[Dixielandjazz] Re: Preservation Hall

[david richoux]

On Sunday, Jul 13, 2003, at 19:20 US/Pacific, Stephen Barbone wrote:

>> Trumpetom at aol.com wrote: (polite snip)
>
>> I saw them: a delightful old left handed banjo player named
>> Narvin.
>
> That was Narvin Kimball. A wonderful player, a wonderful gentleman. I 
> saw that group
> also on tour, probably the same year. They were as you say, 
> unrehearsed and the mixture
> of styles was bad. Probably pretty close to the time Alan Jaffe died 
> and Ben took over
> the bass chair. He had to pay some dues and is much better now.
>

It was actually a pretty long stretch of time between Allan's passing 
and Ben taking over (I think Ben was maybe about 12 or younger at the 
time) and there were a succession of other mostly string bass players 
in between.

My first contact with PHJB was when they did their annual performance 
at Stanford on The Fourth of July 1978. The local "Los Trancos Woods 
Community Marching Band" was the opening act during the pre-show picnic 
for quite a few years and I was playing a World War One US Army surplus 
helicon. Allan was building up a large collection of helicons and he 
really wanted mine. Since it was my only marching tuba at that time I 
could not let it get away.

In 1980 I had a chance to go "backstage" at Preservation Hall and check 
out his collection. A few years after that Allen asked me to sit in on 
a few songs in the last set on one night during Jazzfest midweek and I 
was honored to be asked. I don't remember which songs we did - not the 
Saints - but whoever was the piano player that night leaned over 
afterwards and said I was doing OK but that "you West Coast guys 
usually play the wrong chords..."

Dave Richoux