Yes, one of the accents of New Orleans sounds a lot like a big eastern city. The first person on this video gives an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpFDNTo4DNg

Barbara, I had noticed that 'oi' in Proud Mary, but I didn't know it came from New Orleans.

When we were kids, we had really old 78's around. One had a clean-cut version of this song, and it was pronouced 'MY len burg.'

(Years later my mother gave all the good 78's to a collector who had a radio show featuring early jazz.)
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Milne isn't the only person to have a couple of inconvenient consonants swapped around. How about Brett Favre, pronounced Farve?