[Dixielandjazz] Walter Payton had a stroke while on tour with Preservation Hall

[David M Richoux]

Fortunately not too serious...

Dave Richoux

http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2010/01/preservation_hall_bassist_walt.html

By Keith Spera, The Times-PicayuneJanuary 13, 2010, 11:26AM
Walter Payton suffered a stroke last week while on tour with the  
Preservation Hall Jazz Band.Walter Payton, the longtime bassist in the  
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, suffered a minor stroke Jan. 8 while on  
tour. He remains hospitalized in the Washington D.C. area.
Payton, 67, is a versatile bassist with recording and performing  
credits that run the gamut of New Orleans music. He played bass on  
Aaron Neville’s recording of “Tell It Like It Is” and Lee Dorsey’s  
“Working in a Coal Mine.” He first performed at Preservation Hall in  
the 1960s, and leads his own Snap Bean Band and Gumbo File.
He also spent 25 years teaching music in the public school system; his  
students included Ben Jaffe, the son of Preservation Hall’s founder  
and the hall’s current creative director. Payton is the father of  
renowned jazz trumpeter Nicholas Payton.
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band performed in New Jersey on Jan. 7,  
then traveled to Washington D.C. for a show the following night with  
the Blind Boys of Alabama. A member of the band’s road crew found  
Payton collapsed in his room before the gig.
The band was able to perform that night as scheduled, as its touring  
roster already includes a second bassist: Ben Jaffe, who alternates  
between tuba and upright bass on stage.
The Preservation Hall tour continued with a Jan. 9 gig at B.B. King’s  
in New York with the Del McCoury Band, and another show Jan. 10 in  
North Carolina. After three days off this week, the musicians head to  
Tennessee on Thursday for a three-night engagement with the Nashville  
Symphony.
The stroke on the left side of Payton’s brain “mainly affected his  
speech,” Jaffe said Tuesday. “His hands and feet are fine. He’s up and  
walking, and he’s already started rehabilitation.”
Payton is expected to return to New Orleans by train this week.  
Doctors have advised him to quit smoking, adjust his diet and make  
other lifestyle changes, but “they want him to start playing music  
again,” Jaffe said. “So he may be back on stage at Preservation Hall  
as soon as a week or two.”