The Dirty Dozen Brass Band has been infusing funk and bebop into traditional New Orleans-style jazz since the 1970s.
Roger Lewis, saxophonist for the Dirty Dozen, joined The Show to talk about his long career and how he got his start working in clubs when he was still a minor.
They'll perform on Dec. 27 at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.
Full conversation
ROGER LEWIS: My background was in rhythm and blues, and the scene at that time. We had a lot of local clubs in New Orleans, we just about had bands in every neighborhood. You know, they, you know, I was doing segregation, so that was part of the children's circuit, you know.
SAM DINGMAN: Well, were you playing with mostly older musicians?
LEWIS: Well some older musicians, some young musicians. I think when I, because I was playing in some of these ballrooms and you know as a kid, man, I was playing in these.
DINGMAN: I can imagine.
LEWIS: I was, it's just like I was telling a guy the other day. I said, man, when I was in senior high school, I was a professional musician because I was, I'll be out there in the street late at night and I see some of my teachers in the clubs where I'm playing and I gotta go to school.
You know, but a matter of fact, my English teacher, he was a bass player and I was, I was playing gigs with him. I was a kid, man, you know, I'm 17 years old, man, you know.
DINGMAN: But you're a, you're a saxophone player. Tell us a little bit about the difference in what you're playing on the saxophone at a rhythm and blues gig versus a brass band.
LEWIS: Well, in those days, you know, the tenor saxophone, I was playing tenor. I was usually, the band would consist of a tenor and a trumpet, that was the instrumentation, horn instrumentation. And maybe sometime it maybe was a trombone, you know. So you, you know, like the tenor was very present. So you, you need to know the the type of tunes back then that the tenor tenor players would be, would play. Like “Night Train,” “Hall of Nocturne,” what was another one, I'm having a brain freeze right now.
DINGMAN: Oh that’s OK.
LEWIS: “Honky Tonk.” Yeah, you know that you have to, you better do “Honky Tonk.” And then, you know, “Caravan.” When I was playing this club back in the late ‘50s, you have to know caravan because they used to have what they call female impersonators and you, you would play “Caravan” for them to come out and do their thing. They would dance off of that.
You know that tune, it would be like [SINGS TUNE] and they'd be taking off whatever they'd be taking off and doing it, doing their thing and then they reach down in a basket and pull out a big python snake that you're not expecting to see on the gig as a kid. That's when you make your exit off the stage. I'll be at, I had never seen no snakes, especially a snake of that size, and the doggone snake was looking at me. I said, oh no, you don't. I was at the front door watching the show.
DINGMAN: So much, so much for the gig.
LEWIS: Hey, you know, so it's a lot of things that happens when you're playing music, man, you know, like back in the days we used to play a lot of from birthdays to funerals that covered just about everything, you know.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, that's, I wanted to ask you about the, the funeral aspect of this, because one of the things that I've always found really beautiful about brass band music in New Orleans, at least as I understand it, is that there was this proximity to death rituals and, and funerals. And that it, it was a way of bringing people some, some joy and some relief at this very sad time.
LEWIS: Usually what we do, we like, we call it playing a body out of the church. Where the, where musicians line up on each side, on the sidewalk on each side, you know, as the body is coming out and going into the earth. We'll play maybe like a hymn, like “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” You can go a couple of blocks without, you know, before you cut, what we call cut the body loose.
Then as we plan in front, like I say, I'm playing in front of the leading, leading the funeral procession down the street. Then we can get ready to cut the body loose, we line up on each side of the street and you know, then the horses go by and the family, you know, everything follow, follow the hearse, and after, after the last call, then we'll start playing some joyful music, you know, going back to the church.
Our business card used to read from birthdays to funerals, and anything in between.
DINGMAN; But I guess, you know, at a certain point, the Dirty Dozen Brass band goes from being a brass band that played gigs in New Orleans to recording and, and touring all over the world. And I think in many ways bringing the brass band sound into the broader cultural consciousness. So how did that happen? How, how did you make that jump?
LEWIS: We played traditional New Orleans music, but then we start playing music of Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, you know, and Jimmy Forrest and, you know, Duke Ellington, but we, we mixed it in with the traditional sound of a New Orleans band, but we brought all these contemporaries.
People had never played that music in a brass band contests, but in a Dirty Dozen Brass Band, in our band, you have an opportunity to, to play whatever kind of music you've been exposed to, well, whatever kind of music you want to play. So we mixed all of this, all these different contemporary sounds along with avant-garde. And we brought all this music to the streets and the people loved him.
Now the traditional, some of the traditional guys, they was, they gave us a lot of static because they said, well, y'all not really playing New Orleans music, you know, but we was working and they wasn't working. We were traveling all over the world with this music with the … We were doing almost 300 gigs a year for, for about 30, almost 30 years, you know.
DINGMAN: I'm glad you, I'm glad you're bringing this up because one of the things I often think about jazz, and tell me if you disagree, is that sometimes there's this purity culture to it, like you were alluding to. There are a lot of people in the jazz world who want to say, well, this is jazz and that's not jazz. And why do you think you were so, and the band was so receptive to blending styles?
LEWIS: Well, I mean, you know, we was playing all, we was playing everything, we were playing bebop, we were playing avant-garde, we was playing blues, we was playing rock and roll and because, you know, we, you know, we was, we just, it was like a complete musical gumbo of everything that you could think of.
But we also playing music for the musicians who wanna, you know, you know, we got music for your mind, body and your soul, you know, that kind of thing. The mind is to, for the musicians that want to sit down there and dissect what you play with it, whether they like it or not. Then we got music to make your body feel good and make you want to get up and dance and shake a little something, you know. Then we got for your inner part of what we call souls to make you feel, make your skin feel a certain kind of way where you're getting goosebumps and all that kind of stuff, you know.
There was a guy by the name of George Wayne who started most of all the jazz festivals and he all over the world. And he heard us play, and he decided to, to record us, that was our first professional contract. I mean, and then he then he took us all over the world, man, put us on all these jazz festivals all over the world. You know, we opened up for Miles Davis and oh man, the list go on and on and on, you know, you did a gig with Cab Calloway, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, and, you know, all over.
But then everybody started, you know, everybody wanted a piece of a piece of the Dirty Dozen. Elvis Costello who is playing, and we wind up doing a couple of CDs with him and of the Neville Brothers.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah, but you know, Roger, you're describing one of my favorite things about the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in the way that you're talking about the music, which is that to me it it feels like my emotional reaction to it every time I hear it is that it's like it says yes to everything. And I just love that so much about it, and I wonder if there's any moments in any of these collaborations, you know, you named so many artists that you've played with and so many and and they are across so many different styles, you know.
Has there ever come a time when you have encountered a collaboration And thought, I, I, that's, that's not what I wanna do, that's, that's not what our sound is. Are you open to all of it?
LEWIS: Oh, we're wide open, man. We don't, you know, we don't, we don't, we don't close the book or not really do this. Man, let me tell you something. When you, when you sign on to be a, to be a musician, when you say I wanna be a musician, you don't put yourself in no box and say, well, some cats say, well, I don't wanna play nothing but bebop. If you wanna be a musician, you gotta be the complete package, man.
If you can, you know, you might get a gig where you have to read some music, so you want to build a complete package. I don't wanna play no one kind of music. I ain't put myself in no box. I enjoy it all. I like everything. I don't care what it is. I love it. It's music, man.
When I say I wanted to be a musician, I say I'll play anything. I don't care what it is, you know. And the Dirty Dozen is pretty much like that. So of course, people have their favorite thing that they like to do, you know.
DINGMAN: Well, it seems like, it seems like it's working pretty well for you.
LEWIS: And I'll play with anybody. It ain't gotta be the baddest, the, the, the greatest band in the world. I don't, I don't, because every time I play with anybody, I always learn something that I, you know, I didn't know before. I hang out with a lot of young young musicians, they come over by the house and we'd be practicing and I'll be showing them things that I know and I'll be learning some things that, things that they, they're working on, you know. So it's, it's an exchange, you know. Keeps me young and keep, you know, I'm 83 years old, man, so you know I'm still trying to figure it all out.
DINGMAN: Well, Roger Lewis and his fellow members of the Dirty Dozen Brass band will be performing at the Musical Instrument Museum. That show's on Dec. 27, and, Roger, thank you so much.
LEWIS: You know, everybody come on out and get baptized in this good New Orleans music.
