The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is a New Orleans, Louisiana, brass band. The ensemble was established in 1977 by Benny Jones together with members of the Tornado Brass Band. The Dirty Dozen revolutionized the New Orleans brass band style by incorporating funk and bebop into the traditional New Orleans style.


Label: Rykodisc, 2004


Tracklist:

1 Just a Closer Walk With Thee 5:30
2 I Shall Not Be Moved 4:58
3 Please Let Me Stay a Little Longer 3:06
4 What a Friend We Have in Jesus 3:44
5 Jesus on the Mainline 5:18
6 John the Revelator 4:39
7 I'll Fly Away 3:39
8 Is There Anybody Here That Loves My Jesus? 3:06
9 Down by the Riverside 5:06
10 Amazing Grace 1:05


Dirty Dozen Brass Band:

David Hidalgo - Accordion
Kirk Joseph - Sousaphone
Roger Lewis - Baritone Saxophone
Efrem Town - Trumpet, Flugelhorn
Julius McKee - Sousaphone
Gregory Michael Davis II - Trumpet
Terence Higgins - Drums
Sammie Williams - Trombone
Davell Singers Crawford - Vocals



On their tenth album, the Crescent City's Dirty Dozen Brass Band bring it all back to the cobblestone streets where it began. The Dozens have done it all, from straight New Orleans jazz to restless funky experimentation, and here they put it all down to the roots of its origin. Funeral for a Friend is just that, a complete reenactment of a New Orleans funeral or "homecoming." The Dozens played them at the beginning and continue to. The set is dedicated to the memory of founding member Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen, who passed away just a few weeks after its completion. The band performed it in the streets leading the horse-drawn carriage procession. Comprised entirely of gospel and spiritual songs, it follows the trajectory of a departed one's life from birth to celebrations of her or his character to death and resurrection in the afterlife. The first of the three stages begins with a slow, mournful dirge that emerges as "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," as the gathering begins at the courthouse and becomes a strident statement in "I Shall Not Be Moved," where the grief begins to give way to the feeling of victory, that the departed has broken the bondage of this life's prison. The music begins to swell and swirl and gains in stridency and emotion until it actually erupts about five tracks in with "Jesus on the Mainline," with the band accompanied by the Davell Crawford Singers. The mind-blowing thing is the sound; though this was recorded in a studio, the listener feels like she's in the middle of a throng of marchers, surrounded by the band and the choir. The second stage begins with a stunning rendering of "John the Revelator" that simulates being played at the gravesite and offers this bluesy prophetic read on the entrance of the departed into a new order prophesied. It is resolved in "I'll Fly Away," with Melody Palmer leading the choir in a rowdy statement of death's defeat. This is followed by an altar call in "Is There Anybody Here That Loves My Jesus?" The final stage -- leaving the cemetery for home -- is commenced by the funky read of "Down by the Riverside," and is resolved in the celebratory gratitude for mercy in "Amazing Grace." But this review does nothing, literally, to describe the sheer power of the transference of emotion that Funeral for a Friend does. This is easily the most heartfelt, honestly rendered, and stunningly captured moment of the DDBB's recording career; it belongs in every household where the celebration of life and its transition from the sorrow of death to the eternal afterlife is honored. It is not only a classic in the genre, but will come to be regarded as a jazz classic, period.
- Thom Jurek, All Music Guide -


Since 1977, the Dirty Dozen has extended the New Orleans brass band tradition, adding a funk rhythm section and recording with alt-rockers from Elvis Costello to Modest Mouse. But the band has deep roots, and they've never been more apparent than on Funeral for a Friend, a performance that goes to the very core of jazz and New Orleans musical life. Dedicated to one of the band's founders, the late Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen, it's a jazz funeral with hymns played at stately dirge tempo en route to the cemetery, then pressed to festive up-tempo counterpoint on the return. The music here pulses with life--and with afterlife too--as the raw R&B force of tenor saxophonist Kevin Harris and baritone saxophonist Roger Lewis energizes traditional tunes like "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" and Blind Willie Johnson's "John the Revelator." On "I Shall Not Be Moved" and "Jesus on the Mainline," the band pushes outward to hypnotic, dense, incantatory jams. Funeral for a Friend is a summary of the Dirty Dozen's greatest strengths, a memorable CD filled with joy and sorrow and real emotional power. - Stuart Broomer -

Dirty Dozen Brass Band:

New Orleans music ushered in the 20th century with the wail of a joyful noise: collective improvisation, syncopated rhythms, eclectic stylings, and an infectious joie de vivre that was exhilarating. Indeed, thanks to New Orleans musicians such as King Oliver, Jellyroll Morton, and above all, Louis Armstrong, the 1920s became known as the “jazz age.” Just like early jazz was an amalgamation of the music of its era, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band's musical revolution was actually a reintroduction of the basic eclecticism that made jazz the most dynamic music of the 20th century. Founded in April of 1977, the formation of the Dirty Dozen created a musical revolution in New Orleans. For over seventy-five years, the brass band tradition existed largely unchanged until this forward looking, bebop influenced ensemble completely changed both the style and the repertoire of brass band music. As trumpeter and bandleader Gregory Davis points out, “The concept of the Dirty Dozen is to play and experiment with all types of music. We will take a song - and not worry about if it is a jazz song or any particular type of song - we'll just take a song and see what we can do with it as The Dirty Dozen.” For over three decades the Dirty Dozen has been touring the world. They've played all the major festivals - Newport, New York, New Orleans Jazzfest, Playboy, Montreaux - and they have played one-nighters in no name venues in small towns you need a local map to find. If they didn't love the music, they couldn't keep up the pace, but, as their signature song exclaims, they roll on. Davis believes, “being a New Orleans band has marquee value. The other side of that coin is that people expect you to do a good job. The audience expects something special. So our challenge is, every night, to make sure that you are not only playing some good music, you have to also put on a good show.” In a world of war, poverty, ecological disasters, dissent and conflict in the social fabric of society, Marvin Gaye found himself looking to the heavens in 1971 and asking the heartfelt question “What’s Going On?” And with that Gaye created the unqualified masterpiece of his astounding career, an album addressing these questions of an uncertain world. In 2006, with the same questions looming even larger, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band borrowed on Gaye’s inspiration to create a crowning achievement in their own career, which spans more than three decades of innovation and leadership in New Orleans music and beyond. Mixing vibrant instrumental pieces with simmering, scorching vocal numbers the Dirty Dozen has translated the songs from “What’s Going On,” into its own music language. The new recordings are infused with the powerful feelings resulting from the band’s own experiences with Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent massive flooding and the devastation of their homes and communities. The August 29, 2006 release of “What’s Going On” marked the one-year anniversary of Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. “Katrina exposed a lot of issues and social irregularities that shouldn’t be tolerated in the society we live in, but appear in our own backyards,” says Towns. “New Orleans will prevail, but as far as the social stuff, it’s what’s been going on. Gee, it takes a catastrophe like Katrina to expose the whole thing.” Here we are in Sept. of 2007, and there is still much to be done in the ongoing Reconstruction of New Orleans. These feelings and more are what make this interpretation of “What’s Going On” the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s very own.




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