Nickel-a-Dance

Nickel a Dance

NICKEL A DANCE is a free series of Sunday afternoon jazz concerts each spring and fall, that is a hit with children, families, seniors, and the general dancing public that 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.

Sundays in March 2012

4:00pm to 7:00pm

March 4

Gerald French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band

Original Tuxedo Jazz Band

The Original Tuxedo Orchestra, named for the Tuxedo Dance Hall in the Storyville district, was founded in 1910 by cornetist Oscar “Papa” Celestin. Celestin led the group, eventually rechristened the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, for 44 years. After his death in 1954, trombonist Eddie Pierson stepped in for four years. Banjoist Albert “Papa” French, then logged two decades as leader. During his tenure, the band took up residency at Tradition Hall, reportedly the first African-American-owned club on Bourbon Street. Following Albert’s death in 1977, his son Bob took over. He restored the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band to Bourbon Street in 2009. However, due to the illness of Bob French, his nephew, drummer Gerald French has been named bandleader. Gerald, the son of bassist and singer George French, spent his formative years as a musician at the Fifth African Baptist Church. As a boy, he tagged along to second-line parades, to his father’s and grandfather’s gigs, and to Tradition Hall, sitting near the drums to watch his uncle “like a hawk.” By 21, he was subbing for Bob with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He’s spent the past 14 years with Charmaine Neville and has backed Harry Connick Jr., Dr. John, trumpeters Leroy Jones and Gregg Stafford, clarinetist Michael White and pianist Lars Edegran, among others. He’s a regular at the Palm Court Jazz Café and Fritzel’s European Jazz Pub, and masks with the Wild Magnolias Mardi Gras Indians.

March 11

Herlin Riley and the Hot Foot Floozies

Herlin Riley was born in New Orleans, LA. Herlin was a member of Ahmad Jamal’s group from 1984 through 1987. He has recorded with important artists such as Dr. John, Harry Connick, Jr., George Benson, Marcus Roberts, among others. In the Spring of 1988, he joined Wynton Marsalis’ touring and recording group, which he performed with through its disbanding in late 1994. Herlin is regularly a featured musician at Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC.

March 18

Tom Saunders & The Tomcats

Tom Saunders Tomcats “The Tomcats” is a completely new band created in 2010 by Tom Saunders. The band combines the talent and experience of veteran big band and Hot Jazz musicians Tom Saunders, Steve Giarratano, Charles Fardella, Tom Hook, and Ray Moore with the fresh and vibrant talent of younger musicians Ben Polcer, Charlie Halloran, Chris Edmunds, Matt Rhody, Aurora Nealand, Gene Black and the vocal talents of Meschiya Lake.
The band performs Big Band Hot Jazz from the transitional period of the late 1920’s and early thirties when Hot Jazz was giving birth to the Swing era and producing wonderful Hot, Swinging music that was full and organized in the big band format while still retaining the hotness and spontaneity of the great 1920’s Jazz era! The great music of bands like Fletcher Henderson, King Oliver, Don Redman, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers,The Missourians (later to be Cab Calloway’s Orch), Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orch, etc…….
The band plays music from the private archives of Tom Saunders. Tom has devoted his life to collecting sheet music and sound recordings of 1920’s & 30’s Jazz, Blues, and dance music.Tom Saunders is also a well know Jazz DJ on WWOZ,90.7 FM, New Orleans’ famed independent community radio station which features almost exclusively local program content with a heavy emphasis on Jazz, Blues, and the culture of the region. Tom is also a life-long professional musician, playing Tuba, Sousaphone, String Bass and Bass Saxophone mostly with the great bands in the Frenchmen St. music corridor that has emerged as a real musical hot spot in the last 10 years or so in New Orleans.
Tom Saunders Tomcats Tom founded this band, fulfilling a long time dream, upon his return from a 3 ½ year engagement in the hit Theatrical Production “a la Recherche Josephine” in Paris. Tom can be heard regularly as a member of the New Orleans Cotton Mouth Kings (f.k.a. The New Orleans Jazz Vipers) on Bass Sax, with St Louis Slim & the Frenchmen St Jug Band, on Sousaphone, with the Steamboat Stompers on the Steamboat Natchez, with Tommy Sancton at Preservation Hall, and with the Tim Laughlin Trio/Quartet on String Bass but you are likely to see him playing in nearly every band in New Orleans from time to time as a favorite substitute.

March 25

Lionel Ferbos & the Palm Court Jazz Band

At 100, trumpeter Lionel Ferbos is the oldest jazz musician in New Orleans. A native New Orleanian whose career has remained almost exclusively in the city, appears weekly at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe where he leads the Palm Court Jazz Band. During his long career, he worked with some of the giants of early traditional jazz, including Captain John Handy and Mamie Smith, and more recently with widely recognized contemporary revivals of the old style music like the original stage band of the off-Broadway hit “One Mo’ Time.” He has played at all of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festivals.

Ferbos was born July 17, 1911, in the city’s Creole 7th Ward. He said he had asthma and his parents wouldn’t let him take up a wind instrument, but when he was 15 he saw an all-girl orchestra at the Orpheum and argued that he ought to be able to do anything a girl could do. So he got an old cornet at a pawn shop on Rampart Street and began lessons with Professor Paul Chaligny, an exacting Creole task-master who would not let him blow the horn until he knew how to read music and had mastered the rudiments of theory. After a year with Chaligny, Ferbos moved on to study with noted musicians Albert Snaer and Eugene Ware. His first professional music jobs were in the early ‘30s with society jazz bands like the Starlight Serenaders and the Moonlight Serenaders, performing at well-known New Orleans venues like the Pythian Roof Garden, Pelican Club, San Jacinto Hall, Autocrat Club, Southern Yacht Club and the New Orleans Country Club.

In 1932 he joined Captain Handy’s Louisiana Shakers and played the Astoria and toured the Gulf Coast. He later backed blues singer Mamie Smith while playing with the Fats Pichon Band. During the Depression, he worked as a laborer in New Orleans City Park for the Works Progress Administration, then played first trumpet in the WPA jazz band, of which he is the last surviving member. In the 1940s, he played on Lake Pontchartrain at the Happy Landing and Mama Lou’s, and in the ‘50s he worked with Harold Dejan at the Melody Inn, where he recorded with the “Mighty Four.” In the ‘60s he played with Herbert Leary’s Orchestra.

Until he reached retirement age, Ferbos kept his day job, so his musical work was mostly in and around New Orleans. In the ‘70s, he dropped out of the hit musical “One Mo’ Time” when it moved to New York, rather than leave town. However, he made eight tours of Europe with the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra, formed to revive the old music unearthed in the jazz archives at Tulane University. He was trumpeter with the Ragtime on the soundtrack of the movie Pretty Baby.

In 1990, he began playing at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe and is now leader of the Palm Court Jazz Band which plays Saturdays at the French Quarter club. He won the “2003 Big Easy Lifetime Achievement Award” and is frequently called on to tell about his experiences in the Depression, as well as in music and with tinsmithing, on panels and in history classes.