Despite A Few Changes, Dirty Dozen’s Brass Shines
The Dirty Dozen makes a big, brassy New Orleans sound.
When it began as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band nearly 20 years ago, only a couple of the old, traditional New Orleans horn bands plied the wedding/funeral/Mardi Gras/church social circle and the prospects weren’t good for another one.
“We came up in an environment where people told us that what we’re doing isn’t going to work,” trumpeter and vocalist Greg Davis said last week in a phone interview. “But we have outlasted all that was around us at the time.”
Indeed, the Dirty Dozen (they recently shortened their name) has flourished and in the process found a new audience for an old tradition.
It’s an irresistible tradition, in which trumpets and trombones play off each other and a sousaphone holds down the bottom end. The music is bright and bold but it also carries a deep emotional heft; it means something - and it has universal appeal.
“We’ve been playing world music since this band began in 1977, before they were calling it world music,” said Davis.
In its two-decade history, the Dozen have collaborated with the Neville Brothers, Elvis Costello and Manhattan Transfer. In recent months, the group has toured with the Black Crowes and turned down offers to play with Phish and Sting, who wanted them for an 18-month world tour.
“We had other commitments,” said Davis.
Friday, they’ll appear at the American Music Festival in Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane.
The Dirty Dozen has given an old tradition new life. In old New Orleans, brass bands led funeral mourners to the cemetery with a repertoire of dirges. The service turned into a party on the way home and the horns broke into raucous dance music. As young musicians, Greg Davis and his friends picked up spare gigs playing in horn bands and even though work was scarce, he and 11 friends decided to strike out on their own.
They found a willing audience, first in the usual round of play-for-dinner gigs at picnics, softball games and weddings.
“When we first got going, gigs were rolling in really hot and heavy,” Davis said.
They graduated to clubs, then festivals and international travel.
“Once we started to travel, it just broke wide open.”
The band recorded a couple of self-financed singles and turned down a number of record-label deals until George Wein came along with an offer to play on Concorde Records, one of the preeminent jazz labels.
“We saw it as an opportunity to play all the festivals that George managed,” Davis explained.
Because they were young and because they were musicians, the members of the Dirty Dozen didn’t feel compelled to limit themselves musically.
“People consider us a jazz band,” Davis said, “but we play R&B, funk and rock ‘n’ roll on some nights. We just play music.”
A recent shift in personnel has brought the band some criticism. They replaced their twin-drum setup with a single set of traps, added keyboards and a guitar and, on occasion, replaced the sousaphone with an electric bass.
Davis has even recorded his first vocals, but he doesn’t see any of this as a break from tradition.
“As we saw it, the tradition was to learn from what was there to begin with, then expanding on it. And that’s what we have always done.”
Even John Coltrane’s music evolved, he said.
With the addition of keyboards and guitar, the band changed their name to the Dirty Dozen.
The new lineup gives the band more rhythmic variety and a new muscularity. Fans who reveled in the close horn harmonies may miss a layer or two of the old sound, especially when the bass is thumping in place of the sousaphone.
But the addition of those rollicking New Orleans keys and the depth added by a guitar gives the band new dimensions to play with.
“There have been some whispers about us doing the wrong thing, but the changes have opened up other opportunities for us, we have been able to go into whole new venues.”
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