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New Orleans brass band music was around before jazz, and it is still the hottest sound on the city's streets. For a while, it seemed to be dying out with the old-timers who had put it on the national map in the 1920s and 1930s, but it came back strong thanks to the work of Danny Barker, a banjo player who set out to train young musicians in the classic repertoire. His students went on to form the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which took the basic marching band instrumentation and rhythms and applied them to everything from old standards to bebop tunes, r&b hits and television theme songs.
Dozens of bands followed in the original Dozens' wake. Among the strongest is the Tremé Brass Band, named for the neighborhood that has nurtured many of New Orleans's greatest musicians. Led by the percussion team of Uncle Benny Jones and Uncle Lionel Batiste, the Trémé band specializes in the jazzed-up hymn tunes that have been the stock in trade of marching bands playing for the city's famous jazz funeral parades, as well as a wide grab-bag of old-time jazz numbers and some hot originals. With James Andrews on trumpet, the band has one of the best young soloists on the current scene, and is an intergenerational standard-bearer for the marching band tradition.
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