Thornton “Thorny” Penfield says he always loved music. When he was growing up in New York, his mother would write him notes so that he could get into clubs at 15 and 16 years old to hear the musicians play.

Over the years, Penfield followed his love of music to New Orleans and helped found and run what has become one of the cities most loved musical institutions — Tipitina’s.

During the course of starting and cultivating the club, he taught at many New Orleans universities, including a nearly 10-year stint as an English professor at Loyola.

Though he was not one of the original 14 who began Tipitina’s because he was away in Colorado, he returned shortly after it opened and became heavily involved.

With his walls covered in Tipitina’s and New Orleans music memorabilia, as well as countless drawers and boxes filled with master board tapes from thousands of shows, Penfield says Tipitina’s was more than just another music club.

He said the role of Tipitina’s in the community is something that hasn’t been addressed sufficiently.

One of the things that made it unique was the quality of the time, he says. Tipitina’s opened its doors Jan. 14, 1977.

“There was an us-against-them feeling all through the hippie era, particularly from 1965 to 1980,” he says.

“There was a carry-over from the civil rights movement, and in particular in New Orleans, from the anti-war movement.”

Those things and the “rock festival syndrome” were clear illustrations of the “our-world-against-their-world-attitude.”

Penfield says he doesn’t think that outlook exists in the same sense because lines have become blurred.

But in those days, there was a “cluster of people in town who never lost their fascination with New Orleans R&B, though rock’n’roll pretty much pushed it aside and rendered it uncommercial in the white community for many years,” he says.

The same group that was involved in the anti-war movement was “self-sustaining, self-isolating and identified with the street people who came through each spring, summer and early fall,” he says.

Those kids who came through, living on the streets and in City Park, helped define the subculture and “nourished this sense of a kind of hip community, even though they were mobile and many of us here were immobile,” he says.

Penfield categorized himself as one of the “weekend hippies” who earned a living teaching, but was looking for a place to gather with others in the community.

Before Tipitina’s, there was not much of a music scene Uptown except for the Maple Leaf and Jed’s, both located on Oak Street.

Penfield remembers that many were distressed about the treatment that the now-legendary Professor Longhair received at the hands of club owners who begrudgingly let him perform, though not at the grand piano at Jed’s.

“I was there that evening, and I remember what an insult that was. It was horrible, and it was typical,” he says.

“We were only 15 years past segregation here.”

When Tipitina’s opened, “it was the first time that many Uptown white kids had ever partied with black people, much less danced with them and drank with them,” Penfield says.

“It was a unique experience that changed lives.”

He says the original owners were proud of that fact.

“We used to boast, and with good foundation I think, that Tipitina’s was the most integrated place in the South.”

But the original Tipitina’s didn’t prove to be financially viable. Penfield says their anti-commercial attitude kept prices low, and admission was free to people in the neighborhood and all musicians.

The bar was set up in such a way that it was almost impossible to buy a drink, he says. People would come to Tipitina’s for the show, then walk across the street and buy drinks at the Rose Tattoo.

The parking situation also made it an easy police target, he says. Due to the shortage of space, people parked along the neutral ground and Napoleon Avenue, blocking driveways.

This gave the city and the police grounds to come down on a club that was welcoming and supportive of blacks, he says.

Tipitina’s closed its doors in the fall of 1984, the year of the World’s Fair in New Orleans, and opened again under new ownership in 1986.

They cut up the bar and took down all of the signs that had become the club’s trademarks. The signs weren’t brought out again until filming for “The Big Easy” converted Rosie’s into a temporary Tipitina’s for the movie.

After a long period in which management failed to cultivate the community the original founders valued so much, Penfield says the current managers are trying to bring back that atmosphere and are doing “a wonderful job honoring that tradition.”

He says they are doing this by sustaining the flavor from the choice in bartenders to the presence of longtime doorman, “Joe Cool.”

Penfield and some of the other original owners bought the name “Tipitina’s” and continue to lease it to the current ownership.

All the profits from the name go to their nonprofit organization called “Tipitina’s Social Aid and Pleasure Club,” something he says is in the original spirit of the club.

The group helped sustain Professor Longhair’s wife after he died, and today gives money for music scholarships and other music-related projects at Southern University of New Orleans.

In recent years Penfield says he has become a “marryer of musicians,” officiating at the services of dozens of ceremonies here and up North, where he spends eight months of the year with his wife Diane, on Lake George in the Adirondaks.

Until this spring, Penfield was a part time professor of English at Loyola and hopes to come back and teach again.

When assessing the meaning of music in his life, he compares its place with the way some people might view membership in a church that they join as young people and then grow older with.

“The institution has been there the whole while, as well as the ongoingness of the concerns that brought you together to begin with.”

“Thorny” Penfield holds a piece of Tipitina’s artwork by Mike Smith. Penfield has hundreds of pieces of memorabilia from his time as an owner of Tipitina’s. (STAFF PHOTO BY ERIN WILLIAMSON)

Located at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas, Tipitina’s continues to bring great music to the New Orleans community. The giant banana and Dixie signs are reminders of the club’s past and symbols of its future. (STAFF PHOTO BY PAMELA HOWARD)