Photo by Clint Maedgen
It’s not surprising to find my interview scheduled during travel time for Ben Jaffe, Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s creative director and tuba player. Although the musical institution is based in New Orleans, the members have consistently left the Crescent City to spread its timeless jazz sounds around the globe.
Over the past year, the beloved act celebrated its 50th anniversary with a concert at Carnegie Hall, a Thailand tour that included a show before the country’s King and Princess, a performance with Stevie Wonder during the Message of Peace Concert at the United Nations, guests such as Jim James, Steve Earle, Bonnie Raitt, Trombone Shorty and Allen Toussaint joining them at New Orleans JazzFest and the 7th annual Creole Christmas shows.
Preservation Hall’s 2013 has already included joining My Morning Jacket for a Hurricane Sandy benefit at Asbury Park, performing with Dr. John and the Black Keys at the Grammy Awards, receiving a NAACP Image Award. Also on the agenda are a host of dates as headliners, with the Mobile Symphony Orchestra and as part of festival lineups (Merlefest, Sasquatch, Saskatchewan Jazz, Red Wing Roots).
Established in 1961, Preservation Hall originated when Jaffe’s parents, Allan and Sandra, moved to New Orleans and were encouraged to organize the jam sessions held by the elder musicians at an art gallery located in the heart of the French Quarter. Since that time, it has become a place to embrace and mentor one generation after another in the traditions of jazz while supporting the creative impulses that move the genre forward.
Marking Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s lengthy history is the four-CD box set, The Preservation Hall 50th Anniversary Collection. The 58 tracks, selected from 19 albums, offer a master class on the evolving nature of the group by including different versions of the same song, collaborations and live standards.
When Jaffe explains in the liner notes the importance of the set, he also ends up discussing the invaluable setting that nurtured five decades of musicians, and will inspire many more. The collection demonstrates that “New Orleans music remains just as meaningful today, vital and full of life. It can be happy and joyous; it can be sad and mournful. It has no language barrier, and it delivers a universal message that we, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, carry with us wherever we travel.”
*JPG: I imagine that when the 50th anniversary was coming up there were discussions about “What are you going to do? What are you going to do?” Is the box set one of many things that came about through those discussions?
Yeah. That was definitely something I personally wanted to see get done. I knew that it is a big and ambitious project and it was something that we had put a lot of planning and effort into. So, I knew it needed the kind of momentum you get from a 50th anniversary to make it happen.
And then, there’s all the little nuances of it and all the people you have to convince that it’s a good idea ‘cause, of course, we think it’s a brilliant idea. It’s like everybody else figuring it out, too. I guess that’s really been what this 50th anniversary has been for me. It’s been an awareness campaign to all the people, our music fans and fans of Preservation Hall. I almost don’t even call them fans as much as I can call them supporters of what we do. It does feel like what we do is a cause.
Do you feel in a way with the box set, 50th anniversary and, basically, everything that you do with Preservation Hall your mom and dad are looking over your shoulders?
I’ll tell you how I feel. By releasing this box set it acknowledges where we’ve been as a band. It really puts us in historical perspective and it also gives people some sort of different cultural understanding of what Preservation Hall is. And that’s something that I’m glad we can do, that we could put it out there to the world and say, “This was our last 50 years and let’s see what’s going to happen in the next 50 years.” The next 50 years are as much a mystery to us as the past 50 years were.
My parents had absolutely…this was the furthest thing from their minds. If you had told my parents that they were going to end up moving to New Orleans and getting involved with their jazz community of New Orleans in the early 1960s, and that my dad was going to end up playing tuba in a jazz band and tour the world and that his son would someday end up being the creative director of Preservation Hall, he would have looked at you like you were nuts. You might as well have told him that you sending him to Saturn or Mars.
Your answer has me jumping in three or four different directions right now. Let’s stick to the album, the sequencing of the album, I enjoyed the way that the four disks played out but I’ve got to admit that I’m more of a purist on these things who likes the songs in chronological and see the artistic changes unfold over time. How did you come up with the sequencing?
Well, one of the reasons I wanted to do it that way — and I’m up on music, a fanatic myself and I’ve spent my life…I grew up on Michael Cuscuna’s label, Mosaic, and all of his box sets that he creates are chronological, exhaustive box sets with all of the outtakes and partial takes. When I sat down with this project, I really wanted it to be not so much historical because I don’t think of Preservation Hall as a museum piece. I think of what we do as a living, breathing tradition. I wanted the music, the experience, to be more like a playlist of Preservation Hall music. Once we decided that it wasn’t going to be the complete recordings of Preservation Hall, that it wasn’t going to be a 16-disc box set that included everything that the band has ever recorded including every outtake, then I wanted it to play out as an in-depth playlist of Preservation Hall music that I enjoy listening to and I also think is important historically to who Preservation Hall is.
And there is a reason why every track is on there. They weren’t just chosen haphazardly. There’s a good reason why each one of those songs was chosen, either because there was historic value or because of the qualities of performance or because of a juxtaposition of two different decades of a different band playing the same song and interpreting it in a different way.
Was there a consideration of running into the studio and recording something, anything that would hit the 50th year because you stop at 2010?
I think the last track we recorded in there is actually 2011. The first track, I think it’s been misprinted. The first track that appears in the box set was actually recorded in 1961. So it’s like 1961 to 2011 and covers the 50 years of Preservation Hall. The box set came out simultaneously with our 50th anniversary live performance at Carnegie Hall. The two projects were released on the same day. I thought that was a great testament to the Preservation Hall Band, that we released 50 years of our music and then we released where we are today as the Preservation Hall Band.
Preservation Hall opened its doors in September of ’61. We’ve been celebrating the 50th anniversary from September to September. That’s the year of our 50th birthday. We would be 50 years old as of September 2011. You’re 50 the whole year until September 2012.
You alluded to this earlier when you talked about doing the sequencing and showing the changes and how there is still that tradition of Preservation Hall going through it. You write in the box set’s liner notes, “I get great pleasure out of a song that has been interpreted, reinterpreted and performed for years while remaining as fresh as the day it was born … That’s what music does, it stretches time, it overlaps traditions, it challenges history …” Is it the idea of pushing the music forward, respecting traditions yet not being set in stone by them and that you don’t want to be thought of as a nostalgia act?
There is a lot at play here. First of all, what Preservation Hall does, the music that we play, the original Preservation Hall band that formed in 1961 were these living, breathing founders/creators of New Orleans music. And Preservation Hall, over the years, has been the offspring of that first wave of musicians. All of the musicians who perform at Preservation Hall have some family connection or blood connection or some can trace something back to the very earliest days of New Orleans music. I’m probably the exception. I am the exception. I should say I probably am. I am the exception that I only go back to New Orleans one generation as a musician. That’s my story. I’m a complete anomaly. I’m the exception not the rule. But everybody else in the band has some family connection to New Orleans music.
When you look at someone like Charlie Gabriel, our 80 year old clarinet player, his family goes back in New Orleans music five generations to its earliest days of jazz in Storyville when his great great grandfather was playing across the street from Buddy Bolden. To me that’s unbelievable, that there’s this unbroken tradition that we have in New Orleans, that we’re not recreating anything. We are it. We are the natural torch bearers of this tradition.
And that’s very important to me to keep our music relevant and not to make it a museum piece; that our music has to be not only respectful of the traditions but we never want to be beholden to the traditions that it strangles us as artists and as the inheritors of the tradition. If Louis Armstrong hadn’t pushed music in a new direction, just think what we wouldn’t have today or if Jelly Roll Morton hadn’t pushed the boundaries of music or Sam Morgan or Papa Celestin or King Oliver. All of the very early Jazz musicians were criticized for what they were creating but just think how brave it was of them. Today, it seems very innocent but back then this was heresy.
When you came there in 1994, let’s face it you’re a 22 year old guy who came out of college and even though you had connection there, were you immediately trying to change things? Were you met with resistance?
No, I was at Preservation Hall for probably 12 years before I even suggested that we change our set list. Probably the first 12 years that I performed there, literally, we played the same repertoire at every concert. I can even tell you the set list because it’s ingrained into my brain, but Narvin Kimball was in the band playing banjo. And you know what? We were there to support Narvin Kimball. He was the senior member and the last living original member of the Preservation Hall Band. We were there to support him and allow him to tell us what direction the band should go in.
But it was very, very rare that we ever even introduced a new old number. Probably, the first thing I did that seemed a little bit curated was a record called In the Sweet Bye & Bye, which was an album of spirituals and hymns. I did that. I think we actually recorded that in ’94 or ’95. So, I guess I did start curating things but all I did was take songs that were already in our repertoire and select from them. And there were a couple songs that we had performed in the ‘60s and ‘70s that I brought back like “Do Lord,” but those were songs that these guys had grown up on. It wasn’t like I was introducing anything new. I was just bringing back something from our past.
Until you actually become one of the elder members of the band, you don’t really have a voice. Your job is to carry suitcases and get coffee and make sure all the older members are taken care of. That’s really you’re responsibility. You’re making sure that they get to the shows on time and that they’re healthy on the road. You’re basically mentoring. You’ve got to earn your stripes to carry this torch.
Also, those 12 years let you settle in.
Oh yeah! I had to discover my own voice as well. I had to discover what it was. I had to discover what was important to me as an artist and as someone who had a responsibility to a community and its traditions. I never wanted to do anything that was disrespectful to our musical tradition. That’s always first and foremost, is what we are creating right now respectful of the tradition that we’ve inherited and the people whose shoes or whose shoulders we’re standing on? That’s always front and foremost for me. And sometimes, people even disagree about that. It’s a question that I ask myself, and it’s a debate that I have internally. Ultimately, I always side on the side of respect and whether or not it’s something that I consider respectful. After I weigh all the pros and cons and listen to everybody’s opinion you filter it all down and then make the best decision that you’re capable of.
That brings up this. I saw a photo of you onstage with a DJ. Was that his set and you guys just joined him or was that your set and he was playing with you?
Recently, we had Kid Koala who we’ve worked with before. He came and played on our set. We’ve done that on several occasions, not just with Kid Koala but also with King Britt. He was the first DJ that we ever worked with.
I guess what I’m getting to goes to traditions and not being static. Was that something that you had to go back and forth with yourself and convince others?
For me it wasn’t huge dilemma ‘cause I know King Britt and I know Kid Koala personally and I I know how much respect and dignity they have for music and how much respect they have for our tradition. I mean anybody who knows Kid Koala, all you have to do is search his name online and you’ll see some of the most brilliant work that any DJ…he’s beyond a DJ. The same with King Britt. King Britt is involved with everything from dance to the visual arts. You can’t lump every DJ together just like you can’t lump every musician together. There’s some DJs that I wouldn’t work with, who I don’t think bring the appropriate attitude to the stage or who represent the right music. There’s certain people who I wouldn’t get on the stage with. We’re very selective about the projects we do, who we work with and who we collaborate with. I wouldn’t be able to sleep easy at night if I didn’t respect all the people that we collaborate with.
I wasn’t trying to infer that it was some sort of ploy to get 18 year old kids to your concert.
Oh no. Jesus Christ, no. If we wanted to do that, we’d have naked girls dancing onstage. Really, if Preservation Hall wanted to attract more people, we would start selling drinks and put air conditioning in. (slight laugh). For whatever reason, we have this death wish that we’re happy with where we are. We’re able to sustain ourselves. We’re able to at the end of the day go to bed feeling like we didn’t sell our soul to get to do what we do and it’s a blessing. We might not be here tomorrow. We’re the dinosaurs. We’re like the last men standing in a lot of ways. We’re an endangered species.
I found the line that line that made me want to bring up why it’s interesting to use Kid Koala and King Britt. It was a review of the box set in Offbeat, which said that you’ve “insisted that it’s entirely possible to change the band line up, change the band’s repertoire, change performance venues and dramatically change the band’s audience demographics without once endangering the inheritance of tradition established in 1961…” And so, using a DJ relates to that idea.
Man, I can tell you this much. If you’re not hip to DJ culture by now then I would say that you’re pretty much out of touch with music for the past 30 years. That’s something that I always tell people. You know what? You would have had to have been blind and deaf not to have been influenced or heard or seen or experienced DJ culture in the past 30 or 40 years. I mean really even more than that because Jamaican music is so influential in New Orleans. I’ve been listening to dub and reggae since the ‘70s when I was growing up. It was huge in New Orleans. DJs scratching and dubbing for 45 minutes.
Hip hop, everything that came out of New York and the Bronx. I mean, anything. Madonna. Everybody uses DJs. Herbie Hancock, for God sake, was the first person. A lot of people don’t acknowledge that a jazz musician was the first person to ever use a live DJ in concert as an instrument, that he was the first person to ever record scratching. Herbie Hancock, the world ambassador of jazz. He was appointed (a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador). So, there is a history of jazz musicians always being on the vanguard of whatever’s happening. I mean…
I’m not trying to make you angry, it’s just…
Oh, no, no, no. I get excited about these things because I find it all very interesting.
Preservation Hall Jazz Band has traditions and can move forward and while DJs can add to it, it is still a bit of an interesting combination. And then I wonder about how purists view it because…
I guess that at the end of the day where the conversation comes to an end is when the purists or traditionalists impart their outside view on what we should be. And you know what? We have different philosophies. I was raised in a living, breathing evolving tradition. That’s who I am. I wouldn’t be true to myself or to New Orleans if it wasn’t constantly evolving. We would have become a repertory band. That’s not what I want to be a part of. If I wanted to be a repertory band, we would be the Preservation Hall Repertory Jazz Ensemble. That’s not what we are.
In regards to being the creative director, were you being groomed as you grew up or did you just get a call while attending Oberlin College, “When you graduate come on back and..?”
BJ: I don’t think it was something that my parents consciously did but very early on, I loved being around musicians. I loved being around my dad. I loved being around marching bands. I loved being around Preservation Hall. And there was something that, you can’t necessarily be trained for it because it’s something that you have to grow up in because it is a tradition. You just don’t take a great opera singer and say, “Sing some Gospel.” Some of the worst Gospel I’ve ever heard has been sung by classically-trained opera singers. If something is a tradition, you have to grow up with it. Either you know it and are a part of it or you’re not.
I was just very fortunate. My dad raised me in this world, the world of jazz funerals and the world of Mardi Gras parades and the world of marching bands and Second Line Parades and Preservation Hall and Sunday afternoon lawn parties. That’s the world I grew up in. I’m just very blessed. I only know a handful of people, not even a handful who were exposed to the world that I was exposed to growing up. It’s hard for me to talk about it with anybody because we’re talking about something from two different perspectives. It’s only when I sit down and have a conversation with people who I grew up with and have a shared similar experience with that they’re like, “Oh, okay I get it.”
Looking at your recent collaborations what was the experience like working with Stevie Wonder for the United Nations concert?
That was like playing with Buddha for me. I can’t think of anybody else living today that is the closest embodiment of…it’s actually what it would have meant to play with Duke Ellington for me or Count Basie. It was on that level, or Louis Armstrong.
We performed two songs with him, “Sir Duke” and “People Get Ready” and to play with Stevie Wonder, the Ambassador of Peace at the UN blew my mind. I still can’t believe that it happened. What was amazing about it, it happened very quickly that it all took shape in about a week. Within a very short period of time, we got all the parts together. When we got to the UN it was sort of chaos and mayhem. They’re filming it and it’s going to be on a worldwide stream on the UN site. BET is filming it. We were actually rehearsing in the UN in the General Assembly. The rehearsal takes place at 10 o’clock at night when everything shuts down. So we’re in the UN by ourselves with a stage in the General Assembly, which was just crazy.
Stevie heard us rehearsing “Sir Duke” off the stage and we were having fun. We were getting a little goofy with it. We started playing it like we would if we were in New Orleans on the street, marching on the street, more with a New Orleans parade beat.
The way Stevie plays it, it’s pretty straight. [he sings the signature horn part.] In New Orleans, they would swing it and they would syncopate the beats more. [He sings it in New Orleans time.] It would be a little bit slower, people would be able to dance to it. So, when we get up on stage, we’re thinking we’re going to play this song with his band. We’re just going to do the horn part. He’s like, “No, no, no. I want to do it like you guys were just doing it.” All of a sudden everything changed and we ended up playing it just with me playing tuba and our horns and him playing piano and singing and harmonica. It just blew my mind. I’m like, “Okay, my mind is officially blown wide open.”
That brings up this. You’ve done a lot of collaborations including Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall & the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program with Jim James, Pete Seeger, Tom Waits, Richie Havens, Del McCoury, Ani DiFranco, Dr. John, Merle Haggard, Buddy Miller, Jason Isbell and Angelique Kidjo. With collaborators is it something you see in them that you think can bring something to Preservation Hall or you think you can bring something to them or just get together and see if some magic happens?
A lot of times collaborations are based on friendships that you’ve developed over the years. It’s kind of like taking your girlfriend, asking her to move in and then asking her to marry you and having a kid. It’s a progression of a relationship.
That’s a beautiful thing when you can collaborate with people who you either have an intimate relationship with on a personal level or, maybe, you have musical kinship that you’re exploring. Different musicians are parts of different musical communities and different musical families but if you dig and you sniff a little bit, you can figure out what musical trunk a musician comes from. That’s important that musicians who come from the same mold, that even though you play different styles of music and you come from different walks of life, anywhere you go in the world, everybody has certain things in common.
We all have to eat. We all have to breathe. Big general things like that. But, you know what? The guys in Nashville have the same traditions that we have in New Orleans but they just come from a different walk of life. You collaborate with someone from the country side in Kentucky and you’re like, “Wow, these guys, they sing the blues but they just sing it a little different than we do, but they’re telling the same story. They’re doing the same thing.” Where do the two intersect with each other? Where do we share a common language? Sometimes, you have to discover the common language but a lot of times, it’s already there for you.
Lastly, I read that you played with the next generation of musicians, the Preservation Junior Hall Band at Voodoo Music Festival.
Our junior jazz band, those kids meet every week. They come and hang around Preservation Hall during the week. They’re part of our family. These are kids who we mentor. The family of junior musicians keeps growing every year as new kids start advancing on their instruments and then older kids transition to other programs.
Part of our philosophy at Preservation Hall is we want kids around Preservation Hall. We want them experiencing our life. We want to let them see into our world the same way that older musicians allowed us to see behind the curtain when we were kids. That’s how you become a musician. It’s not learning the notes. Anybody can learn the notes. How many people actually get the experience of being exposed to this world? It’s so few. It’s always been few. One thing that Preservation Hall does is we’ve always been this place where young musicians like myself…a lot of musicians who play at Preservation Hall today were young kids hanging around Preservation Hall 30, 40 years ago.
That’s a great starting spot. Who knows where they’re going to go? Look where Trombone Shorty’s taken New Orleans music. He’s somebody who’s rooted in the New Orleans music tradition. He comes from an incredible musical family with deep, deep roots in New Orleans music. It’s amazing to me to think what’s going to happen. Where’s Preservation Hall gonna be when I’m gone? It’ll be a beautiful thing even if it has to end someday down the road. That’s part of life, too.
