Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 54)

played is one that’s often played at funerals, “The Old Rugged Cross.” So we played many of those wonderful hymns and “Flee as a Bird to the Mountain,” and “Lord, Lord, Lord, You Sure Been Good to Me,” and “Westlawn Dirge.” Harold had sheet music, some arrangements of these dirges and that was one where he’d pass out the sheet music. Which I couldn’t really read, by the way. I just kind of faked it. But it was really an extraordinary experience being with that band and particularly being such a young person, It’s not just music in the street. When you’re at a funeral, it is a funeral, and you’re confronted with the reality of death and what it means existentially, but also what it means culturally in this city, and you realize that it is part of the way people die and the way people are buried here; it’s part of a very particular New Orleans culture. That too was one of the lessons that I learned playing with the Olympia Band and following the other bands around at the funerals. I realized that there’s this sort of seamless transition between happy music and the religious music, and the lamentations, and it’s all part Sancton: Well, Harold Dejan was a wonderful human of life. If you want to distill a Sandra and Allan Jaffe, founders of Preservation Hall being and a great bandleader. He led this band, the life lesson from that, it’s that in 1961, flank Tom Sancton’s Olympia Brass Band, which was one of the great marching the whole spectrum of human father during a conversation bands in the city at the time. That’s one of the main experience is not always between jazz sets. traditions of New Orleans culture, the parade music. The joyful but it’s always majestic. parade music tradition goes back to the Civil War military That’s what I felt without bands, and the parades served many functions. They being able to articulate it at the time. That’s very much played in particular for funerals and they played also for what I felt playing with those bands on those occasions. weddings and picnics and second line parades through the The musicians themselves were just wonderful human neighborhoods. It was always a big celebration, a big beings. They were funny. The banter between the musicians neighborhood event when a in the street was, well, I’d parade passed, whether it was a never heard anything quite funeral or just a parade, second like that. There was an old line parade. There were others. bass drummer who played “Chester Zardis, the bass The Eureka Brass Band which with Harold’s band named player his mother was run by Percy Humphrey was Booker T Glass. Henry Glass. didn’t want him to another one at that time. The His son played the snare Onward Brass Band which Louis play, she thought he’d drum and called his father Catrell ran, and then there was “Book.” Book called the son get in trouble. ‘If you Tuxedo with John Casimir. There “Papa.” Papa had a lot of start playing that jazz was a lot of great brass band kids. His name was Nowell those women are music around at the time. Glass and he was a younger Harold was really wonderful musician, and gonna eat you up!’“ for the younger musicians everybody called because he invited us to come him Papa. One day play with his band, and I had for some reason this experience, it was one of Booker was late for the great training experiences I the gig and the band had because you’d go play for five or six hours at a time in started without him, and Papa had strapped on the bass the hot sun and go through all these amazing drum and was just about to kick off the first number and neighborhoods and see this wonderful second line dancing; Booker T was running down the street. Booker T, by the I’d never seen anything like that in my life. Clive also spent way, at that time was up in his 80s. And he was straight as many hours on those hot streets sitting in with, as well as an arrow and he looked like a dry stick, he had no fat on Lars, sitting in with Harold Dejean’s Olympia Brass Band. him and these wonderful cheekbones. He had a face like a We played many funerals. In fact the number we just tribal mask or something. He took his drumming very 54 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Summer 2008 GRAUMAN MARKS

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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