Preservation Hall Jazz Band bring a little holiday cheer to SECCA. (photo by Ryan Snyder)
Already having been christened with two near-capacity performances earlier this year, #003’s a charm for the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts’ Crossroads series. The famed Preservation Hall Jazz Band shuffled onstage to a sold-out crowd at the cozy McChesney Scott Dunn Auditorium on Friday night, the first of likely many packed houses for SECCA’s fledgling concert series.
The seven-piece evangelists of New Orleans jazz history took the stage in sharp black suits for a performance that’s a part of their Creole Christmas tour, and greeted the crowd with an instrumental version of a song made famous by Joe “King” Oliver, “Dippermouth Blues.” Clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, this lineup’s most senior member and himself part of a musical lineage dating back to the 1850s, took the song’s first solo, a scatty soliloquy met a few moments later by the rumbling trombone of the great Freddie Lonzo.
Each player had a chance to introduce themselves as they breezed through a number of New Orleans jazz standards by the likes of Charley Patton and Countess Ada de Lachau. Working from an entirely unique setlist, some selections were predictable, yet still fun (see: “When the Saints Go Marching In”), while the band swung fast and loose on “Shake It and Break It,” a song they recorded with Andrew Bird for their 2010 benefit album.
There was a devout acknowledgement of the troupe’s decorum as they swapped solos; idle members sat patiently with hands on knees while saxophonist Clint Maedgen crooned the Charles Brown holiday classic “Please Come Home for Christmas” against a subtle piano curtain provided by Rickie Monie. The horns leaked in quietly on the first Christmas number of the evening, letting Maedgen’s soulful voice engender the holiday mood over the subtle arrangement. There were few moments when the full band was in on a piece, though the rendition of “Tootie Ma Was a Big Fine Thing” saw Lonzo, Maedgen, Monie, and trumpeter Mark Braud, engaged with Jaffe on tuba and challenging one another for space while Gabriel sang the ode to Big Chief Allison Montana.
Their 90-minute set was a microcosm of New Orleans musical heritage and deeply respectful of the city’s illustrious traditions, except when they decided to break their own. “We never, never, never do this,” said Jaffe. “But it is the holidays.” After already having second-lined through the audience playing a boisterous rendition of “Your Last Chance to Dance,” the crowd’s titanic ovation drew out the wooly-haired Preservation Hall Jazz Band leader and his mates for a rare curtain call with the 80-year-old Gabriel at the helm.
He prefaced his song
selection with a story about spending his teenage years in Detroit, where a nun
at a local Catholic school would often sing a warm number entitled “Merry Christmas
to You,” which he said he had forgotten for over 60 years until rediscovering
it only a short time ago. In a tone somewhere between Ray Charles and Louis
Armstrong, he delivered a line that defined the Creole Christmas. “We wish you
all a merry Christmas to cheer you on your way/This greeting is true/You
thinking of us and we’re thinking of you.”
