Dixieland and the Dukes explained

Where jazz began

Jazz took shape among the African-American communities of New Orleans from the closing decades of the 1800s into the early 1900s. It drew on blues and ragtime, on European harmony and African rhythm, and on spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville songs and dance tunes. The New Orleans style itself emerged in the early 1910s, when players folded brass-band marches, French quadrilles, ragtime and blues into a group sound in which several lines were improvised at once.

Brass bands and funerals

A lot of the first jazz players worked the bars near Basin Street. Marching bands also played the grand funerals that came to be known as jazz funerals, and their brass, drums and reeds became the core instruments of the new music. Cornetist Buddy Bolden was playing in the city around 1900, though no recording of him survives. Louis Armstrong got his start in that same district before he made his name in Chicago.

What Dixieland means

Dixieland, also called traditional jazz or hot jazz, is a style based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The name was first used for the Original Dixieland Jass Band, whose early recordings helped make the style known. Traditional-jazz revivalists applied the term to early jazz in the 1940s and 1950s, and some younger Black musicians rejected the revival, partly because of the name's Jim Crow associations.

How the band plays

A standard Dixieland band is fronted by a trumpet or cornet, a trombone and a clarinet. The rhythm section includes at least two of guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano and drums. The definitive sound comes when one instrument, usually the trumpet, plays the melody while the others improvise around it. The result is a polyphonic texture that differs from the written arrangements of a big band, and the best way to hear it is to follow one instrument at a time.

What to listen for

Dixieland is built on collective improvisation, a polyphonic texture in which several lines sound at once, and that is why it feels busy and cheerful. Wikipedia contrasts it with the written arrangements of the swing-era big bands and with bebop, where the melody is stated briefly and most of the piece is improvised. Follow the trumpet for the tune, the clarinet for the filigree above it, and the trombone for the bass-like slides beneath. The ticket calls the music New Orleans swing-style jazz.

The Dukes of Dixieland

The Dukes of Dixieland is a New Orleans Dixieland revival band, formed in 1948 by brothers Frank and Fred Assunto and their father. The Dixieland revival of the late 1940s and 1950s was led by the Assunto brothers' band. The band has recorded with Louis Armstrong, and its gospel album Gloryland was nominated for a Grammy Award. The ticket calls the band Grammy-nominated. The name has been carried by several line-ups since the band's founding, and the band's history is set out on Wikipedia.

The band on the boat

The steamboat company's timeline records that the Dukes of Dixieland became house band for its dinner jazz cruises in 1994 and continue to entertain on dinner jazz cruises and private charters. Their line-up has changed many times over the decades. The players on your night may therefore differ from the musicians on older recordings, so treat the name as the band's tradition rather than a fixed list of players.

Listening on a cruise

On the evening cruise the band plays live while the boat is under way, with indoor and open-air seating. Cocktails, beer and wine are on sale on board. The company's daytime sailing features a different band, the Steamboat Stompers, if you want to hear a second group. Listen for how the front line trades the melody and weaves around it, which is the heart of the style.

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