they weren't a part of that tight-knit group, that community. They went away. Or the disappeared. Or they died. But others stayed. Just because they made their livings by lying down with men didn't always mean they were irresponsible in other ways. Maybe they were just stuck. Maybe they went to church. So sometimes these whores would know which of the orphans were theirs. And sometimes they would help the orphanage with gifts of food, and toys, and parties, and holidays. And sometimes they would visit.
But the priests and nuns at the orphanage didn't tell the children who these nice ladies were that visited them.
But you have to wonder...and you certainly have to wonder what the children suspected, especially as they grew to maturity in this world. Well...there was a jazz musician, a piano player, real ivory tickler.
He played in the jazz club nearby, he had lived there by that bend in the river all his life.
He came over to the whorehouse to play special too.
This man was a real favorite with the whores. They really loved him.
As it turned out, he had bedded down with quite a number of them, and over time, had sired children with some of them.
Those children were residing in the orphanage. Sometimes, when the whores would visit the orphange to put on a party or a barbecue, the jazzman would accompany them, and would sing for them and play on the guitar.
It was then that when the little kids said "Who is that man?", the whores would say, "...well, that is your 'Uncle John'..." But his name wasn't "John", in any event. That is a colloquialism.
His name was Cornelius. It was an awkward and a painful situation. But "Uncle John" came to love his children and the other orphans who were not his children very much. He promised himself he would help them if he could, and that one day if he could, he would reveal to them the nature of their patrimony.
It was New Orleans.
Cornelius won big at gambling one night, and the next week, he conspired with the whores to put on a big cook-out for the orphans, with plenty of music. They set up a place near the river, with tables, and firepits, and a little stage for a jazz band.
Prior to his big winnings, Cornelius had been poor, but now he was a man of means, with a house in town he had set up nicely.
On a sunny, beautiful day "Uncle John" and his whores showed up at the orphanage, and took the children and their protective nuns down to the river to hear Uncle John's band. "Come hear Uncle John'd band, by the riverside!"

He had come to take his children home. "I am not your 'Uncle John'. I am your real father! Let's go home together now."