NICKEL-A-DANCE Presents: Gregg Stafford & His Jazzhounds!

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 nightclubs.  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. This season the series features 4 acclaimed band leaders.

Gregg Stafford’s trumpet playing is steeped in tradition. In his youth, however, he had no desire to become a musician. By chance, his high school band leader needed a trumpet player and recruited Stafford. Nine months later, he started marching in parades. He was sixteen years old, and at that time, in the late 1960s, brass band music was for “old men.” But Stafford had grown up watching brass bands and loved practicing tunes at home. He…