New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

So what are the New Orleans/brass band albums of the year?

(And by the way, I've left City Pages, so hit me at petescholtes "at" gmail "dot" com if you have any tours/news coming to Minnesota.)

Hot 8 - Live at Jazzfest '07 is sick.

The Free Agents Brass Band album is done, and really good, but it doesn't have an official release yet afaik.

TBC Brass Band put out a live cd-r that I listened to a ton.

Rebirth put out that dvd, and I like those Harry Connick Jr. records from early in the year (esp "Oh My Nola").

Seems like there will be some new brass band records in early '08 from Hot 8, Rebirth, Soul Rebels at least.

I'll track down the Hot 8 album, thanks, man.

Oh, that link didn't work but you can get it from louisianamusicfactory.com

there's a 10 min rebirth video at the bottom of this page, pretty hot for an in-store!

http://louisianamusicfactory.com/InStores/jf2007/Day6/index.html

Offbeat magazine out of New Orleans needs to run a feature or 3 on TBC and Free Agents and provide updates on Hot 8 and the others.

i did come across this recently: http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20071008c

small soldiers and baby boyz brass bands, new to me!

That is cool. That Andrews family is something. The writer of the article used to (maybe still does?) write for Offbeat.

Speaking of Offbeat, some sad news via their e-mail--

Unfortunately, we learned Tuesday that Ernest "Doc" Paulin passed away. Paulin was 100 years old, and he played with such traditional jazz greats as Kid Ory, Danny Barker, Papa Celestine and Harold Dejean. Paulin retired in 2004 after playing one last gig at Jazz Fest, but before that, he gave many talented musicians their first gigs, including Dr. Michael White, Big Al Carson, Donald Harrison, Tuba Fats, Gregg Stafford, Freddie Lonzo and Leroy Jones. He came from a musical family and that tradition continues as his sons still play as the Paulin Brothers Brass Band.

http://www.folkways.si.edu/search/AlbumDetails.aspx?ID=2113#

samples from Doc Paulin's Marching Band Folkways cd

'Doc' Paulin, New Orleans oldest traditional jazz musician, dead at 100
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Wed Nov 21, 2:53 AM PST
MARRERO, La. - New Orleans' oldest traditional jazz musician, trumpeter Ernest (Doc) Paulin, is dead at the age of 100.

Paulin, who had performed since the 1920s, died Tuesday at a daughter's home in suburban Marrero, family members said.

Doc Paulin's Brass Band was one of the city's more popular jazz bands for years.

"He embodied the spirit of the New Orleans jazz tradition in his manners and his trumpet playing and leadership," said Michael White, a professor of African-American music at Xavier University and a clarinetist who started his own career in 1975 with Paulin's band.

"For many decades, especially the 1950s through the 1980s, he trained dozens of musicians in his band."

The band was featured in "Always for Pleasure," an award-winning film about New Orleans culture, The Times-Picayune reported Wednesday.

Paulin grew up in a family of musicians. His father played the accordion. Edgar Peters, his uncle, was a trombonist, and many of his children - 10 sons and three daughters - are musicians. At least six performed in his band.

One of his sons, Rickey Paulin, a New Orleans clarinet player displaced to Houston by Hurricane Katrina, said the family is working on funeral plans and is trying to persuade officials to allow an event to be held at city-owned Gallier Hall.

"We don't have a place large enough for the crowds," he said.

Rickey Paulin said survivors include Ernest Paulin's wife, Betty, 10 other sons and three daughters.

there's another cd, not that one, but a more recent Paulin Bros. Brass band one that is great if you like trads

New Orleans pianist Davell Crawford hit hard times and is now in NY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/nyregion/22musician.html?ref=music

I bet this Vincent Mallozi NY Times article will get him some bookings

“Davell is a cross between Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, a male Billie Holiday,” said Wendy Oxenhorn, the executive director of the Jazz Foundation. “He is way too talented to be going through hard times.”

Mr. Crawford, called the Prince of New Orleans by a former mayor, Marc H. Morial, said that Katrina wiped out his apartment and his Lower Ninth Ward recording studio, where he kept his grand piano, recordings, compositions, jewelry, even money.

The studio doubled as a music school for hundreds of aspiring young artists whom Mr. Crawford, whose energetic music embraces jazz, gospel, funk and rhythm and blues, taught to sing and play the piano. The catastrophe forced him to live for a while in his grandmother’s beauty salon, which Katrina left partly standing, with no running water and no heat.

As the rest of New Orleans struggled to recover, Mr. Crawford used his life’s savings to support himself while performing at funerals and benefits around the city.

For those performances, he took no pay, but great pleasure in repaying those who had showered him in better days with thunderous applause at places including the House of Blues, Charly B’s and the Maple Leaf.

“Down in New Orleans, we’re a very tribal community,” Mr. Crawford said. “We’re like family — we help one another.”

By February 2006, six months of volunteering had taken a financial toll on Mr. Crawford. He had drifted to Atlanta and was sleeping on the floors of friends’ apartments.

One afternoon, he found himself in a Burger King there, with $12 left in his pocket.

“A preacher friend of mine from Atlanta called me that very day, just by coincidence,” Mr. Crawford said. “He rushed over to the Burger King and gave me a hundred dollars — and I just broke down and started to cry.”

The next day, he received a phone call from Ms. Oxenhorn, whose foundation began helping him with bills and finding him work. In August this year, the foundation brought him to New York and placed him in his apartment, gave him a donated grand piano worth $12,000 and had his grandmother’s beauty salon in New Orleans repaired.

The foundation also provided Mr. Crawford with recording equipment to make CDs to get bookings for festival work and helped him land an audition for Blue Note Records in New York and numerous gigs around the city.

I wonder if Blue Note is gonna sign him?

he was running ads offering a private concert in your home for only $1000 :>

New Orleans crime stories continue. Alex Chilton is still in New Orleans and playing at a benefit on Sunday (this is via Offbeat):

Robert Strong has been the bar manager at La Crêpe Nanou for twenty-four years. On Saturday, November 3, 2007 he was shot on St. Charles Ave. during an armed robbery. The incident left Mr. Strong initially in critical condition with major injury to his jaw. He requires five more surgeries to rebuild his jawbone and remains in inpatient care.

On Sunday, December 2nd, 2007, several area businesses will host a benefit to assist in Strong’s recovery and unite against the recent surge of violence in New Orleans.

Participating local restaurants include La Crêpe Nanou, Galatoire’s, Café Degas, Dick & Jenny’s, Dante’s Kitchen, St. James Cheese Company, New Orleans Ice Cream Co., and many more. Area musicians Alex Chilton, Susan Cowsill, The Stringbeans, Herringbone Orchestra, and David Doucet and Al Tharp will perform throughout the evening. There will be information on safety and self-defense provided by local martial arts instructors. A silent auction will be held, with donations from artists, restaurants, and cultural institutions.

The benefit is from 3pm until 8pm on the 1400 block of Robert Street.

pretty good Free Agents video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsHmL4dq5zQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAhbxW2RdUE

Atlanta's Shawty Lo from D4L with brass

Excerpt from a sad NY Times article

December 18, 2007
With Regrets, New Orleans Is Left Behind
By ADAM NOSSITER, New York Times
LAKE CHARLES, La. — With resignation, anger or stoicism, thousands of former New Orleanians forced out by Hurricane Katrina are settling in across the Gulf Coast, breaking their ties with the damaged city for which they still yearn.

They now cast their votes in small Louisiana towns and in big cities of neighboring states. They have found new jobs and bought new houses. They have forsaken their favorite foods and cherished pastors. But they do not for a moment miss the crime, the chaos and the bad memories they left behind in New Orleans.

This vast diaspora — largely black, often poor, sometimes struggling — stretches across the country but is concentrated in cities near the coast, like this one, or Atlanta or Baton Rouge or Houston, places where the newcomers are still reaching for accommodation.

The break came fairly recently. Sometime between the New Orleans mayor’s race in spring 2006, when thousands of displaced citizens voted absentee or drove in to cast a ballot, and the city election this fall, when thousands did not — resulting in a sharply diminished electorate and a white-majority City Council — the decision was made: there was no going back. Life in New Orleans was over.

Now, they are adjusting to places where the pace is slower, restaurants are fewer, existence is centered on the home, and streets are lonely and deserted after 5 p.m., as in this city in southwest Louisiana. These exiles, still in semi-limbo and barely established in a routine, describe their new lives less in terms of what it now consists of than of what they left behind.

“I told them, ‘I love turtle soup.’ People here go, ‘What’s that?’ ” said Pauline Hurst, a former therapy technician at a New Orleans hospital who settled here after her home was destroyed in the post-hurricane flood.

Dreadlocks, accepted in New Orleans, might mean a reservation at a fancy restaurant is suddenly “lost,” as in the telling of one exile here. A burst of gunfire might mean an instant police response rather than none at all, as in New Orleans, in the amazed recounting of another. Late-night cravings mean the IHOP rather than the famous Camellia Grill; going to work means hourlong trips on country roads, rather than, say, a 10-minute hop across the Industrial Canal from the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans.

hot 8 playing at a protest that gets broken up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GPjNhVUzqk

The benefit shows are always happening:

Irvin Mayfield will throw himself a "Thirty for 30" birthday party Saturday from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Latter Memorial Library (5120 St. Charles Ave.). Mayfield is the chairman of the New Orleans Public Library board, and as he is celebrating his 30th birthday by giving the $30,000 he has raised to the library system. The party features music by Kermit Ruffins, the Rebirth Brass Band and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra Allstars, and it's free with a library card (which you can get at the door with a driver's license and another document with a current mailing address). There will be a cash bar, and donations to the library will be gladly accepted. Eight of the city's 13 public libraries were ruined by Hurricane Katrina, and more money is needed to rebuild and restock them.

Sunday night, the House of Blues once again hosts "Home for the Holidays-A Concert for the Daniel Price Foundation for Aspiring Artists." Price was a local artist who was murdered in San Francisco by a mugger in December, 2003. His father, Dr. Steve Price, set up the foundation to help college-bound graduates of NOCCA, and this year's show includes the Rebirth Brass Band, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Ave., Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers, and special guests Jonathan Batiste, John Boutte and Rockin' Dopsie, Jr. Before the show, there will be a special patrons' party with music by Irma Thomas.

Jordan, Geraldine Wyckoff who wrote that article on young brass bands that you linked to, has written a less obscure overview of brass bands for the latest issue of Jazztimes. I think Not 8 are in it. I glanced at the magazine at Borders.

http://jazztimes.com/columns_and_features/table_of_contents/article_excerpts/index.cfm?article_id=18623

Not 8! Uh, Hot 8....

great Stooges second line video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PESn_gvHHyY

In the latest Offbeat magazine, in the introduction to their best 50 Louisiana cds of 2007, they wonder why there were so few official 2007 release cds from New Orleans brass bands. Perhaps they should have asked the bands. Unrelated to that, I think their list is a little too jam and Americana heavy. Not enough rap or zydeco.

One disturbing post-Katrina trend is the relative absence of brass band releases. Last year, the Dirty Dozen’s What’s Going On loomed so large that it obscured the lack of other releases, but Mardi Gras Records’ release of New Birth’s New Orleans Second Line! was the only brass band release we received this year, and that album was dominated by reissued material. The dearth of brass releases makes you wonder. Is it because recording is a luxury many recovering brass bands can’t afford? Is it because brass bands don’t see enough of a market for their music on CD to make albums a reasonable expense? Or does it say something about the condition of the brass bands and their musical community? Sadly, it’s now a feature of life in New Orleans that celebrations are almost always accompanied by causes for concern, so why should our look at the year’s top releases be any different?—Alex Rawls

http://offbeat.com/artman/publish/article_2823.shtml

all the bands recorded this year, but nothing has come out yet. '08 should see six new brass band records at the very least, which will be like a record year.

x-post--The Stooges joined your band on New Year's Eve?!

Perhaps the Offbeat editor should have asked the bands whether they are recording, instead of simply guessing about the reasons for the few 2007 cds. I read that Hot 8 are backing the Blind Boys of Alabama on 2 cuts on the new Blind Boys of Alabama "Down in New Orleans" cd due out at the end of January.

no, we played in madison on NYE. we did do a couple mini-tours with the Stooges a few years ago, though.

I think you put the wrong youtube link. You said you linked to the Stooges brass band, but you linked to your own band.

oh whoops, here is the stooges video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHy__pYDO3o

That's nice.

Heard my man Trombone Shorty on American Routes with Kermit Ruffins playing in Minnesota I think.

Now I see Shorty is doing a big pricey show in NYC--

January 11 & 12, 2008 - Rose Theater
Jazz at Lincoln Center

WHO/WHAT: Kings of the Crescent City celebrates the music of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Joe “King" Oliver and Sidney Bechet. Led by Victor Goines (clarinet, soprano saxophone), the ensemble comprised predominately of New Orleans natives will consist of Troy “Trombone Shorty" Andrews (trumpet), Marcus Printup (trumpet), Wycliffe Gordon (trombone), Don Vappie (guitar), Jonathan Batiste (piano), Reginald Veal (bass) and Herlin Riley (drums). Kings of the Crescent City is one of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame concert series. The show will be hosted and narrated by actor Wendell Pierce.

Free Pre-Concert Lecture both nights at 7pm in the Irene Diamond Education Center: Victor Goines (music director for Kings of the Crescent City) discusses the music of New Orleans and four of its greatest practictioners - Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and Sidney Bechet. Mr. Goines will be joined by Jazz at Lincoln Center's Education Manager Ken Druker for these lectures.

WHEN: January 11 & 12, 2008, 8pm

WHERE: Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, on Broadway at 60th St., New York City. HOW: Tickets at $30, $50, $75, $95, $120

hosted by Bunk!

i'm going down weekend after next.

Went to the benefit concert for Dinerral Shavers at the Howlin Wolf last night and saw 7 - count 'em 7! - brass bands. Rebirth, Soul Rebels and the Free Agents played short sets to start. Then To Be Continued came on and blew me away. They've really got it together in the past year and have some great original songs w/intricate horn parts and vocals. (Gotta get that live CD-R that Jordan mentioned.) Da Truth has also improved a lot since I saw them playing on Bourbon Street a while ago. They don't quite have the great arrangements that TBC does, but maybe I should cut them some slack since the average age of the band members is about 19. The Stooges were next and they're back in a big way. They have a song called "Protect and Serve" that' about the murder of Hot 8 trombonist Joe Williams by the NOPD, and Shamarr Allen, who grew up with Joe in the 9th Ward, came onstage to rap a verse. A trumpet player in the Stooges said the song will be included on a new CD out in March. Hot 8 closed out the night. They're the band to beat right now, and are playing especially tight after all the touring they've been doing. Alright, I'm done gushing, and my ears are still ringing from all that brass.

aw now i regret being lazy and not doing anything last night. that sounds awesome.

jordan--y'all marching? or doing the usual donna's thing?

man, wish i could've gone to that show.

hey adam, the whole band isn't going this time. slight chance i might get a gig with another band for krewe du vieux, but otherwise we're just going to be hanging and seeing bands.

ps could you e-mail me? i don't have your # anymore.

done.

i may be playing with the st00ges for the parade on sat.

Very cool. Have the Lil' Stooges moved back to N'awlins from Atlanta (which is where I thought they were most recently based)? When they were last in DC they were moving away from being a straight-up brass band and were including a keyboard and stuff.

i don't know if they're still doing the electric band lineup sometimes, but it sounds like they're back in town and starting to work as a brass band again. let you know after this weekend.

not in the video, but the audio from :30 - 1:30 is the stooges from krewe du vieux.

One of the Stooges' trumpet players told me they've regrouped here but maintain a band house in Atlanta. They were all-acoustic when I saw them. They've also played several second line parades recently (including the one Jordan found on youtube). And they announced from the stage that they've got a weekly gig at a bar in N.O. East - I think they said on Downman Road.

I'm curious to hear the new CD. For a while they had a MySpace page w/hip-hop trax and no brass band songs, but now I can't find it. (Anyone better at Googling "Stooges" and not getting the punk band?) (Which is also great.)

yeah, they're back as a brass band full-time now.

here's the myspace page you're talking about.

oops: http://www.myspace.com/stoogesmusicgroup

Just noticed that Hot 8 are gonna be near me soon--Reston, Virginia on the 9th of February and maybe Chick Halls in Bladensburg, Md on the 10th (the latter show is listed on the club's website but not on Hot 8's myspace site)

I downloaded that new Blind Boys of Alabama record this morning. It's nice...it leans more to the BB's thing than to the New Orleans musicians' thing, but it's kind of a thrill to hear Shannon Powell, David Torkanowski, the Hot 8 etc. on a national release.

I came across praise for New Orlean street band Loose Marbles (tuba plus numerous other instruments). Need to check out their youtube videos again. Was not wowed on first glance.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/neworleansjournal/2007/05/loose_marbles.html

terrible