Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 50)

based music. One was the foundation of the Archive of New Orleans Jazz at Tulane University, with Richard B. Allen and Bill Russell; those are names that you will encounter in Tom’s book. That was in 1958 with Ford Foundation funding. But even more significantly for many people, because this became the conduit to the public, was Preservation Hall in 1961. It should be noted much of this was accomplished by people who were not from New Orleans. Larry Bornstein, for example, was the owner of the Associated Artists Gallery that became the site for Preservation Hall. Barbara Reed and Ken Grayson Mills were basically jazz pilgrims who came here, put together a Society for the Preservation of Traditional New Orleans Jazz, which was the first kind of attempt to establish Preservation Hall. But what made it really work was the arrival of Sandra and Allan Jaffe. He was a graduate of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and he made Preservation Hall a going concern. All of this simply to bring us up to the point that we want to talk about today, which is when Tommy Sancton gets involved with Preservation Hall. What I’m basically saying is that, not only was the place absolutely essential to this story, but the time was essential. Because Tommy enters the picture at a time when the idea that Preservation Hall needs to be here to preserve the music and to allow the musicians to play the way they want to. This was a crucial idea and it’s part of the continuum to which the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park is contributing to today. So, when we talk about renewal, our touchstone for all of that is the tradition and our guest today is very much a part of that tradition. He got it hands on at Preservation Hall and elsewhere, which is how you learn to play jazz in New Orleans. So Tom, let me begin this dialogue by simply asking you, how did you first become aware that there was this tradition existing in your hometown of New Orleans? Tom Sancton: It was through my father, who as a younger man in the 1920’s, as Bruce was saying, actually was going to university dances, fraternity dances, and the music he heard included the Papa Celestin Band many times, the Sidney Desvignes Band, and Armand J. Piron. That’s the music he danced to and it was really the popular music of his youth. Many years later, at a time in his life when he was, I would say, looking for a new direction, he just stumbled on Preservation Hall one night, and I don’t even know if it was even called Preservation Hall then, it was still Larry Bornstein’s art studio. I don’t know if it may have had the name by then or not, but it was the same thing basically, a little hole in the wall with the splintery wooden floors, pretty much the way you see it today, with a jazz band in it. My dad heard this music and realized that he was looking at musicians that he’d heard years earlier, not only at those dances George Lewis and but also he heard that night George Tom Sancton play Lewis, the clarinet player, Jim Robinson clarinets at on trombone, Slow Drag Pavageau on Preservation Hall, bass, and he realized that these were December, 1962. musicians that he’d heard in New York in the ’40s when he was up there working on magazines. The Bunk Johnson Band had a residency at the Stuyvesant casino. Basically he discovered, or rediscovered, these musicians. He just thought it was wonderful and the next night brought me and my mother down there. My mother is here actually, in the back there. THOMAS SA . NCTON, SR “I was absolutely smitten with George Lewis on the clarinet. The sound of his clarinet was like nothing I’d ever heard. It was absolutely angelic, his tone, and so almost spiritual. There was something almost religious about it.” 50 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Summer 2008 I’m very pleased to have her here because she’s very much a part of this story, too. We went a few nights later, maybe the next night, because he wanted to expose me to this music, not to force me to get involved in it, but he just thought that it was a great cultural phenomenon, a great part of New Orleans, and I should see it. I was just enthralled the first night I went into Preservation Hall. I heard the George Lewis Band and it was a real revelation. All these musicians were like people I’d never seen before. Jim Robinson was on the trombone and he was a very exuberant, kind of rambunctious, wonderful player, kind of

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities George Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Cajuns, Blue Dogs & Beyond Katrina The Historic New Orleans Collection After The Flood Faubourg Marigny: The Creole “Suburb” Preserving New Orleans Jazz, One Generation at a Time: Conversation & Music with Tom Sancton Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Architecture Baton Rouge Photographs, 1863-1910 Jazz Notes The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Louisiana Association of Museums Nature of the “Beast” Louisiana State Museum Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

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