Now in its 30th Year, Nickel-a-Dance is a free series of Sunday afternoon jazz concerts that began in 1994, and now take place each Spring and Fall season that is a hit with children, families, seniors and the general dancing public who don’t tend to go to night clubs.  It attracts a diverse group of fans that meet on Frenchmen Street to celebrate jazz as America’s original dance music, while listening to the best of today’s classic jazz bands.

Nickel-a-Dance offers a weekly dance soirée that is friendly to dancers of all ages, where drinking from a bar is not a central focus of the gathering. This season, the series features acclaimed bandleaders from musical families that go back generations in New Orleans Jazz history, over the course of four Sundays in October.

Dr. Michael White performed at Nickel-a-Dance for the inaugural season show on Sunday, October 1. Davell Crawford is scheduled to perform on October 8. Known as “The Prince of New Orleans,” Davell Crawford is a pianist, singer, songwriter, and performer. Raised in the church, Davell is the grandson of the rhythm & blues star James “Sugar Boy” Crawford, who wrote the New Orleans hit song “Jockomo,” later known as “Iko Iko.”

The New Leviathan Oriental FoxTrot Orchestra an American revival orchestra, will play Nickel-a-Dance October 15. The band performs authentic orchestrations of vintage American popular music from the 1890s through the early 1930s.  In addition to the well-known compositions of jazz and ragtime composers like Jelly Roll Morton, Fletcher Henderson, and Eubie Blake, the orchestra’s repertory includes the work of other New Orleans Tin Pan Alley composers such as Larry Buck, Joe Verges, Paul Sarebresole, and Nick Clesi.

Taking its name from the SS Leviathan, a transatlantic ocean liner with a well-regarded dance band at the start of the 1920s, the orchestra was founded in 1972. Their first performance was at Tulane University, presenting a rather tongue-in-cheek concert of “Best-Loved Oriental Foxtrots,” partially satirizing the then-current revival of scholarly interest in classic ragtime. They’ve been together ever since, still recruiting new musicians along the way.

Kermit Ruffins will play the following Sunday, October 22 followed by Herlin Riley, Sunday, October 29.

These free events take place Sundays from 4-7 p.m. at Maison, 508 Frenchmen Street.