Preservation Hall — the moniker has it exactly right. Perhaps
no other spot in America is so appropriately named as the legendary
New Orleans nightspot. Over the four decades of its existence, one
would be hard-pressed to think of any other American institution
that has changed less than the historic jazz club on St. Peter
Street a half block off Bourbon.
It’s the same seedy, one-room music joint it has been since
opening in 1961. Forty-two years have seen it virtually untouched
by cleaning supplies, paint, or any other beautifiers, the absence
of which, paradoxically, has imbued the place with a
down-at-the-heels charm that gets more pronounced as the years roll
by. More importantly, Preservation Hall offers the same music
(hell, even many of the same musicians) it has for
decades.
In a city celebrated for its musical tradition, Preservation
Hall has been the most steadfast keeper of what is known as New
Orleans-style jazz. New Orleans jazz differs slightly from the
Dixieland variety, which has a fast two-beat tempo.
The music Preservation Hall has endeavored to carry on is a
style of jazz that is slightly slower, with a driving melody. The
musicians — most elderly black gentlemen wearing white
shirtsleeves and ties — improvise around this solid melody on
familiar spirituals like “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” and “Down
by the Riverside,” not to mention well-known footstompers like
“Tiger Rag.”
The appeal of the music is its simplicity. Same with the
experience of attending a show at Preservation Hall. To say there
are no frills is to risk understatement. Reservations aren’t
accepted; the policy is first-come-first-serve, meaning a queue of
an hour or more is the norm. Patrons are packed in like sardines
into a room the size of a small basement. There are precious few
seats, with most folks standing (a few sit on the dirty floor).
Lazy ceiling fans do little to combat the stifling heat. Most
ominously, alcohol is neither served nor even permitted in.
The Big Easy is a city given over to things like comfort and
bacchanal and excess, but Preservation Hall offers none of these.
It even shuts down at midnight, when the bon temps are
just starting to rouler. Despite these privations, the
Hall arguably is the spiritual heart of the Crescent City.
During the 1950s, if it can be imagined, the New Orleans music
scene was growing mordant. Many of its celebrated musicians were
working little. Allan and Sandra Jaffe decided to do something to
stem the tide. In ‘61, the couple bought a 210-year-old building on
St. Peter that had been a tavern during the War of 1812 and more
recently an art gallery. They converted it into a venue showcasing
a style of music particular to New Orleans. (Sandra still runs
Preservation Hall.) The pass-the-hat sessions in dingy bandboxes
during the 1920s and '30s that established New Orleans’s reputation
as the birthplace of jazz are preserved and relived seven nights a
week.
The Hall is not difficult to miss. The only indication you are
standing on the threshold of an American jazz Mecca is a tiny
wooden sign dangling over the entrance. The entrance is no more
than a banged-up wrought-iron gate fronting a chipped building
which would seem more at home in Beirut than New Orleans.
Inside is a fire marshal’s nightmare, a falling-apart wooden
shack of a room. The same holed hanging board has been covering the
walls for years, holding in place the same grimy paintings of old
jazz players. The six or seven musicians on duty sit on rickety
wooden chairs, inches from the front-row customers. The trumpet
player usually leads the ensemble, as John Brunius did the recent
evening I attended, though many observers point to those years
during the 1960s, when the legendary clarinetist George Lewis
fronted the Hall’s house band, as a particular high-water mark.
A tip-cup sits atop a small stand, and a sign on the wall spells
out the pricing scheme for requesting certain numbers. Traditional
New Orleans jazz tunes can be heard for as little as a two-dollar
donation. Other songs cost five, assuming the band can play them.
Suppose you want to hear “When the Saints Go Marching In”? That’ll
be ten dollars. (If you were a professional musician in New
Orleans, no doubt you’d be tired of playing the “Saints” all the
time. A little disincentive to tourists’ demands for that song does
wonders for a musician’s sanity.)
The close quarters at Preservation Hall redefine the term
“intimate venue.” The furthest patron is no more than thirty feet
from the band. Imagine having six or seven of the best jazz
musicians in the world playing in your living room with the lights
down low and all your neighbors crowded in, and you get the
idea.
For this reason, a show at the Hall is nothing short of
mesmerizing. Because of the huge demand, sets rarely last longer
than forty minutes before the crowd must turn over. Those waiting
to enter notice something akin to reverie on the faces of the
departing. Once inside, it only takes a minute once the band
strikes up to realize what put that look on those faces.
And so it goes, night in and night out at Preservation Hall,
which has been offering the same experience since the Kennedy
Administration. Exiting after the performance I witnessed, a
gentleman beside me rapturously exclaimed, “That’s exactly
how I remember it from the last time I was here!” When was that, I
asked. “Thirty-five years ago.” Undoubtedly, that’s how it will be
when the year 2037 rolls around.
