In New Orleans, we often recognize and celebrate our wealth of musical families—and rightly so. They are of huge importance to the continuum of this city’s heritage. With links to the past, members of such families are deeply rooted in the tradition yet are a part of the evolution that reaches forward to insure the music’s future.

Less is said, perhaps, about what might be described as “educational families,” those equally important entities that have produced generation after generation o...