Keeping the Beat on the Street (32 page)

We used to play for a mixed crowd at second lines. We didn't just go with the funky street-type music—older people don't relate to that. It may sound good, but it's the meaning that counts. I'm very aware of that: music has a meaning, it's a universal language. We tried to stick to playing the old traditional tunes that we still do now, because when you travel, when you go overseas, people relate to that music because that's what they know. The things that Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton did, those are the tunes that made jazz
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Mainly we did second line parades, funerals, sometimes parties. You do a second line parade now, you're going to be making a hundred to a hundred and twenty dollars. We wanted to have it so that the same rate applied to each band. So we agreed between the bands that we wouldn't accept second line parades for less than one hundred dollars. With funerals—they involve second lines, you still have to walk, and when you cut the body loose and rave it up, it's a second line again. You might not be paid as much on a regular second line, but it should be comparable
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Pinstripe is still functioning, but I left the band in 1994. I've always wanted to be a bandleader—I felt I could do it. Most bandleaders are horn players; there's not many who are percussionists. And I think I had reached that stage where I had exhausted myself with the Pinstripe, and it was time to make a move. The other guys in the band said, “If anyone should break away and form their own band, it should be you. We'll support you all the way.” Some of the Pinstripe members came with me. They also were at a kind of plateau—they'd been in the band a long time and they wanted some new energy, to do something a little bit different
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At first, we were the Mellow Fellows Brass Band, but we rushed into it too fast, and it sort of fell apart. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a musician, and I mentioned that all the good band names were already taken. He said to me, “Man, y'all should call yourselves the New Wave Brass Band.” I thought, that's not a brass band name, but I gave it a try, and it stuck
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I work as a policeman for the French Market Corporation, and that's how we got our first gig. They had brass bands on weekends—they called it Music in the Market. At the time, Bridget Turner was in charge of booking the bands. She took a liking to us and became our manager and booking agent. In the band then we had George Johnson on trumpet—he had been in the Pinstripe, but he wanted to broaden his horizons. I played snare drum, Aaron Paulin on bass drum, Ricky Paulin on clarinet, Dwayne Paulin on trombone, Robert Harris on trombone, and Mark Smith on tuba
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There's one thing the older musicians respect highly if you are an up-and-coming brass band, and that is if you wear the traditional attire and show respect for your audience before they hear you play a note. That meant parade cap, hatband, white shirt, black tie, pants, and shoes. Both the Pinstripe and the New Wave dressed like that. For something like a second line, we had our band T-shirts, parade cap, black pants, and shoes
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We played mainly traditional tunes, but we would mix in street music. That was stuff you made up yourself that has a funky beat to it. The horn players play rhythm patterns and riffs, mainly transposed from rhythm and blues tunes. That's what the young generation are doing, and there's so many of them now. When I started out, most of those guys weren't even born
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Eventually, I got the chance to take the New Wave band to Ascona festival in Switzerland. I had always wanted to go and play overseas. Audiences there are different— they are very supportive, more so than they are at home. Over here, they can get to hear you anytime, but in Europe, they're much more attentive. I just love it when we go overseas—you get treated on a different level. They're so thirsty for the music, they'll sit and listen to you all night. Here, it's like a level down
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BORN
: New Orleans, April 13, 1974.
Played with the Pinstripe Brass Band; founder and leader of the Mahogany Brass Band
Interviewed at 3621 Burgundy Street, October 2002

Brice Miller and Morten Nilsen (trumpets), Copenhagen
Photo by Peter Nissen

My dad was a musician. He's Dwight Miller Sr. He's a saxophone player; he plays with the Pinstripe Brass Band. That's how I got my start. I was almost born into music, because not only did he play with the brass band, he would play the juke joints as well. At that time, we were living at 1705 Pauline Street, in the Ninth Ward. My daddy grew up uptown, in the Calliope housing development. All the members of the Pinstripe came from that area. They all went to Booker T. Washington School. Dad grew up in the midst of the second line culture. Every Sunday, there'd be a second line parade up there. He grew up in the epicenter of jazz
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I remember when I was a kid following my dad to the second line and looking up at him as he played. That was cool. This was when I was about five years old, getting stomped on by all the big dudes
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Our house was a musical house. My dad was the leader of various club bands—he played with several of those groups—so there would always be musicians hanging out at the house, rehearsing and so forth. We had a music room, and when they weren't rehearsing, the room was filled with instruments. There was the drum set, there was the piano, there was the big Hammond organ, saxophones, trumpets, trombones. All the cats would leave their horns at our house. My brother and I would sit in the music room, and we would bang, beat, blow whatever we got our hands on
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That was my formal introduction to music—playing other people's instruments. I was a self-taught musician; that's how I got started. My dad sent my brother and I to Werlein's for piano lessons; that's when they were on Canal Street. We'd jump on the Desire bus and go down there
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I got interested in the trumpet because my dad was trying to find a way to include me in the music. I think I must have been around eight or nine when they dressed me in a suit, umbrella, and some sunglasses. I became like the grand marshal for the Pinstripe Brass Band. I was the guy that danced around with the umbrella. The strange thing is I was very shy—that's why I wore the sunglasses, so that nobody could see my eyes
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Like most kids, I was fascinated by the drums—it's the instrument that makes the most noise with the least requirement. I played snare drum in the elementary school band. I think my dad wanted me to be a trumpet player—it was the Satchmo thing: every man in New Orleans wants his son to play trumpet. He bought me a cornet; I still have it now. My friend Murphy Watson was studying trumpet, and every evening after school, he'd sit down and give me lessons: how to get a proper tone and how to make the notes and so forth
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And after that, I was hanging out with my dad and seeing musicians like Robert Harris, Tuba Fats, Benny Jones, Lionel Batiste, Gregg Stafford, Gregory Davis, all those cats. It was those guys that encouraged me to treat the music seriously—many of them have not received their due credit and exposure. From seventh grade, I started studying trumpet at Andrew J. Bell School, in the Seventh Ward. My band director there was Donald Richardson. Finally I went to St. Augustine High School. But I got much more informal training. As a kid, on Saturdays, I would go and play in Jackson Square with various small groups that didn't have names
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Then I began playing with the Olympia Kids band, which Milton Batiste had created after the Junior Olympia. Dimitri Smith, the tuba player, was in charge of that band. We rehearsed at Batiste's house; he would come and give us a sermon now and then—how we should learn the tradition and culture of the music and how important that New Orleans sound is. It was a great experience
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My main influence on trumpet was George Johnson with the Pinstripe. I used to ask my dad about him: why is he still in New Orleans, why is he not rich and famous, why does he play in a brass band? I really looked up to him. And Dwayne Burns gave me a few lessons when I was in high school. He had a particular demeanor about him, so cool and debonair. My first professional gig was with the Pinstripe—it's the first time I got a dollar. I think I must have been in the ninth grade—that was in 1987
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They allowed me to start my own band, the Junior Pinstripe brass band. The Olympia Kids had phased out when we went to high school. There was a lot of things taking place, businesswise, that weren't right—it wasn't fair
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The Mahogany started when I was in high school, in 1991. It grew out of the Junior Pinstripe. Then we changed the name to the Jazzy Gentlemen Brass Band. Finally, we became the Mahogany. The reason for the name changes was that we had been getting a lot of work as the Junior Pinstripe, but people would be confusing us with the regular Pinstripe. The music was pretty much the same style, but we were a lot younger. Jazzy Gentlemen was all about being cool and mature, although we were so young. That was the ideology behind that
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We dealt with a guy that was doing management for us, and he went and incorporated the name Jazzy Gentlemen. Then he started booking another band using that name. I was only twenty; I had never thought of registering it myself
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I did some research—I was at Xavier University at the time. I was taking African American history classes, and I came upon the term “mahogany”—strong dark wood; plus I liked the association with the old Mahogany Hall on Basin Street, with its red walls and big mirrors. When I formed the Mahogany Brass Band, we would play at Donna's Bar and Grill and other clubs
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I've always tried to do something different. We had a newsletter every month called
The Mahoganist.
It would have little jokes, information about the band. I didn't realize it, but when I stopped doing it, I started getting calls asking what had happened to the next issue. We would just bring it to the gigs and give it away
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Learning the history of the music, and the history and culture of the city, made me realize that people like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong had opened doors, and this was important to me as a young black man. This jazz is something that was created out of the soil of New Orleans by the labor of black men of that time. It's the one thing that a black man in America can stand fast and say, “This is mine.” I looked at that identity—in order to move into the future, you have to understand yesterday
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I tapped into the tradition, by listening to records, by attending social club events, by having the pleasure of meeting greats like Danny Barker and seeing him perform. I was playing around with other bands; one of the most influential was the Tremé Brass Band, with “Uncle” Benny and “Uncle” Lionel. I've never really associated with musicians of my own age group; it's always been the older guys. Even today, most people think I'm in my mid-thirties, but I just made twenty-eight
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At that time, there were all these young bands—the Rebirth, the New Birth, the Lil' Rascals. They were all playing head songs and popular songs. They were kind of doing the same thing that the Dirty Dozen had done earlier. The scary thing was every band was doing the same thing. The only way you could learn traditional brass band music was by listening to a much older band, the Olympia, or the Tremé, or the Algiers. But there were no young musicians playing traditional. I told my band, “This is the music that we need to learn.” We had to do it in a way that would still be interesting to our peer group. And I had to sell it to my musicians. So I came up with what I call “traditional swing.” We'd play stuff like “I Found a New Baby,” “Exactly like You,” “Ice Cream,” “My Blue Heaven,” but we'd add little rhythmic figures and swing aspects to them to make them more fun. From that point, it kind of took off, and to this day, we're the youngest traditional brass band in the city
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It's mainly the older people that hire us; the younger folk want to hear that urban stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that kind of music. We incorporate a little bit of that into what we do
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It's just that I realized that if somebody didn't hold on to the traditional music, it was going to disappear. I've taken that upon myself on trumpet, Robert Harris on trombone, and Kirk Joseph on tuba. Ronell Johnson plays trombone with us too. Frederick Shepherd plays saxophone with us, and I have a younger saxophonist called Eron Williams. My snare drummer is my cousin, Ebria Keiffer. He also started in the Olympia Kids. On bass drum we have David Wallace. For a while I had another trumpet player by the name of Omari Thomas; he came from Alabama
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Sometimes I write down chords for the band, especially if it's a song they don't know. I've written several original compositions in the traditional idiom—if you heard them, you'd think they were old songs. But music is self-expression, and I always leave space for the musicians to do their thing—they have to play themselves. Every instrument has a role; the trumpet's role is to play that melody. The trombone's job is to give us the grounding that we need, and the saxophone gives us the color, fills in the gaps. The tuba doesn't just play the bottom of the chord: it has to give us rhythm. The drummers give us the New Orleans groove
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