Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Best of the Early Years/Hot 4 with Duke Dejan (Preservation Hall Recordings)

Best of the Beat Heartbeat Award: Sylvester Francis

This 2004 article has been updated to include a 2015 photo of Sylvester Francis – Ed. Sylvester Francis never planned to head a museum and considers himself a cameraman rather […]

Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music Education: Alvin Batiste

Many people might presume that after some five decades spent in the field of education a person could become jaded or perhaps even cynical. Yet, when clarinetist Alvin Batiste relates […]

The Stooges: Sweet on the Street

The Stooges Brass Band hit it on the sweet spot when it dubbed its debut release It’s About Time. Folks on the street have been jumpin’ to the band’s hot […]

Stooges, It’s About Time (Gruve)

Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Songs of New Orleans (Preservation Hall Recordings)

Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Sweet Emma and Her Preservation Hall Jazz Band (Preservation Hall Recordings)

Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Shake That Thing (Preservation Hall Recordings)

Trumpeting the Year

Despite saxophonist Ornette Coleman’s arrival at Jazz Fest and with bows to all the jazz musicians who swung like crazy in 2003, trumpeters, particularly, triumphed on the New Orleans scene […]

Preserving Preservation Hall: A Conversation with Ben Jaffe

It’s a natural that Preservation Hall, the bare-bones French Quarter nightspot world-renowned for presenting New Orleans traditional jazz, should spawn its own record label. So much so that some folks […]