Keeping the Beat on the Street celebrates the renewed passion and pageantry among black brass bands in New Orleans. Mick Burns introduces the people who play the music and shares their insights, showing why New Orleans is the place where jazz continues to grow. Brass bands waned during the civil rights era but revived around 1970 and then flourished in the 1980s when the music became cool with the younger generation. In the only book to cover this revival, Burns interviews members from a variety of bands, including the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band, the Dirty Dozen, Tuba Fats' Chosen Few, and the Rebirth Brass Band. He captures their thoughts about the music, their careers, audiences, influences from rap and hip-hop, the resurgence of New Orleans social and pleasure clubs and second lines, traditional versus funk style, recording deals, and touring. For anyone who loves jazz and the city where it was born, Keeping the Beat on the Street is a book to savor.

 

Mick Burns (1942--2007) was the author of The Great Olympia Band and Walking with Legends: Barry Martyn's New Orleans Jazz Odyssey and played jazz professionally in Europe and the United States for forty years. He lived in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, in England.

ISBN: 9780807133330

Paperback

212 pages

6 x 9

Bibliography, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents

LSU Press, 2008