Making Music With Hammers And Nails

'Musicians Village' Aims To Keep The Music Playing In New Orelans

(CBS)  Never mind the taste of New Orleans. For many, it was always the sound. Stroll anywhere in the French Quarter and music spilled onto the streets.

But there are fewer songs these days, reports CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan — because there are fewer musicians.

Hurricane Katrina pushed out at least half of the city's 2,200 musicians. Bands broke up, clubs were closed — and those who did stay found a whole new depth to the blues.

"Good God, playing the music is the easy part, believe me!" says J.D. Hill. He's one of the backbones of the Big Easy — but he says staying there has been a struggle.

"Where I'm living right now ain't nothing but a shack," he told Cowan.

But jazz greats Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, both New Orleans natives, had a plan to save Hill — and any other musician who wanted to stay.

"It was an idea that — that we could use this catastrophe to try to help other people, but particularly musicians," Marsalis says.

"Our original idea," says Connick, "was just to build as many houses as we could to try to get these displaced musicians and other people that lived in New Orleans back home."

A "Musicians Village" it was called — and soon a vacant lot had a beat all its own.

Habitat for Humanity brought in 250 to 300 volunteers a day — even President Bush pitched in — and soon, 70 multicolored homes sprang up out of nothing.

"We've had volunteers and sponsors who haven't been here for a while," says Jim Pate of New Orleans Area Habitat For Humanity. "They drive up to the site — I've had 'em tell me they've had to pull over and cry because it's so hopeful and so beautiful."

The house that President Bush was working on is now Hill's.

"They told me I better watch it — it might fall in," Hill says with a laugh.

Either way, it's all his — one year after he lost everything.

"The other day it finally hit me, I said, 'Man, I have a house.' And I got kind of teary-eyed because this is the first time in my life I've really had anything new except a pair of shoes."

Now he has somewhere to tap them — not on someone else's stage, but on his very own welcome mat.