[Dixielandjazz] Preservation Hall Band

[Stan Brager]

Today's New York Times had this article about the fate of the Preservation
Hall jazz band.

Stan
Stan Brager
................................................
The Preservation Hall Band, Far From Preservation Hall
By MICHAEL BRICK
One by one, the musicians in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band landed at New
York airports last night. The stragglers were the drummer, the clarinetist
and the trumpet player, who had been missing since Hurricane Katrina flooded
New Orleans, their hometown.

The whereabouts of the trumpet player, John Brunious, might still be unknown
if not for a woman who sat next to him on a bus from New Orleans to Texas.
She later contacted the bandleader, Ben Jaffe, who tracked him down in
Conway, Ark. How Mr. Brunious ended up there was not yet known.

"I'm sure we're going to be up all night telling stories," Mr. Jaffe said by
telephone after reaching New York.

Like many of the people fleeing New Orleans, the band members chose their
new temporary home for reasons practical and coincidental. For Mr. Jaffe,
34, who plays bass in the band and is the son of its founders, the choice
was between New York and North Dakota, where his wife's family lives.

New York won out in part because Mr. Jaffe's mother, Sandra, spends a good
deal of time in the city and in part because Manhattan offers a solid base
for fund-raising, a pursuit Mr. Jaffe expects to occupy him for a long
while.

Back home in New Orleans, a sign on the wall of Preservation Hall, still
standing on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter, lists the cost of
requests from the house band: $2 for traditional songs, $5 for others and
$10 for "The Saints," the classic spiritual about leaving this world and
marching in to a better one.

The price structure winks at the bond among the band, the city and the
old-time music that became a fixture of tourism marketing in New Orleans,
where in certain parts of town every other store has the word jazz in the
name, though few businesses sell music.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, founded in 1961, evolved into a major
tourist attraction itself, charging a cover for entry to the hall, a small,
mostly unadorned wood-walled room where the musicians played brief sets
before each group of a few dozen listeners was dismissed to make way for the
next.

The group now has its own record label, Preservation Hall Recordings, and
derives much of its revenue from touring, Mr. Jaffe said. It employs about
75 other musicians, including the Olympia Brass Band and Leroy Jones's
group, to play the hall when the eight-member house band is away.

Though the hall appears to be undamaged, concerts there are out of the
question with the city evacuated, so Mr. Jaffe has started a fund to raise
money for the other musicians. "They're not carpenters," Mr. Jaffe said.
"There's not a lot of need for jazz trombone players in Shreveport, La."

For the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the circumstances are more promising.
The band's tour schedule, which it expects to keep, takes the players to
Thailand this month and up the East Coast at the start of October. Mr. Jaffe
said the band might also pursue a residency in New York, at a club perhaps.

Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers
University, said the band should not expect to find a thriving scene for
traditional jazz in New York.

"They might, of course, at least temporarily benefit from all the publicity
and interest in New Orleans," Mr. Morgenstern said.

Mr. Jaffe said the fate of the band, its members spread around the country
before converging on New York, provided a rough symbol of the condition of
New Orleans's unique culture. "We've never lived more than a few miles from
each other," he said.

Lee Frank, vice president of Preservation Hall Recordings, ended up across
the country from the band, in Northern California. In a telephone interview,
he said he was optimistic about the future of the band and the culture it
helps represent.

"What other culture has a parade at a funeral?" Mr. Frank asked. "New
Orleans is all about the celebration of life in the face of death."