by Mick Burns
You could compare it to the Baroque renaissance in Austria, with the Bach family, Handel, all of them. That’s why our dedication became having this New Orleans music recognized, not just as a fine art, but also as a great art. People like Kid Thomas and George Lewis and Danny Barker and the Barbarins—these people dedicated their lives to this music. That’s one thing you feel in New Orleans today, that the sense of dedication isn’t as great as it once was, that music isn’t just something you do for a living, that it’s a way of life. What sets this community apart from many other musical communities—it’s because the music is a living, breathing continuum. It’s a tradition that goes back to the founding of the city.
Danny Barker had returned from New York in the mid-sixties. He recognized that the music he loved and had grown up with was dying out. You had a few semiactive brass bands. The Olympia was really the only regular working brass band. The Eureka had died out. Floyd Anckle would pull the Majestic together for gigs from time to time; Doc Paulin always did certain parades every year, the Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church being one of them. But there wasn’t much encouragement to young people to get involved.
I can’t remember exactly how I first met Danny. I think he brought me to a jazz funeral around 1978. In a simplified way, it turned my world around. I’d heard of these things, but I’d no idea of the depth and the pathos and the tradition that musical funerals represented. By being with Danny, I was already a celebrity. The band was the Olympia. I met James Andrews Sr., the trumpet player’s father, that day. Youngjames, who started the All Star Brass Band, began playing with Danny’s Roots of Jazz Brass Band in the early eighties. After the funeral, James Senior needed a ride home, and he was living close to where Danny lived, four streets away, in the St. Bernard project. I gave them a ride, and then I went over to James’s house in the projects and met his wife, Lois. At that time, young James couldn’t have been more than six years old. I’ve had a friendship with James since that time—I still see him at least once a week.
All of these experiences emphasized to me the importance and significance of building this radio station and getting this music into the community through the media. There had been hundreds of people at this funeral; you could sense the importance of the event. These musical funerals and second line parades are much more important to the people who attend them than the Saints’ games or Mardi Gras.
They’re dedicated to doing that, and you can feel it. You hear the people moan, and cry, and see tears flowing, the solemnity of it, and at the same time, the celebration of it. I was greatly moved by that, and it motivated me to start hanging around the second lines. At that time, the only light-skinned people hanging around second lines were myself, Michael Smith the photographer, and Jules Cahn the entrepreneur. I wasn’t writing a book, I wasn’t taking photos, I wasn’t making a film—I just hung out.
I got to meet all these beautiful people, whom I still have friendships with: the guys who went on to create the Dirty Dozen, Tuba Fats, Little James. I remember going to the first funeral little James Andrews played, when he was twelve years old: it was the funeral for his grandfather “Black Walter” Nelson. His sons were Papoose and Prince La La—Papoose had played guitar with Fats Domino.
We finally got on the air with WWOZ on December 4, 1980, and I started hanging out with James Andrews Sr. a lot. He was nicknamed “Twelve” because, as a crap shooter, he would always be able to hit double sixes: it’s known as “boxcars” in the game of craps. James had around his neck two gold dice, with the two sixes aiming out, so you could see them. He organized and formed the High Rollers Social Aid and Pleasure Club. He’s dedicated his life to the second line. That’s the most important thing he has ever done, or will ever do:participate in that.
Into the seventies, there had been a slight revival of New Orleans music. A lot of great players were still alive who had been ignored by the media. Tipitina’s club was opening uptown, WWOZ was getting together, and the Jazz Festival was becoming a worldwide event.
Certainly the media can exaggerate, misconstrue, and mislead. But with WWOZ, we had the people doing the programming themselves, having hands-on participation. After spending $50,000 on legal expenses, I got a call from an FCC commissioner on December 3, 1980. He said, “Can You be on the air?” Within twenty-four hours, we were broadcasting. It was amazing.
We were broadcasting out of a cinder-block transmitter shack on the Mississippi River. So there was no way our audience could reach us. This went on for about five months. I’d stay up all night making tapes, then drive out to the transmitter, sit there for ten hours a day, and run the tapes. It was pretty painful.
Then the people at Tipitina’s allowed us to put a studio above their nightclub. The very first day we had a phone so people could reach us, Snooks Eaglin called us. He said, “I’m listening. I can hear it. Sounding good to me. Keep it going. I’m with y’all.” I’m like, “Who is this?” He says, “This is Fird Eaglin.” I said, “Can we put you on our mailing list?” He said, “I’ll have to call you back. Let me ask my wife.” Then the second day, David Lastie calls up, when we’d just played the very first recording he’d ever made. He had been driving in his car when he heard it, pulled over to a pay phone. He said, “This is David Lastie. I can’t believe y’all got that record.” Musicians just came out of the woodwork. Nobody had given them any attention in their own community. When my brother and I were running WWOZ, it was the only radio station in America that had a fifty-fifty black and white audience.
Walter and I worked for almost four years for not one dollar. We struggled. Both of us were working numerous part-time jobs and working twelve hours a day at the radio station. We finally started to get paid towards the end, but not much. That’s why people like Danny Barker just embraced us. People in New Orleans figured we were either total idiots or insane millionaires with Texas oil fortunes. They didn’t know we were truly idiots! It was through that dedication that the people gave us what we needed—the community built WWOZ with their sweat, their blood, their money. That’s why it’s as successful as it is today. That’s what gave it its base.
Danny’s love of the brass bands, and Leroy Jones and Tuba Fats, that’s what made me close to those guys. He introduced me to Shannon Powell, Michael White, Lucien Barbarin. He realized that we shared a love of the music.
In 1980, we produced the first recording by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. It wasn’t released—I still have the master tapes. We did it solely so that we could have their music to play on the radio, and we played it constantly.
The first time I ever heard them was at Big Chief Jolly’s funeral. Big Chief Jolly, George Landry, a wonderful barrelhouse piano player, in the style of Jack Dupree, was also the uncle of the Neville Brothers. He had really encouraged them to get into music. He was also the Big Chief of the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indian tribe. His funeral was a big deal; it was a massive event. I think it was early 1979. I was recording the funeral—I had this little stereo recorder. The Olympia had played inside the church and led the casket out. There were lots of Indians; the Nevilles were there and the Meters, all beating tambourines. It was at a church uptown. The Dirty Dozen was there. It was a group that had just come together—you could hear that they were struggling with ideas within the framework of the music. They had not, at that point, progressed to where they were playing those incredible tight arrangements and riffs that they became known for, using the New Orleans second line tradition as a basis to jump off into any form of music they chose. They were all very talented musicians, but their ideas just hadn’t crystallized yet.
It was obvious that they were rehearsing like crazy. Just a few months later, they started to perform once a week at a club called Daryl’s. It’s down in the Seventh Ward, on Tonti Street, between Conti and Rocheblave.
I’ll never forget the first time I walked in there. I could barely get in—it was only a small black-owned barroom in a poor neighborhood. I mean, the place was just exploding. T
he band had been practicing, and they had figured out what they were going to do. The people were so exuberant—the floor was covered with people, rolling on the floor! I was afraid to step on them. And there were at least six men in their sixties and seventies dancing on top of the bar. This is what the Fairview band and the Hurricane Brass Band had been leading up to—the Dirty Dozen had renewed this music to speak to the contemporary New Orleans community. The people were going wild. Going to Daryl’s became the weekly ritual.
At Daryl’s on Thursday night, it was just an explosion of spirit. They would serve red beans. There was not one person who was not dancing. Everybody was moving—the music was moving them. The more the people moved, it moved the music even more. People were taking their clothes off—the place was crammed, it was so hot (there was no air conditioning), they were sweating. In between sets, everybody would pile outside, just to cool off before going back for the next set. The Dozen was a complete show—there was no break from one song to the next. They’d play three hour-long sets, and if they felt good, maybe longer. Each set was like a complete symphony—that was something new.
I interviewed Gregory Davis in the mid-eighties and asked him to explain what did the Dozen do that’s different. They stepped outside the traditional boundaries. The first song they did that the old guys criticized them for was “Night Train.” They were willing to bring in material that meant something to their own lives and experience. In many ways, it’s no different than what had happened before: brass bands in New Orleans have always adapted the music that was popular in their time. In that sense, they were part of that same tradition.
Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Jackson Square, 1986 (Kirk Joseph, Efrem Towns, Lionel Batiste Jr., Gregory Davis, Jennell Marshall, Roger Lewis) Photo by Marcel Joly
There were other people who contributed to that. Tuba Fats had recorded “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” with the Olympia Brass Band; Leroy Jones, “Leroy’s Special” with the Hurricane Brass Band; they were all leading in this direction, you could feel that.
The Dirty Dozen brought that tendency to fruition, and they dedicated themselves to it, more than any body else had previously. They rehearsed and Frog Joseph had a big influence on them—they rehearsed in his backyard, and he would mentor them and their sound as a brass band. He wasn’t against them taking the music in new directions, but it was like, “If you’re going to do it, do it right.” He influenced them in that way—correct harmony, counterpoint, rhythmic interest, that kind of thing. It helped them create a big sound, big chords.
People didn’t pay attention to what was going on back then. Whenever I recorded the Dozen, I couldn’t pay them, but they were just thrilled that anybody was taking any notice of them, especially someone who was connected with the music business. One of my contributions to brass bands was to make them understand, early on, the importance of having your business together. I did the first press kit for the Dirty Dozen and helped them to present themselves professionally. We produced a calendar for them, and I arranged a concert for them, which was the first time they had played in a white club, Tipitina’s. That introduced them to a whole new audience—that was in 1982. They hadn’t made any official recordings by that time.
They emerged from this deeply rooted community tradition that included the Baby Dolls and the Original Sixth Ward Dirty Dozen Kazoo Band. I paraded with the Baby Dolls on the last time they went out: that was Mardi Gras Day, 1981. It was a Mardi Gras tradition; the Dirty Dozen kind of grew out of it. Benny Jones was around, Uncle Lionel Batiste. It was his family that were the nucleus of that Mardi Gras group. It was a real folk movement within the community.
Jenell Marshall, the snare drummer, would organize these parades where all the men would dress as drag queens, all out marching down the street, and they’d just be beating on tubs and bottles—they just did it for fun and the love of life. If you’re from New Orleans, and you have any sort of social conscience, you realize that classism and racism are very deep rooted. Not for everyone, but historically. These people in the black neighborhoods had learned for centuries how to enjoy life, amongst the greatest repression. They have really made life special, and they have made it their own. People that are forgotten today were part of that scene: Andrew Green the drummer, Cyrille Salvant the trumpet player.
The Dirty Dozen grew out of all that culture; it wasn’t as if they were created in a vacuum. They made a musical climate in which it was possible for the Rebirth Brass Band to exist. When Danny Barker and the Reverend Darby put the Fairview Baptist band together, not only were the brass bands dying out, but the second line clubs had sort of ceased to exist as well. When the Dozen exploded musically, it gave the impetus to clubs to start parading again. Of course, the Olympia band played the older, traditional club parades, but people turned out to the Dozen’s second line parades in masses—more so than they do today. Today, an average four-hour second line parade is probably witnessed by around eight thousand people. But back then, you might have around five thousand people actually following the parade. The tune that finished every performance was “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now.” That became the anthem of the street.
People romanticize about the Tremé and its importance in the history of jazz, but there were many neighborhoods that were important. But certainly for the revival of the seventies and eighties, Tremé was very significant. It’s gone through tremendous changes in the last fifteen years. The real estate has skyrocketed because it’s such a historic area. People realized that there were all these incredibly beautiful houses there.
The Rebirth headquarters was on North Villere Street between St. Philip and Ursulines. That’s where Philip and Keith Frazier lived with their mother, Barbara. As kids, they had witnessed the Dirty Dozen, the Chosen Few, all of that.
In a way, it was the newfound freedom of civil rights that gave the youth the impetus to have freedom in the music. There’s a parallel between that and the way emancipation spawned so many brass bands after the Civil War.
In the 1960s, the NAACP tried to stop the second lines. It wasn’t that they had bad intentions; it’s just that they felt that it was a bit of a throwback, and it was time to move on. Harold Dejan and Danny Barker stood up to them and said, “This is valuable. This is a part of the history of our people.”
I used to call Danny Barker “the last sidewalk intellectual.” He would hang out with the brothers on the street corner, drink a beer, shoot the shit, smoke a joint, whatever was happening. He could discuss history, art, world music—his interests were not confined to his music that became known as jazz.
The Rebirth, being young kids, it was all the most exciting thing they saw. The majority of them were going to Joseph Clark High School, so they got together. Allison Miner, who later became their manager, really helped turn the Rebirth into a world-class band. I saw potential in them, and I wanted to help them develop. Allison was producing a jazz series at the Contemporary Arts Center. I asked Allison as a favor, “Look, I’m working with these kids—it would really mean a lot, they’ve never played on a stage—could they get up and do just one song before your concert starts?” She’s like, “OK, Jerry, as a favor to you, I’ll do it.” So we showed up at the right time, got on stage, and started playing. After maybe a minute and a half of “Lord, Lord, Lord” Allison stomped out on the stage and scolded me for bringing a group like this that was not ready to be presented to any audience and told us to get out. She was a very strong-minded woman. It was really ironic that, ten years later, she thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread!
Round about the same time, I had them play for this function for WWOZ in Armstrong Park. Kermit [Ruffins] was up there playing, and some guy came up to me and said, “That’s the worst trumpet player I ever heard in my life. Why are you letting him play?” Now, Kermit’s still not the greatest in the world, but he’s working regularly, and he’s developed a lot. I mean, somebody has to encourage emerging talent.
In 1984, Danny Barker decided to organi
ze new workshops—he was going to organize another children’s group. He started a band called the Roots of Jazz Brass Band, and James Andrews was the leader of that. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine at that time. Nicholas Payton was in that group. A lot of the band personnel were members of the Andrews family — “Peanut,” Darnell, “Buster.”
Within a year, James realized, “Hey, we got something here.” So they formed their own group, James Andrews and the All Stars. Shortly after that, Lois, his mother, rented a building on Governor Nicholls and Marais Street. It became known as “the Hall.” Tuba Fats lived upstairs; I lived around the corner. It became the spot. Every Monday, we would barbecue out there, the band would perform, Tuba would show them how the music went. Clark Terry would come by if he was in the neighborhood.
The Hall was covered with murals of brass bands. James had sat at the feet of Kid Thomas and Teddy Riley. As a kid, he really did try to absorb this New Orleans sound. When James was around fourteen, he was playing in this place called the Tremé Lounge. I was in there, sharing a drink with Harold Dejan. I asked Harold who he thought James sounded like. Harold said he reminded him of Kid Howard when he was young.
In about 1986, it was a special time. Tuba had the Chosen Few, the Tuxedo were still working, there was the Olympia, the Dirty Dozen were out on the road, there was the Pinstripe Brass Band uptown, Floyd Anckle had reorganized the Majestic, and the Rebirth.
I was kind of an outsider looking in, but I became an insider. I didn’t think about it—I was with my friends. The friendship wasn’t all about the music. It extended to “If you’ve got a flat tire, let’s help you fix it. If you need to move, let’s help each other move.”
Most of the people today who participate in the tradition really don’t know what it’s about—all they know is their own personal experience. There’s over forty-four second line parades annually now. That’s more than there’s ever been.