R. Emmet Kennedy was born in 1877 to Irish immigrants. In the Kennedy household, music was always in the air and musical talent appears to have run in the family. Emmett’s nephew and namesake, Emmett Hardy was a child prodigy and a jazz musician. Hardy entered a 1919 music contest where, after a long and intense struggle, he outplayed Louis Armstrong!

Emmett Kennedy’s life changed at the age of seven when he first heard African-American spirituals sung at New Hope Baptist Church. Fascinated with the “Negro spirituals” and the dialect of the people living in East Green, a mostly black community in Gretna, Emmett would be seen at every wake, funeral, baptism and wedding at New Hope Baptist Church.

He listened to the spirituals and wrote down the words to preserve for generations, songs that are still sung today. His works document the simple life, character, folklore and music of the southern “negro.”

Emmet Kennedy died in 1941 at 64 while on a visit to New Orleans. He had walked into Max Samson’s Drug Store on Camp Street to buy cigarettes, when he had a massive heart attack and died on the spot. He is buried in the Hook and Ladder Cemetery.