Joy at the Last

If his heart had been lighter while he lived, they would have played Didn't He Ramble? as they marched away from the cemetery. But John Casimir was a sober man, and when he was buried in New Orleans, the surviving members of his Young Tuxedo Brass Band left his graveside in silence.

Widow's Wail. Casimir, who died this month at 64, led his band for 40 years. Most of their work was playing in street parades for funerals, and no one in New Orleans could line up funeral work like John Casimir. Over the years, his friends said, Casimir learned the knack of arriving at a sickbed just after the priest and just before the hearse. If the victim looked sick enough, Casimir would give him a quarter. "Go buy yourself some ice cream," he would say cheerily, tipping his hat to the dying man's family. Everyone knew that a quarter from Casimir had the chill of the grave on it. At funerals, the band would play John Casimir's Whoopin' Blues, and the woebegone wail of Casimir's clarinet sounded like a widow's cry against the big brassy shout of his band.

In his last year, Casimir's band began playing sit-down music in a club called Preservation Hall. Now, taking turns with other jazzmen of their greying generation, his Young Tuxedo musicians play to attentive audiences who come to tune students' ears to the originators of New Orleans jazz. For many players, though they have spent their lives in jazz, a job at Preservation Hall means the first real payday in a long time. The hall is managed by Allan and Sandra Jaffe, two jazz connoisseurs from Philadelphia, who run it as a labor of love. At the door, customers contribute what they care to.

Lips That Fail. Most of the men are well over 60, and all are traditional players of the New Orleans style--a rick-a-tick-tick, free-moving jazz form that is the noblest ancestor of Dixieland. The oldest regular is Papa John Joseph, 85, who still plays a mean bass and is a veteran of the old Kid Ory and King Oliver Creole jazz bands. Papa plays in the company of such old regulars as Trumpeter Punch Miller, 68, and Clarinetist George Lewis, 62. Lewis is among the few jazz pioneers still living. The clarinet on which he composed his classic Burgundy Street Blues has a place of honor in the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

Moved by the revival of interest in the New Orleans style, Atlantic Records is putting out some "Jazz at Preservation Hall" albums, but such efforts come along very late. The old generation is thinning out. Casimir's death followed the deaths of Clarinetist Steve Angrum and Drummer Chinee Foster. The jazz played by the remaining old men limps along on failing lips and shortened breath. But even so, the music at Preservation Hall is often better than an echo of what used to be: like the Whoopin' Blues, it is a cheerful way of saying goodbye.

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