Preservation Hall Band Spans Generation Gap

by Bill Rice, The Troy Record, August 1, 1972

Don’t talk to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band about such things as language barriers or generation gaps. To them, no such things exist.

We dropped in on the last portion of their Saratoga Performing Arts Center concert Sunday evening on the way home from a delightful Lake George Opera Festival cruise, never intending to write a review, but what we heard and saw in the final moments of the concert should not pass unnoticed.

The PHJB are a group of five ancient-looking black jazz musicians (assisted by a young white on tuba) who play a style of New Orleans jazz that is priceless in its authenticity.

This is not the slick brand of well-polished Dixieland so often heard, but true gut-bucket tailgating stuff. Listening to them play is like having a page of American musical history (torn from the very beginning) suddenly come to life.

Band Members

Members of the band included Billie Pierce on piano, her husband, De De, on trumpet, “Big Jim” Robinson on trombone, Willie Humphrey on clarinet, “Cie” Frazier on drums and Al Jaffe on tuba. Billie Pierce and her husband plus Humphrey were heard on vocals while we were there.

This was by far the finest in traditional music we have heard since a visit to Eddie Condon’s club in Greenwich Village 20 years ago, where the guitarist’s “Chicago” brand of Dixie was played by the likes of Wild Bill Davis, Edmond Hall and Cutty Cutshall.

When we walked in at Saraloga, Billie Pierce, who once accompanied the legendary Bessie Smith, was laying down some of her own lyrics to St. Louis Blues.

*If you don’t like my peaches, Baby don’t shake my tree,” she sang in a straightforward manner.

Young Also

At first glance this was an audience typical for this type of concert—by that we mean oldish. But we did notice a few young people in the audience, who though in appearance looked like they belonged at a rock concert, were moving to the happy music just like the older fans.

But when the band broke into the encore—what else but When the Saints Go Marchin In—it happened.

About 100 or so young people from the lawn poured down the aisles and stormed the front. Egads—it looked like another rock concert. Over the railing, across the orchestra pit, and onto the stage they went, and, once there, commenced to dance wildly around the band.

Musicians Delighted

The musicians didn’t seem to mind—in fact they seemed delighted. The audience too seemed defighled and even Craig Hankenson, general manager of SPAC, seemed delighted.

Then like a true pied piper, clarinetist Humphrey led the surging throng in a march off the side of the stage, and around the aisles of the amphitheater.

It was really something, we must admit, to see young people react in such a way to music generally assumed to be out of their reach.

We probably should not have been so surprised, for more than once during the winter months we read of similar triumphs by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, all over Europe, where jazz is given its true regard.

We expect they will return next season. You shouldn’t miss them.