[Dixielandjazz] Preservation Hall - Good News/Bad News

[Steve barbone]

Well the good news is that Preservation Hall has reopened. The bad news is
that the music has changed. I guess its strictly "business" and not
personal.

Cheers,
Steve

All Quiet Since the Hurricane, Preservation Hall Reopens

By NATE CHINEN - May 3, 2006 - NY TIMES

NEW ORLEANS, May 2 ‹ In a city haunted by history, a singular function is
fulfilled by Preservation Hall. Housed in a French Quarter edifice built in
1750, the space has been a mecca and sanctuary of traditional New Orleans
jazz since the early 1960's. So while the more lavish production this past
weekend was the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, some local musicians
and visitors were just as focused on Preservation Hall's reopening, eight
months after Hurricane Katrina.

The occasion, which doubled as a 45th anniversary celebration, was largely
true to form: the hall's austere furnishings and poor ventilation were just
as everyone remembered, as was the antique but effervescent sound of the
Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Less familiar to some returning patrons (and
perhaps a touch less reassuring) was an infusion of rock 'n' roll, the
clearest signal of a rebranding effort that began a few years ago.

This might have registered as a minor scandal in another era, sometime
before the cataclysm that turned preservation into a common civic cause.
Preservation Hall was spared the flooding that followed Katrina, but not its
resident musicians; five of the band's seven members lost their homes.

Their stories added an unspoken poignancy to last week's events at the hall,
beginning with a press conference on Thursday for Music Rising, a campaign
led by U2's guitarist the Edge with the purpose of replacing the instruments
of Gulf Coast musicians. But of course no amount of pathos could tarnish the
lighthearted spectacle of U2's "Vertigo" as performed by the Edge with the
Preservation Hall band; the Edge himself had doubled over when he first
heard the band's arrangement, in a rehearsal that afternoon.

"I think it was hugely significant because of what Preservation Hall stands
for in New Orleans's musical history," he said a few days later, referring
to the symbolic backdrop for his public message. "The guy that set the place
up, Allan Jaffe, was a visionary in that he recognized that jazz needed to
be preserved. Not kept in formaldehyde, but given the opportunity for a
stable home."

That's a good characterization, even if Mr. Jaffe and his wife, Sandra,
established Preservation Hall virtually by happenstance. They were new
arrivals to New Orleans when they stumbled across the building on St. Peter
Street; it was owned by the art dealer Larry Borenstein, who featured
traditional jazz there on Sunday afternoons.

The Jaffes took over and eventually expanded the series, with the guidance
of knowledgeable locals like the historian Richard B. Allen. They also moved
into a building at the back of the property, sleeping in a loft overlooking
the garden patio of Pat O'Brien's, the famous French Quarter bar.

Mr. Jaffe, a tuba player, organized the first of countless Preservation Hall
band tours in 1964, advancing an international awareness of New Orleans
legends like the clarinetist George Lewis and the husband-and-wife team of
DeDe and Billie Pierce, a trumpeter and a pianist.

Those legends can still be discerned in some murky portraits adorning the
hall's interior. Last week there was also a wreath in the carriageway for
Narvin Kimball, a banjoist and last founding member of the band, who died in
March at 97. There was no conspicuous monument to Mr. Jaffe, who died in
1987, except his son Benjamin Jaffe, who plays bass and tuba, serves as
musical director, organizes tours and generally maintains the hall.

The younger Mr. Jaffe, who grew up a few blocks away in the Quarter, assumed
stewardship of the organization after graduating from Oberlin Conservatory
in 1993. He set about gently refurbishing both the hall and the band,
buffing their image with small innovations: a flashy Web site, a start-up
record label, a line of stylish T-shirts.

"I see it as my father did, as a business," Mr. Jaffe said at Jazzfest,
sitting cross-legged on a patch of grass next to a memorial wooden cutout of
his father. But he also recalled his father's apprehensions about
authorizing the first Preservation Hall T-shirt, roughly 25 years ago.

The younger Mr. Jaffe, who recently retired from touring with the band to
focus on administration as well as New Orleans recovery efforts, speaks
passionately about his city's cultural traditions. But it is safe to say
that without him, the Preservation Hall band would never have arranged a
Kinks song, "Complicated Life," featuring the vocalist Clint Maedgen, or
shot a music video for the tune, which had its premiere at the reopening on
Friday night.

For now these flashes of pop culture ‹ all draped, it should be said, in New
Orleans finery ‹ have yet to alienate fans like Shelly Gallichio of Tuscon,
Ariz., who was at the hall on Friday for "maybe the 50th time," or her
husband, Ken Arnold,, who first encountered the band on his college campus
in 1965. 

The band's current members are divided about the new musical directions; Mr.
Jaffe's mother, Sandra, who keeps a close eye on the group, likens the
departures to a classical artist's extracurricular activities, "like Yo-Yo
Ma doing bluegrass."

Hints of bluegrass could actually be heard at the hall on Sunday night,
courtesy of an assemblage of musicians including the guitarist-singer J. J.
Grey, of the band Mofro. The following night the room was packed again for a
trio led by Stanton Moore, drummer for the New Orleans rock band Galactic.
This weekend, in addition to sets by the traditional jazz trumpeter Greg
Stafford, there will be a Saturday midnight show featuring a groove-minded
crew called 504ever Allstars.

Mr. Jaffe was quick to point out that all of these musicians had "very
strong ties to New Orleans." And he expressed concerns that there still
might not be enough local support to keep the hall afloat once Jazzfest's
crowds dispersed. After this weekend Preservation Hall will feature music on
Friday and Saturday nights ‹ it used to close only on Mardi Gras ‹ and will
likely continue to court younger audiences, as a matter of survival.

But not just survival, it seems. "Why wouldn't Preservation Hall do a
project with Tom Waits?" Mr. Jaffe mused at the fairgrounds on Saturday. "Or
Bruce Springsteen? Or even the Edge, like we did the other day? I don't
think I'm compromising the integrity of the band, as long as I'm staying
true to the vision of Preservation Hall, which was originally, and always
has been, to provide a place for New Orleans jazz musicians to perform."

The next day the Preservation Hall Jazz Band closed the festival's first
weekend according to tradition, with "When the Saints Go Marching In." Its
blithe polyphony accompanied a procession of bobbing parasols in the aisles.
Of course not even Mr. Jaffe knew that Mr. Springsteen would shortly finish
his own set across the fairgrounds with the same tune, in a fashion that was
strikingly different but every bit as true.