[Dixielandjazz] Preservation Hall JB at Carnegie Hall

[Stephen G Barbone]

If those stupid letters to the editor of the American Rag are any  
indication, no doubt some who read this will criticize the  
Preservation Hall Jazz Band for bringing other genres of music to  
their program in  order to keep New Orleans Traditional Jazz alive.

If you don't know about those stupid letters, why not get a  
subscription to American Rag to find out what is going on with myopic  
trad fans here in the USA. Click on "Subscription Information" just  
below the Masthead.

http://www.americanrag.com/

No, I have no financial interest in the paper. Only unwavering  
admiration for publishers Don and Cathy Jones.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Tribute to New Orleans, Inside and Out

By JON PARELES - NY TIMES - January 8, 2012


The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, a quintessential New Orleans  
institution, discovered new out-of-town admirers after Hurricane  
Katrina, and it brought many of them along for a concert on Saturday  
night at Carnegie Hall to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Preservation Hall, at 726 St. Peter Street, started in 1961 as a place  
where longtime New Orleans musicians could play the city’s most  
traditional jazz. It gathered a core Preservation Hall Jazz Band that  
performs regularly at the hall itself, with personnel gradually  
changing through the years. Ben Jaffe, the bassist and sousaphone  
player who is the group’s current creative director, is the son of the  
band’s previous director, Allan Jaffe. Other band members including  
the drummer Joe Lastie, the trombonist Freddie Lonzo and the  
clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, come from multigenerational musical  
families.

After the devastation of New Orleans in 2005, jam bands, indie- 
rockers, and fellow long-running traditional groups supported and  
collaborated with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The largest project  
was “Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall and the  
Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program,” a two-CD collection  
released in 2010. At Carnegie Hall, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Del  
McCoury Band, My Morning Jacket, Steve Earle, Merrill Garbus of Tune- 
Yards and Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) were on hand. So were the New  
Orleans-born musiciansTrombone Shorty and Allen Toussaint, who sang a  
tribute to the band for putting “pride in your stride.”

While it’s a paradox that welcoming outsiders and trying out hybrids  
is a survival tactic for a deeply local tradition, that’s a fact of  
life for present-day New Orleans.

At Carnegie Hall, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band showed how easily it  
could hop from era to era. It could work like a rhythm-and-blues horn  
section or a tightly arranged little big band if need be, but it could  
also switch back into the polyphonic glories of vintage New Orleans  
jazz, in which nearly every instrument seems to improvise around the  
tune at the same time.

That’s what the band did on its own, in standards like “Bourbon Street  
Parade” (sung by its trumpeter, Mark Braud) — and, even more  
exuberantly, backing excerpts from the Trey McIntyre Project’s dance  
suite “Ma Maison,” with members in skeleton masks and harlequin  
costumes. The band also brought a New Orleans shimmy and wink to some  
of its guests: Tiffany Lamson of the Louisiana band Givers with “Just  
a Closer Walk With Thee,” and Ms. Garbus belting “Careless Love.”

The band was more somber for a doleful version of “St. James  
Infirmary” sung by Jim James of My Morning Jacket; the song then  
turned upbeat for a return of the dancers. For Mr. Earle’s “This  
City,” a tribute to New Orleans, the band deferred to his roots rock.  
But there was a dialogue between traditions when Mr. McCoury’s  
bluegrass band shared songs with Preservation Hall; clarinet and  
fiddle traded solos that stayed true to their own idioms, while the  
rhythm meshed.

A big finale filled the stage as the Blind Boys of Alabama; Mr.  
McCoury; and Preservation Hall’s saxophonist, Clint Maedgen took turns  
singing the gospel standard “I’ll Fly Away” backed by the night’s full  
roster. But after the guests cleared away, the Preservation Hall Jazz  
Band returned along with teenaged musicians from its Preservation Hall  
Junior Jazz Band, whose members get lessons from the elder band  
Musical Outreach. They played — of course — “When the Saints Go  
Marching In,” with an old-fashioned polyphonic swagger that promised  
continuity for another New Orleans generation.