The Preservation Hall Jazz band is a unit from New Orleans dedicated to keeping America's jazz music alive and in 1996 they collaborated with the late Harold Andrew Dejan, aka as Duke Dejan, the former leader of the Olympia Brass Band in New Orleans. DeJan died in 2002 at age 93, but still was swinging enough here to add vocals over the Hot 4's trumpeter/vocalist Wendell Brunious, guitarist/vocalist Don Vappie, pianist Thadeus Richard, and bassist Benjamin Jaffe. .

When in New Orleans be sure to stop by Preservation Hall at 726 Peter St. in the Vieux Carre for some jazz history, and a chance to support their musician's fund which is striving to help the musical community that was displaced following the 2005 flooding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

www.preservationhall.com

Preservation Hall was started in the early 1960’s by a Californian named Ken Mills assisted by a lady by the name of Barbara Reid. Mills was a jazz buff who wanted to get the older musicians playing in public again and, of course, record them. He rented a hall on St Peter Street and Preservation Hall was born. In those early days the $400 monthly rent for the hall and the musicians’ fees were met from the nightly “kitty” collection from the audience. There were so many requests for “The Saints Go Marching In” that the bands grew tired of playing the tune and so a minimum donation of $5 (or perhaps it was $10) dollars was requested. The audience thrilled to the sounds of George Lewis, clarinet, Kid Howard, trumpet, Kid Sheik, trumpet, Jimmy Clayton, trumpet, Kid Thomas, trumpet, Charlie Love, trumpet, DeDe Pierce, trumpet, “Slow Drag” Pavageau, bass, Louis James, bass, Milé Barnes, clarinet, Steve Angram, clarinet, John Casimir, clarinet, Israel Gorman, clarinet, Louis Nelson, trombone, Jim Robinson, trombone, Emmanuel Sayles, banjo, Harrison Verret, banjo, Sammy Penn, drums, Barney Bigard, drums, Billie Pierce, piano, and many others.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.