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O’Neil Broyard
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Bobby Oakes
Michael Santucci
Martin Sawyer
Michael Smith
John Strickland
Floria Woodard

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This project was sponsored by a grant from Southern Comfort.

Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans

Martin Sawyer

“I would prefer to make a good sweet simple syrup, you know, the old-time sugar water, to put in any drink that requires a sugar base, you know. Because it is more smoother, and it’s a more natural taste and it have a way of making a drink more enjoyable, when you got that sugar.”

– Martin Sawyer

With almost fifty years of bartending under his belt and thirty-four years working at the Rib Room alone, eighty-four-year-old Martin Sawyer has seen it all. He got his first job as a bar-back at the infamous 500 Club. A bartender friend recruited him for the job so Martin could help him make out drink orders, as Martin was one of the few young men in his circle of friends who could read. With the nickname “Professor,” Martin studied up on cocktails and quickly became a fixture on the French Quarter bar scene. He had his picture taken with Louis Armstrong and served champagne to General De Gaul. With all that time tending bar, it is easy to believe that he would have had a few brushes with celebrity. What’s hard to believe, though, is the number of cocktails this man has mixed over the years. With time, care and a painstaking attention to detail, he has made mixing drinks a high art. All of these years later, Martin is still at it, making his famous Mint Julep with all the care and attention he did when he first mixed the drink almost five decades ago.

• Download a one minute audio clip from the Martin Sawyer interview (.wma format, 468KB.)

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

SUBJECT: Martin Sawyer, bartender
DATE: March 31, 2005
LOCATION: Rib Room
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans

Amy Evans: This is Thursday March thirty-first, two thousand and five. This is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance in New Orleans at the Royal Orleans Hotel—the Rib Room—in the Roundtable dining room adjacent to the Rib Room, with Mister Martin Sawyer, a bartender here. And Mister Sawyer, would you state your whole name and also your birthday, please sir?

Martin Sawyer: Um, my whole name is, uh, Martin Sawyer. My birthday is May the fourth, nineteen twenty-one.

And you’ve been here at the Rib Room for thirty-four years?

Thirty-four years this, uh, March the, uh, twenty-fifth.

My goodness! Now, where you born in New Orleans.

Yes, born in New Orleans.

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What did your parents do for work?

Well it’s been so many years ago, [you] figure me eighty-four, so they didn’t have nothing to do. Like my grandmother, she took in washing and, you know, did things like that. Other than that there wasn’t no jobs available, you know, of any construction. My father he worked on the WPA [Works Progress Administration], when that was out many years ago.

All right. So how’d you all get by as a family?

Well, I was so small I couldn’t remember how we got by but, uh, me myself, I start—when I got up to the age early—early, you know, ol—o—old enough I started working at grocery stores delivering groceries…That was a job that paid one dollar a day for eight hours, so that wasn’t nothing much.

Do you remember how old you were when you started doing that?

Oh, I would say I was about fifteen, sixteen years old.

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Well how did you get into the bartending business?

Well, first I was working in a shipyard, you know. Working at the Delta shipyard where they was making Liberty ships…And, uh, in the meantime I was doing a little landscaping and gardening, you know, on the days that I was off and things like that. Then one day, going into about [nineteen] forty, forty-four it was just a little bit over forty-three going into forty-four, the War started making a change…And, uh, one of the guys working in the Quarter, I knew him, his name was John Sartin, he was from Mississippi. I can’t think of the town he was from but, uh, he had a problem of reading you know and uh, he tell me one day—he used to talk to me ‘cause they’d given me a nickname “Professor.” You know, I used to read so much, and I had a whole lot of answers cause they didn’t have such big questions, you know, and I generally had the answer. So they started calling me “Professor,” you know. So he say to me, he say one day, he say, “Professor, you can read pretty good,” he say, “I—I work in the Quarter at the 500 Club on Bourbon and St. Louis,” he say, uh, “I can get you a job working with me, you know, as a bar back. You know, get the ice, cut the fruit and do things like that, and then you can, uh, you can learn the bartending business too. You can help me out by reading off the card.” See, he had a good memory of things that went into the drinks, but when the girls came in with all their fancy writing in a hurry, he couldn’t read what it—what the drink was, you see…So that’s where I stood by him and, uh, whenever they came in there with some kind of drink, whatnot, I would tell him what it was, and then he would—then he could make it, you know, and things like that. So by sticking with him for a little time I was able to be—able to read some of the bartender’s book. And then watching some of things he made, I was able to learn, you know, quite a few drinks. Now this was at the, uh, 500 Club at Bourbon and St. Louis. And that was the first bartending job that I had, working with this fella. So I finally learned it.

What kind of bar was that?

It was—it was, um, a bar where they had entertainment. They had the Basin Street Six that was a band ca—local band called the Basin Street Six…But when I was over at the 500 Club one year in nineteen-forty nine, um, Mister Primer used to come at the end of the se—well somewhere along the season when they disband the band, and, uh, he had asked—asked me, he said, uh, “Martin,” he say uh, “I’m expecting Louis Armstrong to come and knock on the side gate.” Now this was in nineteen forty-nine on a Friday night. That Tuesday of the following week was Mardi Gras. And Armstrong was going to be the King of Zulu because he had a membership card—a lifetime membership card. And uh, so uh, Primer, uh, when he told me this I said, “Okay, I’ll be listening for him,” because the service bar was right back toward the gate, right on St. Louis Street you know, the service bar. But they had another long bar that ran along from St. Louis to—to Bourbon, you know, a long bar for customers, you know. So the waitresses had to come to the back part of the bar where we were to get their drinks. So I told him, “I’ll be listening.”…Now they had a—a stage that came out just like a drawer, you know when you pull a drawer and the level—the level part is up to the drawer? Well the stage went in, and whenever they had the girls entertain, Johnny—the fella I’m talking about now—had to go and pull the stage out. And, uh, when you—when you get on the other side and you get on top of stage the people start clapping [clapping his hands] to you to start sing or dance or do something. And Johnny, he didn’t have no talent whatsoever. So it was embarrassing to him to get—to go over on the other side, because the chairs—you had to get back on the stage to come back over to go to the—the service bar. So he told me to go on that side. So I was a little dancer ‘cause we used to dance in our neighborhood with a little tin-can band, you know. So I decided to go over there on the other side. So when I got on the stage, they would start clapping [claps two times] and the band would go into “Tea for Two” [starts to sing the melody] Doo-da-do, and I’d do a little tap dance number, and they would just throw money all on the stage for me, you know. So I—I’d gather all that up. But they had two little fellas, one that was called Pork Chop and one that was called Kidney Stew that danced at most of these clubs in the [French] Quarter. And, um, they was friends of mine. We used to get together and go up to the Dew Drop, that was a club—a nightclub uptown there, so I wasn’t actually dancer you know, per se, but I did that occasionally when I’d cross over. I didn’t do it every time I got on there, but the band would play anyway, you know. But, uh, sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn’t.

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[Later], I went to Brennan’s, and I worked for them, I guess fifteen, sixteen years at Brennan’s. That—that was a job that they had plenty of business. Plenty of business. Twelve, fourteen-hundred people on a Sunday—sixteen hundred. And I used to have to make the milk punch for ‘em, and—Brandy Milk Punch. And, uh, gin fizz and Bloody Marys. At that time we had to make them up. They was selling so much of it that we had to make ‘em in five gallon cans and put them in the cooler. That was how busy that was, you know. And on Sunday was the biggest day—big, big, Sunday brunch—Sunday breakfast. And, uh, it got so busy, we got these, uh, containers, you know like when you go push you glass and than stuff come out? They had to build them [laughs], and I had to keep them filled up with milk punch and Blood Marys. Seventeen hundred people sometimes—sixteen hundred.

My goodness.

So I stayed over there for about sixteen years or so. But then, uh, one of the fellas named, uh, they hired a fella that worked with me named, uh, Robert Johnson. He started working with me, and uh, when he quit from from over there at Brennan’s, he came over here [to the Rib Room at the Royal Orleans Hotel]. Now, when I was at Brennan’s, the hotel over here wasn’t built. This here [where the Rib Room is now] was just a parking lot, and right on the corner of St. Louis and Royal there was log—a little log cabin that sold pralines and—you know, a little small thing. It was tiny. No where near as big as this. About half this size. And they sold a little bit because business wasn’t that great down there then.

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What do you think about the history of New Orleans as far as a drinking town? And—and the drinks like the Sazerac and the gin—Ramos Gin Fizz and things like that?

Well, I think, um, from what I understand, I think they both originated over at the Roosevelt Hotel. I think there was a fella named Ramos and—that made that. Now the Sazerac, which is the—the old Roosevelt Hotel had a bar they call the Sazerac Bar…Years ago they used to make the Sazerac from brandy, from what I understand. And, uh, they got all kind of stories about the Sazerac. Some of them say that they had so much of Rye whiskey ‘til they started using rye instead of the brandy in the Sazerac. So after I’m reading one time where they used brandy and they used rye—old, old, old rye, I decided to use the both of them instead of making it from one. You know, the old one from brandy and then the new one from the rye. So what I do now, I use the both of them in mine. Sort of taking two worlds, you know, and making them both a thing. And it goes over pretty good. Most people like it. I’ve got some customers that come in and look for me to make them ‘em for ‘em, you know. They’ll ask if I’m here. Sometimes they find out if I’m here and then they—at the table they order it, you know what I mean? Other than that, sometimes they won’t order unless they know that I’m there to make it, you know what I mean? Things like that.

So you’re, I would guess then, probably the only person in New Orleans who does that that way. Would you think?

Yeah, I don’t think too many of them use brandy and rye together. They use a—either rye or they use Jack Daniel’s or something, you know, ordinary. But I don’t think that too many of them use the rye and the old—old—old rye and the brandy together. So that’s the way—of course I put more rye than brandy. See, years ago we used to make it—we used to take, uh, cubed sugar and take the two bitters—Peychaud and Angostura bitters—and dash them on the sugar. See, and that—and then took the sugar with that in there and muddled it, you know, break it down. Sometime we may put a little dash of water to make it liquefied you see, because simple syrup is better than any of these sweet things that they use in drinks. They got several of them that’s out [on the market]. But I would prefer to make a good sweet simple syrup, you know, the old-time sugar water, to put in any drink that requires a sugar base, you know. Because it is more smoother, and it’s a more natural taste and it have a way of making a drink more enjoyable, when you got that sugar. [Rubs hands together] But well we’ll muddle that. I’ll—I’ll muddle it, and then I’ll take [moves glass that’s on the table to demonstrate] a glass, and I’ll put it in ice. An old-fashioned glass. I’ll put it in ice. [The] glass is suppose to be chilled [pounding table]. Then I take my rye—the way I’m doing it—the way I’m doing it now because I don’t use the mashed up sugar. I use a syrup now, instead of going through the muddling and the sugar, you know. I take the, um, the two bitters, and I put them in there, and I put the rye and the brandy. Then I—while the glass is chilling, I stirs this around. I don’t shake it; I stir it. And it’s never served on ice, unless the customer requests it. I stir it around, and it’s supposed to—in my opinion, it’s supposed to have a brownish-reddish-looking color. You know what I mean? Not pale. A brownish-reddish-looking color. And, uh, I take my glass out, and I take Pernod or either Herbsaint, and I pour a little bit in the glass, and I stir it around [rubbing hands together], throw the excess out, then I strain the liquid into the glass, then I take me a lemon twist and twist on top of it and drop it in there. Now I don’t rub it around the edge like some bartenders do, they say [put a] lemon twist in their drink. Some of them rub it around the edge. I don’t do it. The lemon have a sting to it and that breaks down the first taste of the Sazerac when you stick it in your mouth. That little oil that’s in there, if you notice [when] you take a—a lemon peel and you bend it like that [makes motion with his hand] and scratch a match and bend it, it sparkles. That oil in there make[s] a sparkle. So that oil is sitting in that drink. You can see it on top of the drink, you know. But running the edge around there, that stings it a little bit. [G]ives it a little burning sensation, so you don’t need that. But the oil dropped in there, and the lemon dropped in there, that’s perfect. That’s good.

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Well you’ve been at this a long time. What is it that you like about bartending?

Well [short pause] I don’t know. T—T—To look at it in the way that, uh, I started learning how to mix these things, you know, together, um, and meeting people and talking to people and learning things. Because I stopped in schooling in sixth grade. And, uh, I guess I was around fifteen years old. That’s like I was telling you, that they started us to school at any age that the family could send you at, you know. And that would—made me a little embarrassed, you know. And, uh, I always was a pretty good reader, you now what I mean. I wasn’t so great in math. I was pretty good. I did enough to get along with, but I—I wanted to be somebody smarter than that. I liked the way the figures come up you know, and whatnot, you know. But, uh, I liked the bartending because I was able to meet a whole lot of people and talk to a whole lot of people.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.