*The spirit of late CBS journalist Ed Bradley was alive and kicking on Friday during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which honored the late music lover with an opening day jazz funeral procession, complete with two brass bands.
Bradley, who died in November, had wanted to be remembered at the festival with a "second line" parade, so-called because bystanders fall in to form a second line of paraders.
"He put it in his will. He wanted a second line and a New Orleans brass band and Quint Davis to put it all together," said his widow, Patricia Blanchet, according to AP.
Davis, the festival producer, introduced performer Jimmy Buffett as the person responsible for first bringing Bradley to the festival in the 1980s, and the first to invite him onstage and hand him a tambourine.
"Bless you Father for bringing us a really bad tambourine player but a great friend," Buffett said Friday, while also taking credit for giving Bradley the nickname "Teddy Badly." About 45 of Bradley's friends participating in the parade wore small green pins bearing the name "Teddy."
During the event, Davis unveiled two portraits of Bradley painted on large pieces of wood — one a larger-than-life picture of his face, the other showing Bradley in a golf cart that he used to drive to get from stage to stage at the festival. The portraits were included in the festival's annual "ancestors" exhibit featuring likenesses of people important to the festival and its musical legacy.
Choked with emotion, Davis said: "We are happy to be sad and say, `You will always be here at Jazz Fest.'"