Keeping the Beat on the Street (4 page)

Danny Barker, like so many other musicians, had left New Orleans and moved north to earn a living. He fashioned a long and illustrious career playing with, among others, Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder, and Jelly Roll Morton. On return to the Crescent City, he moved back to the area near the Fairview Church.

In 1972, Fairview pastor Rev. Andrew Darby approached Danny to form a youth brass band affiliated with the church; the stated aim was to keep the youngsters off the streets. The idea of having youth bands attached to churches was not new in New Orleans: in 1921, saxophonist Emanuel Paul got his start, along with Sam Dutrey, in a band attached to the Broadway Baptist Church in Carrollton. But whereas the Broadway church band folded after only a few weeks, the Fairview band was to prove almost too successful for its own good. As Danny was quoted as saying in the 1980s,

When you give a kid a musical instrument, he does something with his personality. He becomes a figure, and he's not so apt to get into trouble. Later on, the kids got into grass and narcotics, but in those days, families would encourage you to play music. There was something about playing music that gave you something special. You are not a waster or a bum. Now you can be a musician and still be those things, but generally you were a little something special when you were a musician.
¹³

He started the Fairview Baptist Church Band with the Reverend Darby and soon attracted thirty or so teenagers who already played in their high school bands. The band enjoyed considerable local success and spawned the even more popular Hurricane Brass Band, carried on into the late seventies as the Younger Fairview Band and then, for political reasons, as the Charles Barbarin Sr. Memorial Band. In 1983, Danny Barker did it again with the Roots of Jazz Brass Band, a venture that grew out of the Tambourine and Fan youth center on Hunter's Field. During that time, the number of musicians who passed through these bands was quite astonishing. There was Leroy Jones, Gregg Stafford, Anthony Lacen, Joe Torregano, Revert Andrews, Lucien and Charles Barbarin, Daryl Adams, Gregory Davis, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Michael White, Eddie Bo Parish, Nicholas Payton, Efrem Towns, Gerry Anderson, William Smith, Kirk and Charles Joseph, Kevin Harris, James Andrews, and many more. Small wonder that Joe Torregano said of Danny Barker, “That group saved jazz for a generation in New Orleans,” and Walter Payton added, “Danny Barker was like the Christopher Columbus of brass band music. He planted some good seeds.” Veteran bandleader Harold Dejan was even more fulsome: “Now, Danny Barker needs some credit for the Fairview Band. He started that little band with the children. All the boys that played with him; the fellows of the Fairview Band should honor Danny Barker. They should give him a plaque or a trophy or something, because all those boys he really stuck with.”
¹⁴

Danny Barker's name crops up in many of the interviews in this book as someone who would encourage anyone who, in his estimation, was helping the cause of New Orleans music. It's this kind of activity rather than his earlier distinguished career as a musician that ensured his iconic status in the city today.

Unlike many of the musicians of his generation, he was staunchly supportive of the newer sounds created by the younger brass bands. Emile Martyn remembers just how supportive He explained to me:

Fairview Baptist Church
Photo by Barry Martyn

I remember being with Danny Barker in Jackson Square, walking towards the river. I'd been playing in the afternoon with Tuba Fats. There was an English trombone player with us, and he was running down what he called the “modern music” played by “kids”; this would have been in 1985.

Danny sort of jumped on him; he wouldn't suffer fools gladly! He took off his hat and laid down his jacket and briefcase, as though he was stripping down for a fight. He said that he himself had a lot to do with the young bands—he didn't ever use the word “kids.” He mentioned that he'd had a place where they all came and played, and he'd started them off on the road.

Danny said, “You don't realize, you guys that come here. The music changes, and these youngsters want to play something that belongs to today. They're playing the traditional tunes, but they're tightening them up.

“Everything's getting condensed. The drums are getting a tighter sound— they're tuning the snares tighter—it's more staccato. Modern influences and recording techniques mean they're after a cleaner sound, with a distinct beginning and end.” He talked about the way the young bands dressed, T-shirts and baseball caps. They didn't want to be up there in black and white because for them, that was the past.

Danny was extremely aware of all that, and he was very defensive of young bands.

In 1973, Al Torregano, proprietor of the Jive Record Shop on North Claiborne, published
Jive,
a weekly newsletter. The issue of June 22 carried the following article on the Fairview band.

Booooom, booooom.

Here comes the parade.

“What's the parade for?”

“What does it matter? Let's get in the second line and have some fun.”

And so it goes. In New Orleans everybody loves a parade. We parade for Santa Claus, St. Patrick, Carnival, the Heart Fund, the Cancer Society, Spring Fiesta, funerals, and just about any other excuse we can think of. And no parade would be complete without one or two jazz marching bands.

Onward. Olympia. Eureka. Tuxedo. Immortal names in New Orleans. Marching bands unique to the Crescent City. Each band has been heaped with honors from coast to coast as well as at home. Each band is famous in its own right.

But have you heard about the Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band? No. Well, it's time you were told.

“The Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band is a marching band made up of 26 youngsters between the ages of nine and eighteen,” explains Danny Barker, the band's organizer and a fine jazz musician in his own right. “We play all of the old jazz classics; we march in parades; we are good, and I don't mind bragging a little bit.”

Started more than a year ago, the band is now in such demand that it rarely misses a street parade. “My people have always loved music,” says Barker. “Most of us are born with the ‘Baptist beat'—the rhythm of the good old Christian songs like
A Closer Walk with Thee
. We don't have to be taught a bunch of fancy stuff to be able to play an instrument. We go around with the melodies in our heads from the time we are just little folks and by the time we get our hands on an instrument and somebody shows us a thing or two, we are ready to play.”

Leroy Jones Jr., a bright 14-year-old lad, did just that. His parents gave him a trumpet and before long he was blowing away like a junior Gabriel. He invited some of his friends over with their instruments and the Jones' garage on St. Denis Street was turned into a rehearsal hall.

“I used to walk down the street and listen to Leroy and his friends playing rock music,” Barker explains, “and I got to thinking that they should be playing jazz.” Barker spoke to Reverend Andrew Darby Jr., pastor of his church, Fairview Baptist, and they came up with the idea of trying to get the young people of the community interested in a Christian band. “Reverend Darby was very concerned about getting the youth in our community involved in worthwhile projects,” Barker says.

Leroy liked the idea of forming a marching band. He talked to his friends and before long Barker had a dozen recruits. “We thought it was pretty great that he had Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Seven Day Adventists, and Holy Rollers playing in the Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band,” he proudly states. “Gospel jazz music brought all of these young boys together with a single purpose: playing an instrument for a pastime rather than getting involved in some of the street problems of their peers.”

Barker enlisted the help of Charlie Barbarin Sr., brother of the famous jazz trumpet player, Paul [actually a drummer], who passed away a few years ago. Barbarin, an able trumpet player himself, brought along his two young sons and became director of the band.

Leroy's parents agreed to allow the band to use their garage for practice; Reverend Darby cooperated by providing the church bus for transportation; Barbarin turned out to be a dynamic director; Barker took care of all the details; the boys supplied the music. The band began practicing each Monday night for three hours and soon invitations for personal appearances began to pour in.

“We just believed in the youngsters,” says Barker. “We considered the band a self-help program where young boys could learn to do something for themselves; they could learn to follow directions; they could work towards a positive goal.”

The group has played for both the 1971 and 1972 Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the Rag Time Jazz Festival in Washington, D.C. “We were also invited to play at the Celebration of Life, the Rock Festival in Pointe Coupee Parish,” says Barker. “However, that was quite a mistake. When the band got there and saw all of the naked and half-naked people roaming around, their eyes nearly popped out of their heads and they scattered and ran down to the river to get a better look. We had a time getting them back together and out of the place.”

One of the recent engagements the band especially enjoyed was playing for Mrs. Lucille Armstrong, the wife of the famous trumpeter Louis Armstrong, during her recent visit to Milne Boys Home. Mrs. Armstrong was in town to dedicate a portrait of her famous husband; the Fairview Band was on hand to provide the music for the occasion.

It was the second visit to the Home for the young band. When the group first started they went over to play at Milne, and the boys at the Home decided that they would also love to have a band. Now Milne also has a promising young jazz band.

The fame of the young Fairview band is spreading fast. Floyd Levin, a founder member of California Jazz Club, heard the band during the Jazz Festival and he persuaded his fellow club members to donate enough money to buy more than a dozen instruments for the group and to purchase caps and name bands. Durel Black, founder of the Louisiana Jazz Club and Music Therapy Fund, has also been a big supporter of the band; he has donated money for instruments.

“Of course, we still need more instruments,” Barker explains. “We have so many young boys that would love to play in the band, but they are from poor families and they just can't afford an instrument.”

Isn't he afraid that he may end up with too many musicians?

“No, that will never happen. If we get too big for one marching band we will form the second and then the third band. I can't think of a better way to help a youngster get off to the right start; music can make a difference.

“We need any new or old instruments we can get. Just call Reverend Darby at 949-4902 if you have an instrument around the house going to waste. I promise you that it will be put to good use.”

Now when we speak of the famous marching bands, the list will have to read like this: Onward, Olympia, Eureka, Tuxedo, and the Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band.

BORN
: New Orleans, February 20, 1958
Founding member of the Fairview band; leader of the Hurricane Brass Band and currently of his own quintet
Interviewed at the Palm Court Cafe, Decatur Street, September 2001