David Suhor: French Quarter Performance Artist
Singing telegram performer David Suhor in his ChiChi the Fruit Lady persona, ready to roll, photo by Ellis Anderson
February 2025Call it campy or classic, the jaunty tradition of the singing telegram is celebrated by this member of a noted New Orleans musical family.
- by Claude Summers
In the hierarchy of musical performance, the singing telegram does not rank very high – if at all – but as practiced by French Quarter musician David Suhor, the genre is elevated from the endearingly silly to the occasionally sublime. His infectious love of performance transforms these brief encounters into memorable celebrations.
The genre originated in 1933, when Western Union began offering them to help make telegrams, which had been commonly associated with the announcements of death or other bad news, less anxiety-inducing and therefore more popular. Consequently, from the very beginning, singing telegrams have been humorous and often delivered by singers in costumes, traditions that Suhor continues with gusto.
On a Friday in October, I accompanied Suhor, a boyish-appearing man of immense charm, then dressed in comic Carmen Miranda drag (representing Suhor's character ChiChi), on a mission to deliver a telegram outside the Rawhide Lounge on Burgundy Street.
The surprised recipient was delighted by the bewigged Suhor's costume and voice as he sang Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday to You," along with a few other songs. The encounter ended with a good-humored peck on the burly birthday boy's cheek.
The Mardi Gram
The Classic
The previous night Suhor had trekked to the Hilton Riverside hotel in a superhero costume to entertain a businessman being celebrated by his colleagues. The next week he appeared in a tuxedo at the posh Pelican Club to serenade a music lover with arias from his favorite operas.
As different as these appearances in such disparate venues were, they had in common their entertainment value. Suhor is a versatile performer who loves to please. His enthusiasm for performing, along with his rich baritone, adds greatly to the appeal of his "MardiGrams."
MardiGrams is the name of Suhor's business. On his website, he explains the service and offers prospective clients a number of options. Among the characters he impersonates are Elvis, Marilyn, and ChiChi, as well as the classic Telegram Boy, GrannyGram, and TuxedoGram. As he explains there, "Uplifting and embarrassing, silly and sincere, we've been rocking birthday (or any day) singing telegrams since 2008."
The delivery of singing telegrams does not always go smoothly. Suhor recalls delivering one at the wrong address once. His GPS led him to a house in Metairie that was decorated for a birthday party. He assumed that the residents were expecting a telegram and he proceeded to perform his "Happy Birthday" shtick only to discover that the intended birthday lady lived in the house across the street.
Generally, however, most recipients of the telegrams are happy and excited to see him, even when his appearance is a calculated surprise. He was touched recently when a lady told him how much her telegram was appreciated. It came as she was beginning a dreaded treatment for cancer and she said the telegram had lifted her spirits at a terrifying time.
The Granny Gram
Although the singing telegrams are mostly comic and not musically demanding, Suhor himself is an accomplished musician and a member of a family with deep roots in New Orleans Jazz.
David's father, Charles Suhor, a native of the Ninth Ward, as a young man taught in New Orleans public schools and later became an English professor in Florida and the Deputy Director of the National Council of Teachers of English. But he also had a parallel career as a respected jazz musician, critic, and historian: his book "Jazz in New Orleans: The Postwar Years" won the 2004 New Orleans International Music Consortium Award for Excellence in Music Writing and remains a standard citation among jazz historians.
In addition, David's uncle, Don Suhor, was an acclaimed clarinetist and saxophonist who spent his entire career playing in a wide range of French Quarter venues. He was described by his peers as "one of the top three or four clarinet players of all time."
Keeping his chops up at his home on Esplanade Ave., photo by Ellis Anderson
At home with Satie
Although David is a native New Orleanian, he was reared in Tallahassee, where he also attended Florida State University. At Florida State, he majored in Social Studies Education and History. Following graduation, he worked in the tech industry for ten years, including a stint as the IT Director for the Morris Bart law firm. Then he decided to immerse himself in music. With saxophonist Thom Botsford, he formed a band and began performing professionally.
In 2001, he returned to school at the University of West Florida to study jazz piano and music education. In Pensacola, he established his first singing telegram company, ShamaLamaGram.
Suhor also sang with the Pensacola Opera Chorus and participated with the Pensacola Jazz Society. He served as a church musician and soloist for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola and also the Unity Church of Pensacola.
He has been a frequent visitor to New Orleans for most of his life – particularly after one of his brothers moved to the French Quarter in the 1990s – but Suhor did not relocate to New Orleans until 2020, when he began his MardiGrams.
A prerunner at the 2025 Chewbacchus parade, by Ellis Anderson
His choice to live in the French Quarter was both practical and romantic. Practical, because about a quarter of his telegrams are delivered in the Quarter (the rest in neighborhoods across the city and in suburbs such as Metairie and Kenner). Romantic, because he relishes the history and ambiance of the neighborhood, especially its architecture and its friendly and diverse people, as well as the opportunities it offers to perform. He has the good fortune to live in an apartment in the historic Claiborne House on Esplanade Avenue.
Although his career as a telegram singer does not afford much opportunity to indulge his passion for jazz singing, he frequently performs during open mic sessions and Karaoke nights at various French Quarter locales.
He particularly delights in jazz standards and the American songbook, but Suhor appreciates a wide range of music. He essentially enjoys performance for its own sake, a need he attributes to his being reared in a musical family of eleven children, where each had to compete for attention.
It is tempting to see telegram singing as merely another niche of the gig economy that musicians in New Orleans frequently utilize to support themselves in the absence of well-paying steady jobs, but for Suhor it is also – and perhaps primarily – an opportunity to perform. He offers no apology for his uncommon profession: he’s simply grateful to be an unforgettable part of his clients’ noteworthy occasions.
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