which were booked by Sam Johnson and Buffington's brother, the late Thomas Buffington. Tickets would be sold in advance as well as at the door. "There were always more people who wanted tickets than they had room for," Perkins said. The bands almost always played on Monday night, Buffington said. They would play in New Orleans on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then head to Baton Rouge for Monday evening. "We would sub - book," Buffington said. "We could get them cheap." They usually played Baton Rouge for $800. Tansil recalled a famous band, Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy. "Our weather was hot to them," he said. So they went downtown to Stein's on Third Street where suits with two pairs of pants could be bought for $15. "They bought suits for the whole band," Tansil said. Buffington remembered the first time Duke Ellington played the Temple. Tickets were $1.25 in advance and $1.75 at the door. "The tickets sold slow," he said, because Ellington played a type of music known as "sophisticated." Patrons of the Temple preferred peppier dance music. "Duke came early," Buffington said. "He started swinging. The windows were open. Everybody could hear the music. We cleaned up that day." The second time Ellington played the Temple, the house was packed. In a brief history of the Temple, Robert Buffington's nephew, Thomas Buffington Jr., described a night at the Temple as "a night of parading automobiles and fashions."
Even younger members of the black community en- joyed the music of the visiting artists. "For those of us who were too young to attend the dances, they had a matinee," Tansil said. The under - 18 crowd would dance and enjoy the music but had to get out of the building by 8 p.m. or 8:30 p.m. The adult dances be- gan at 9 p.m. and ran until 2 a.m. Buffington used to sell Cokes and hamburgers during the dances. "On a dance night, we would fry up 50 to 60 burgers at a time. They were just meat, bread and mustard," he said. The bands played at the north side of the Roof Gar- den. At the south side was a private balcony, which was entered by a circular metal stairway. "The mayor, chief of police and city officials would sit in the pri- vate balcony," Tansil said.
Eight or nine hundred people crowded into the Roof Garden to hear the bands. Fats Waller drew the larg-
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