Word: brasses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...lips and made a sort of "zonk" deep in the lower register. Just behind Emanuel, I spotted "Booker-T" Glass, the 85-year-old bass drummer. He was standing erect behind the clumsy, weathered old drum. The painted letters on the sides were barely visible: "Olympia Brass Band...
...snare drum began its military marching tempo, then Booker-T thumped two pick-up beats on the big bass drum, and we were off. The number was "Lord, you sure been good to me," an un-tempo hymn played to the lashing syncopation which only a New Orelans brass band can achieve...
Tourists walked along the sidewalk, clicking their cameras and trying to stay clear of the mass of dancing bodies and umbrellas swinging in the street. The number ended in a powerful discord of shrill brass notes, and the crowd let out a great "Whoop!" We continued marching to the beat of the snare drum...
...ORLEANS still has a good number of organization--"benevolent societies"--which give brass band funerals to their departed brothers. The Olmypia Brass Band is one of the last marching jazz bands remaining in the city. Most of its members are aging black jazzmen who have played in the city's back streets, dives, honky tonks, and dance halls since the early part of this century. The brass band tradition in New Orleans goes back further than the lives of these men. Funerals and parades just like this one had been going on long before the turn of the century, possibly...
Perhaps Walt Whitman observed a black brass band funeral during his stay in New Orleans in 1847. These lines from "Song of Myself" capture--though perhaps by coincidence--the spirit of a jazz funeral...