By all accounts, “Joe Sheep” as he was called by everyone, was mean, cantankerous, and rude – yet always willing to sell a sandwich on credit, especially to the many musicians making their way to and from the Storyville District and other gigs around the city. As one writer said, “Although he looked stern, his face hid a smile,” and “his customer abuse was a part of the show.” His name and legend live on in numerous oral histories recorded with Jazz pioneers; in a song dedicated to him entitled “Joe Sheep’s Boogie Woogie”; and in a poem published by a nostalgic octogenarian as recently as 2016.

Joseph Lambert was born in the Trémé section of New Orleans in December 1872. His father, Simon Lambert, worked as a driver for commission merchants in the city. His mother, Marguerite Nelson, who was born in St. John the Baptist Parish, was a sister to Professor Médard H. Nelson. He was his parent’s only surviving son. His sisters were Josephine Lambert, Mathilda (Lambert) Massicot, Rosa (Lambert) Randolph, and Margaret (Lambert) Smith.

The 1894 and 1895 city directories were the first to include Joseph Lambert, and in them, he is listed like his father as a driver and laborer at what was then 331 Orleans Avenue. On 30 May 1895, Joe married – the first of three times – to Rita Hécaud, a daughter of Victor Hécaud and Amelie Rouzan. With a new bride came a new occupation, as from 1898 through 1908, he ran a store at 2027-2039 Orleans Avenue at the downriver, riverside corner with North Johnson Street. Together with his wife Alice, he sold fruit, groceries, and even oysters from the small double building which housed the store on one side and their residence on the other. Together they had a daughter, Lydia Lambert (14 August 1895-20 August 1964), who later married Armand Paul Glapion.

The building at 2037-2039 Orleans Avenue was sold by auction in May 1909. Joe moved his place of business to a small, square building at 1626 Dumaine Street near the corner of North Claiborne Avenue. It was the unassuming lunch stand at that location which made Joe Sheep, as no less famous a personage than Louis Armstrong once said, “famous all over the world.”

His trademark were his sandwiches on French bread which sold for five or ten cents each. Customers could order anything from ham and cheese, salami, or wieners on French bread to chaurice (hot sausage), boudin, shrimp, catfish, or pork chops. He also prepared delicacies like stuffed peppers, stuffed tomatoes, stuffed crab, and cod fish balls.

During most of his career, from 1920 until his death in 1949, Joe lived just three blocks away at 1819 St. Philip Street. He and his wife Rita separated in September 1913 and divorced in March 1927. A month later, on 21 April 1927, he married Alice (Marine) Populus, a widow with three sons. Prior to his marriage to Alice, Joe had a second daughter, Myrtle Lambert (1917-24 September 1976), with Alice Winnier.

Joe Sheep sold these sandwiches in what seemed like a nonstop stream. He often closed around two o’clock in the morning, which made his stand the perfect place for musicians and late-night revelers to get something to eat. The stand was situated just a few paces from North Claiborne Avenue, a major business and residential thoroughfare. At the corner was the Congress Cap Store and two doors down Dumaine Street was the popular Carr & Llopis Funeral Home. Until 1940, the City Park streetcar line ran from Dumaine and Burgundy to Dumaine and North Alexander streets, which meant that countless streetcar passengers and conductors regularly passed by Joe Sheep’s stand. Jazz stringman “Creole” George Guesnon remarked that it was not uncommon for six of more streetcars to be backed up as they waited to get orders from Joe Sheep.

We gain a unique insight from the memories of Joe Sheep and his sandwich stand as recounted by George Guesnon and other New Orleans musicians:

George Guesnon (1907-1968)

“I don’t think New Orleans ever had a more colorful [character] than Joe Sheep the Sandwich King. First of all, money or not, no musician ever went hungry at the Sheep’s. You might get bawled out, cursed out, told all about your mammy, but if you were a musician you had a credit card with Joe. He was a friend of more musicians than anyone else that I know of in New Orleans. His small sandwich shop located on Dumaine Street near Claiborne Avenue still stands even though the Sheep is gone. It was the rendezvous of some of the greatest names in Jazz from Keppard to Armstrong. When I first met Jelly Roll Morton in New York, one of the things he asked me was “Creole, is old Sheep still around?” Everyone, rich, poor, white, black, lawyer, doctor, teacher you name them, at one time or another they all ate at the Sheep’s because his sandwiches were a creation of art and the talk of the town. I’ve actually seen the City Park street cars, that ran on Dumaine Street, standing three or four deep in a row, and the passengers grumbling, in their impatience to get home, while the conductors and motormen were sitting in the Sheep’s having themselves a ball and paying no attention at all to the passengers. Old Sheep with a white cap and apron might be a fussing and grumbling beneath his breath, but he would be frying his ass off. Now the Sheep is gone but he went out in style, being the King he was. Yes, that cat left here and went to the promised land in a $1300 bronze casket that had all the other cat’s eyes bugged out.”

Earl Palmer (1924-2008)

“[There] was a sandwich place called Joe Sheep’s, they had the best hot sausage sandwiches in town for a dime. Joe Sheep was an old guy, light complected [sic] guy, and he was the meanest old so-and-so you ever met. You’d come up there to get a sandwich: ‘Whatcha want, li’l nigger?’ ‘I wanna hot sausage sandwich’ – You goin’ through your pockets, pullin’ pennies out: ‘Hurry up, you little m—-r f—-r!’ Oh, he was a terrible old man, but those sandwiches was delicious!”

Harold Dejan (1909-2002)

“This guy Joe Sheep had a little sandwich place, where you could buy sandwiches for a dime, pork chops for 15 cents, a stuffed tomato for 15 cents; all the rest of the sandwiches was a dime, hot sausages and wieners and all. I’d bring ‘em big bags of sandwiches and on the steps we’d have breakfast.”

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), writing in 1941

“There’s a little lunch stand that opens up on Dumaine and Claiborne every night and he’s famous. I’d say he’s very, very famous all over the world for the fine sandwiches he has been making for years and years. You get your sandwiches, as many as you can eat, and you’ll never stop at just one of any one of them you should get. His stuffed crabs, stuffed peppers, boiled shrimps – there’s lots of other sandwiches he makes – His name is Joe Sheep. Just ask any Creole cat that’s from New Orleans about Joe Sheep’s sandwiches, and they’ll verify my statement.”

Joe Sheep’s wife of just short of twenty years, Alice (Marine) Populus Lambert, died on 19 July 1946. On 28 February 1949, he was married for the final time to Eulalie Farr (1886-1973), who was fourteen years his junior. This marriage was short-lived however, for as The Louisiana Weekly of 3 December 1949 reported: “Joseph Lambert, 1819 St. Philip Street, who is better known to all persons in New Orleans as “Joe Sheep” died Saturday, November 26 at 10 p. m.” The headline of the article reaffirmed his preeminence “‘Joe Sheep,’ 5-Cent Sandwich King, Is Dead.”

Three days later, on Tuesday, November 29, he was waked in the Carr & Llopis Funeral Home, just two doors from the little stand where he served mouth-watering sandwiches and slaty barbs for over forty years. On Wednesday, November 30, a Requiem Mass was said in nearby Saint Peter Claver Church, and the “Sandwich King” was laid to rest in Mount Olivet Cemetery.

The building at 1626 Dumaine Street was later operated as a bar and restaurant by a succession of owners, most notably as “B & J Bar and Restaurant” by Henry Benjamin and Joseph Jourdain in the 1950s and 60s and then as “R. J.’s Bar and Restaurant” by Rene J. Jourdain, Jr. in the early 1970s. In July 1960, more than a decade after Joe Sheep died, saxophonist “Captain” John Handy (1900-1971) recorded an instrumental “Joe Sheep’s Boogie Woogie” on the Icon record label, an important company in the second revival of traditional New Orleans Jazz. In 2016, Roland J. Davidson (1925-2020) published the poem “Mr. Joe” in his compilation of New Orleans memories entitled Sitting on the Galerie and Playing on the Banquette:

 

Jari C. Honora

Sources: “Jones and Bones,” The Daily Picayune, 7 October 1907, p. 3; “’Joe Sheep,’ 5-cent Sandwich King, Is Dead,” The Louisiana Weekly, 3 December 1949, p. 1, 3; Orleans Parish Civil District Court, Joseph Lambert v. Rita Hecaud (divorce), Docket No. 167,449, New Orleans Public Library City Archives; Joseph Lambert (obituary), The Times-Picayune, 29 November 1949, p. 2; Tony Scherman, The Rock Musician: 15 Years of the Interviews – The Best of Musician Magazine (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994), 223-224; Joshua Berrett, ed., The Louis Armstrong Companion: Eight Decades of Commentary (New York: Schirmer Books, 1999), 120-121; William Russell, “Oh, Mister Jelly” A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook (Copenhagen: JazzMedia ApS, 1999), 106-107; Mick Burns, The Great Olympia Band (New Orleans: Jazzology Press, 2001), 26; William Russell, “The Sheep’s Restaurant” (1967), PH000860; Hogan Jazz Archive, Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Tulane University; “Arriving at Funeral Home” MSS 520.371, William Russell Photographic Collection, William Russell Jazz Collection, MSS 520, Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection; “The Sheep’s Restaurant” MSS 508.110, Jelly Roll Morton Book Photographic Collection Series, William Russell Jazz Collection, MSS 508, Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection.