Mardi Gras? Nah, it's New Orleans' Saints Super Bowl warm-up.

Al “Carnival Time” Johnson saved only a few possessions from the wreck of his house in the Lower Ninth Ward after hurricane Katrina: a few family photos, some laminated newspaper clippings detailing his music career, and a Saints football cap.

“I got this cap the first time I went to see the Saints, when they were playing at Tulane Stadium before the Superdome was even built,” remembers Mr. Johnson, standing on the front porch of his new house in the Ninth Ward’s Musicians Village.

Johnson’s 1960 R&B hit “Carnival Time” has long served as one of the city’s unofficial anthems for Mardi Gras, the world renown party that New Orleans hosts every February. For Johnson and legions of other fans this carnival season, the Saints have become a new long, high note of hope and celebration.

Spontaneous celebration

The wave of emotion that New Orleans is riding over its Super Bowl-bound team is evident everywhere.

Some restaurants have changed their linens to black and gold. After the Jan. 16 win over the Cardinals in the NFC playoffs, riders on a St. Charles Avenue street car broke into the chant “Who dat? Who dat say they gonna beat dem Saints?” Pedestrians thronged the trolley like it was a Mardi Gras float.

In the wake of their conference championship win over Minnesota a week later, Canal Street closed down for hours as strangers hugged each other and girls blew kisses out of open car windows. Though long-plagued by a murder rate that has at times clocked a killing a day, the city saw no reports of violence before, during, or after the game.

The largest local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, called the spontaneous citywide party after the Jan. 24 win New Orleans’ biggest communal celebration since WWII and printed an extra 150,000 copies of its Monday-after edition, which became an instant collector’s item.

Though once nicknamed the Ain’ts – the Saints took 21 years to have a winning season, and 14 more to win a playoff game – community support for the team has become part of the fabric of life in the birthplace of jazz, as much as red beans and rice and second line parades.

A church in the Lower Garden District changed its bells to ring “When the Saints Go Marching In” before the matchup with Minnesota, and afterward spontaneous second-line parades broke out on Bourbon Street.

The website for New Orleans’ eponymous community radio station, WWOZ, lists a dozen new songs by local musicians heralding the team.

Right team, right time

Among them is Al Johnson, whose new Saints-themed single “Who Dat Say?” – set to the tune of his famous “Carnival Time” – was recorded after three consecutive loses by the team at the close of regular season. “Their next game was the playoff with the Cardinals, so I hope it helped them win,” he says.

Like his beloved Saints, life in New Orleans has not always been good times for Johnson. He had to fight a 35 year-long legal battle over royalties and rights to “Carnival Time,” finally settled 10 years ago. Johnson’s longtime family home on Tennessee Street was wrecked by Katrina, and he spent the next three years living in Houston.

But like the Saints and his city, Johnson has caught a new wave. In 2007, he released a critically acclaimed single, “Lower Ninth Ward Blues,” and was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. And last year he moved into his new house in the Musicians Village, built by Habitat for Humanity as part of the organization’s post-flood rebuilding efforts.

Four and a half years after hurricane Katrina, the city, the football team, and its die-hard fans have more than hope.

“I’m so glad to see this happen for the Saints,” says Johnson. “I know it feels so good for them and for New Orleans, and for me, too.”

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