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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLYbkgKscg4
Jaffe: I would be nothing without the community of musicians and teachers (my “Buddhas”) who accepted me, took me under their wings and shared their knowledge and experience with me. Some of those include Harold “Duke” Dejan of the Olympia Brass Band; Walter Payton, who was my grammar school music teacher and the bass player on Lee Dorsey’s “Working In A Coal Mine”; Chester Zardis, who was one of the very earliest jazz bass players; and Frank Fields, the bass player for Fats Dominos and the bassist with Ragtime Orchestra. I got my first electric bass lesson from James Prevost and Richard Payne. I must have been pitiful because I recall Richard looking at me very seriously and asking if I was sure I wanted to do this. I think what he wanted to say was, “Kid, you have a long road ahead of you.”
Others include Meters bassist George Porter; Cyril Neville of the Neville Brothers and Uptown Allstars; drummer extraordinaire Shannon Powell; pianists Thaddeus Richard and David Torkanowsky; clarinettist David Grillier (who said that “those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail”); pianist Rickie Monie; drummer Joe Lastie; guitarist and griot Carl LeBlanc; guitarist and bassist Don Vappie; bandleader Lars Edegran; historian and violinist William Russell; brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey; Narvin Kimball; and Sing Miller. And two very special people in my life who are no longer physically on this earth: trumpeter and educator Clyde Kerr Jr. and my college professor Wendell Logan. I learned something important about music and life from each of these fine super-humans.
