INNER VIEW: Preservation Hall band
plays crowd-pleasing New Orleans jazz

“The best jazz band in the land.” That’s how a San Francisco Examiner writer describes the house band from Preservation Hall in New Orleans.

You can’t help but be in a better mood after listening to Preservation Hall Jazz Band, so smiles and tapping toes should abound when the venerable ensemble—returning to Penn State for the first time in a decade—closes the Center for the Performing Arts 2007–2008 season with a concert at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 12, in Eisenhower Auditorium.

“The tradition of New Orleans jazz championed by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band has to be the purest musical expression of the ‘melting pot’ ideal,” writes a Los Angeles Times critic.

Based at Preservation Hall, a 250-year-old building that has housed businesses including a tavern, a photo studio, and an art gallery, the small ensemble of jazz virtuosos keeps alive a uniquely American sound. It’s a crowd-pleasing style of music in which the tempo is a tad slower than in other forms of jazz and the melody, even amid improvisation, is always close at hand.

Perhaps you heard the band perform the national anthem before the Bowl Championship Series college football title game between LSU and Ohio State January 7. Maybe you’ve even been fortunate enough to sit in on one of the band’s concerts at its tourist-mecca home—a weathered venue that doesn’t serve drinks and eschews air conditioning—in the heart of the French Quarter.

Allan and Sandra Jaffe founded the band in 1961 to help ensure that New Orleans’ native art form would continue to thrive. Two years later the band, which then consisted of jazz pioneers who had jammed with the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, began touring the world to spread the good news about the roots of New Orleans jazz.

Benjamin Jaffe, the founders’ son, serves as creative director of today’s Preservation Hall, which includes the band, a recording company, and more.

The band, lead for more than twenty years until his death February 12 by trumpeter John Brunious, opts for the beauty of simplicity over complicated arrangements in tunes such as “Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” “Tiger Rag,” “Bill Bailey,” “Little Liza Jane,” “Bourbon St. Parade,” and, of course, “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Ben Jaffe salvaged master tapes of the band’s early recordings from a studio that had been flooded by six feet of water. The tracks, originally produced by his father, prompted him to create a musical and visual offering that spans the band’s history and stirs hope for its future.

Released last July, Made in New Orleans: The Hurricane Sessions includes previously unreleased gems, archival material, and new recordings that display the legacy of the band and the breadth of its music. The music CD is packaged with a DVD, which features rare footage of the band, including its first national television appearance on the Brinkley News Hour in 1961.

“Preservation Hall,” the Los Angeles Times writer insists, “define[s] that other characteristically American attribute: Where talent reigns, anything goes.”

Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring a visiting artist or local expert, is offered in Eisenhower Auditorium one hour before the performance and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity. Seating is available on a first-arrival basis.

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John Brunious: 1940–2008

A native of New Orleans, John Brunious was imbued from birth with the sound of jazz in his soul.

Brunious joined Preservation Hall Jazz Band in the 1980s after substituting for longtime trumpeter Percy Humphrey. He went on to guide the group as bandleader for more than twenty years. He died of an apparent heart attack February 12 in Casselbury, Florida. He was 67.

A gifted trumpeter and pianist, Brunious grew up in a family of talented musicians. His father, John “Picky” Brunious, introduced him to jazz at a tender age. His father began giving him lessons when he was 10, but Brunious mostly learned by listening to recordings.

Dizzy Gillespie and Maynard Ferguson were especially influential during the maturation of Brunious, who developed a penchant for flashy, high-note solos. His talent garnered him jobs with bands and recording sessions in various genres.

“John Brunious was living history,” says Ben Jaffe, creative director of Preservation Hall. “One of the last things John told me was, ‘There’s another Louis Armstrong somewhere out there in New Orleans. I’m going to find them and teach them all I got.’ It’s now in our hands to carry on his message and legacy the way he carried the torch for so many years.”

“With his shock of white hair and the traditional white shirt and black pants of old-school New Orleans jazz bands, he led the group with great heart and spirit,” says Jeanna Disney  of  the band’s booking agency International Music Network. “He will be missed.”

As is the tradition with the band, the group will, for the foreseeable future, fill the void left by Brunious’ passing with guest trumpeters.

Brunious was celebrated in traditional New Orleans style with a jazz funeral march February 23. The parade, which included musicians, family, friends, and fans, began outside Preservation Hall and made its way through the heart of the Crescent City before concluding where it began.

“I consider New Orleans jazz to be a treasure,” Brunious once said, “and it’s wonderful to be able to share that treasure.”