Like most New Orleans-born-and-bred musicians, Ben Jaffe understands music not as a byproduct of the human experience but as a heart-deep part of that experience itself. Jaffe—tuba player, bassist and current leader/co-composer for the venerable Preservation Hall Jazz Band—comes by it honest, as they say. In 1961, his parents founded the Preservation Hall venue, a performance space especially notable during the Jim Crow era for being one of a handful in New Orleans open to both white and black players. What started as the venue’s de facto house band is now a pillar of the city’s musical history: a live performance, recording and educational outreach project 55 years strong and counting. PHJB’s new album, So It Is, continues the band’s longstanding custom of preserving and contributing new material to traditional New Orleans acoustic music. Jaffe will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our feature on the band.
Jaffe: My dad was a tuba player and that defined who he was. Marching brass band music is an important part of New Orleans musical history. The tuba, along with the drums, is the foundation of marching brass band music, because it is the marching band equivalent of the upright bass. My dad used to take me with him to parades and funerals when I was a child.
Another tuba player who inspired me was Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen. Tuba Fats was a tall, hulking man. He masked as a Mardi Gras Indian with Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias. Tuba was the Spy Boy. He was also the first person I ever heard who translated modern, funk bass lines so they can be played on the tuba. Most notable were his lines on Smokey Johnson’s “It Ain’t My Fault,” Professor Longhair’s “Go To The Mardi Gras” and his namesake original “Tuba Fats.” The song “Tuba Fats” came about in the 1970s as the younger generation of New Orleans musicians started becoming prominent, bringing their new tastes in music and fashion. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, with Kirk Joseph on tuba, was the band that truly synthesized the past and the future. Kirk Joseph is the son of Waldron “Frog” Joseph, who played trombone with my dad in the Olympia Brass Band. Kirk and the Dirty Dozen took what Tuba Fats started and ran with it. The tempos got faster, the tuba lines got funkier. Kirk turned all of our worlds upside down.
Right behind Kirk came Phil Frazier and the Rebirth Brass Band. And right behind those guys was my good friend, the late Kerwin James. Kerwin, like myself, fell right in the middle of it all. Kerwin heard and knew all the older guys as well as all the younger musicians. We played together for years in the Treme All Stars led by Trombone Shorty’s older brother James Andrews. The All Stars eventually evolved into the New Birth Brass Band. After Katrina, Kerwin, along with many musicians from New Orleans, moved to Houston and was camping out at a hotel, commuting back and forth to New Orleans to perform, sometimes five days a week. The stress of it all finally caught up with Kerwin. He passed away, leaving an empty hole in the tuba community and our hearts.
