Uncle Lionel moves onto his next gig

For some 30 years or more, Lionel Ferbos had been introduced to audiences as New Orleans' oldest jazz musician. Someone else will have to assume that title now since Uncle Lionel has crossed over.

Ferbos celebrated his 103rd birthday this month at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe where he was a regular and played trumpet at every Jazz & Heritage Festival event until last year.

Like most working musicians, he held down another job, running a sheet metal business as a master tinsmith to raise a family.

He took up the trumpet despite childhood asthma. Ten years younger than Louis Armstrong, he outlived Satchmo by 40 years.

Ferbos played Traditional Jazz, a genre that went in and out of fashion during his lifetime.

Irvin Mayfield said of Ferbos and his contemporaries: "There's a certain way that they play melodies - it's a different beat, a different rhythm. When you listen to King Oliver or Jelly Roll Morton, you hear it."

"That's one of the lost things that we won't be able to hear in person again," Mayfield added.


Corpus Christi Catholic Church in the 7th Ward was packed on Saturday for the funeral mass. The Treme jazz band came strolling up St. Bernard Avenue to meet the procession going to the cemetery. Everyone was smiling because though the occasion was sad, Ferbos had seen it all - several wars, recessions, civil rights, integration, Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans' rebirth.

He was going to meet his maker.


The band played, "A Closer Walk with Thee," a New Orleans standard the musician had probably played a thousand times.

Ferbos lived an exceptionally long life, but he was not alone, even in his final performance.

Lionel's chariot

Birthplace of jazz rediscovered

By Bruce Nolan, The New Orleans Advocate

On a recent cloudless day, 32 British tourists stepped off a tour bus in Central City and, for reasons not immediately obvious to bystanders, spread out to view a dull yellow shotgun double at 2309 First St. The plain house sat vacant, stripped of all its architectural ornaments, and with its doorways and windows covered with plywood. Its maroon cement stoop provided the only contrast.

The group had flown 4,500 miles to see this undistinguished place, along with a few others, just before the city’s signature New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which kicks off today.

Perhaps a few imagined its former occupant, the great Buddy Bolden, a cornetist widely acknowledged as the first great jazz musician, playing on that very stoop more than a century ago.

David Martin, an amateur jazz cornetist from Devon, was both thrilled and dismayed.

“I find it incredibly depressing,” he said. “You have this picture in mind of areas you’d expect to see, and all you see is crumbled stuff, very, very shabby. It’s very depressing really. On the other hand, it’s a very, very moving experience for me.”

The house, like others on a small triangular plot, belongs to Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, which purchased it in 2008, not knowing its history. It has been vacant since then.

The church says it plans to bring the house back to life in a way that will honor Bolden’s legacy — “more than just a plaque on the house,” spokeswoman Angela Young said.

That such a powerful cultural landmark could be so long boarded-up and out of commerce is a worry not only to English jazz lovers but also to American music historians and proud locals who want to save the few remaining places associated with the New Orleans birth of a global art form.

There aren’t many left.

Louis Armstrong’s birthplace lies under the Municipal Court Building on South Broad Street; the site of his boyhood home is roughly the lawn in front of City Hall.

Most of the saloons and dance halls along South Rampart Street that gave birth to jazz in the first decade of the 20th century were demolished in favor of parking lots.

“There are precious few structures still standing today that document the powerful explosion of creativity and innovation that became jazz,” said John Hasse, curator of American music at the National Museum of American History.

Bolden’s house is one of them.

Bolden’s family rented the shotgun double on First Street in 1887, when he was 10.

Central City, in those days, was a working-class mix of German, Irish and African American families, like his. By accident of history it was home — or soon would be home — to a cluster of musical geniuses including, besides Bolden, jazz pioneers Kid Ory and King Oliver.

Music poured out of the place.

According to biographer Donald Marquis, Bolden’s home was just two blocks from the parade route favored by the Excelsior, Onward and other local bands. And down the street was Bolden’s own St. John the Fourth Baptist Church, whose ecstatic services and distinctive music also shaped his ear.

Musicians were everywhere.

Historians say Bolden was not the most technically proficient cornetist in town, but there is consensus on this: After other musicians heard him and his popular band, around 1900, they never played the same way again.

Bolden was doing something different, and it shifted the course of New Orleans music.

Marquis described it as the “extra touches” the untrained Bolden added by way of faking past passages he didn’t know. Bolden also added a distinctive new syncopated beat that opened room for improvisation. Others describe Bolden’s breakthrough contribution as his novel merger of blues, ragtime and street marches, influenced by church music as well.

Some experts disagree on whether he was playing jazz or a kind of proto-jazz brought to full flower by King Oliver and others.

To musician and jazz educator Wynton Marsalis it’s clear: “He played jazz. He’s the originator of jazz. He’s the progenitor.”

“All the music we play comes out of Bolden’s style,” Marsalis said. “His legacy is the history of jazz.”

Bolden’s career was dazzling but brief, lasting less than a decade. He fell into the grip of schizophrenia at 29, collapsed during a parade in 1906 and was institutionalized for the rest of his life.

He was buried in a pauper’s field in New Orleans in 1931. No one knows exactly where. His fans erected a monument approximating the site in 1996.

“(Bolden) practiced in the house and on the front porch stoop in front of the house. If it were possible to pinpoint the birthplace of jazz, it would have to be here,” Marquis wrote in 1978, urging the city’s Historic District Landmarks Commission to grant the house landmark status.

Marquis and others were successful, and today the commission watches over the house as a designated landmark.

City Hall records show that in 2011 and in January 2014 Greater St. Stephen was cited for allowing the house to deteriorate. A $575 fine accompanied the second violation.

In each case, the church made the mandated repairs.

“I’m not fearful for these particular properties, in that they seem to be being maintained in a watertight condition,” said Elliott Perkins, the commission’s executive director.

“We’ve gotten them to the minimum standard. I do worry for them in a long term way. But I don’t think they’re in immediate danger.”

But many people remain anxious.

Jack Stewart, a contractor and jazz lover who, years ago, rescued Jelly Roll Morton’s deteriorating house, pointed out that vacant houses are inherently vulnerable to slow, unseen threats like termites and water damage and to sudden calamities like fires set by vagrants.

In 2011, the Louisiana Landmarks Society named the Bolden house as one of the nine most endangered properties in the city. (The group nominates nine different historic properties every year.)

And the nonprofit Preservation Resource Center is anxious to get the vacant house back into use.

“The Bolden house is one of our top priorities at this point,” said Michelle Kimball, a senior advocate for the center.

In earlier cases, the PRC purchased the endangered homes of jazz pioneers Kid Ory and Red Allen, renovated them and sold them back to individuals. They are safe today, but such a purchase is not in the cards for the Bolden house, Kimball said.

Kimball said her organization tried to match the church with a willing buyer, but Greater St. Stephen’s spokeswoman Young confirmed the church was not interested in selling because it now has its own revitalization plans.

Young said Greater St. Stephen’s purchased the house to use in its ministries, not knowing its past or realizing it had landmark protection.

Three months later, a fire ruined its Central City church, a block away. The church building remains vacant, and the congregation now meets far away in eastern New Orleans.

Greater St. Stephen’s is in the midst of a capital campaign to reclaim the empty church and its surrounding properties, including the Bolden house, Young said.

“We plan to bring the Bolden house back into commerce, and we are exploring how to document the influence of spiritual music and the music of Buddy Bolden’s day,” she said. “We want to honor it. And we’re going to do it by doing more than putting a plaque on the home.”

Young said church representatives have scheduled a meeting with Marsalis in May to talk over preservation ideas.

Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, the interim executive director of the African-American Museum of Art and Culture, said she is exploring plans for the Bolden house on behalf of the church.

“We don’t need anybody to save the day,” Young said. “We’re going to pay homage to Buddy Bolden, an African American-musician, and we’re going to do it properly.”

by Taboola

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Boswell Sisters revived in New Orleans

By Robin Miller, The New Orleans Advocate

Chica Boswell Jones charged her daughter, Kyla Titus, with one task.

“Bring the sisters home,” she said.

Jones was the daughter of Helvetia Boswell, better known as Vet in the lineup of the Boswell Sisters trio that included Martha and Connee.

The Andrews Sisters’ Maxine Andrews once said they were the first to vocally harmonize jazz.

And speaking of the Andrews Sisters, they were only Boswell emulators.

The Boswell Sisters were the first of the close harmony trios, and their sound came from New Orleans.

And now with The Historic New Orleans Collection’s exhibit, “Shout, Sister, Shout! The Boswell Sisters of New Orleans,” they’ve returned home. The show runs through Oct. 26 in the collection’s main gallery at 533 Royal St.

“I did as my mother asked,” Titus says. “I brought the sisters home.”

The exhibit celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Boswell family’s arrival in New Orleans.

They lived on Camp Street Uptown and were classically trained in music by cellist Otto Finck, an orchestra member at the French Opera House that once stood on Bourbon Street.

“They were exposed to all of New Orleans’ music,” Titus says. “Their mother even brought them to the Lyric Theatre to listen to African-American musicians.”

The sisters’ musical style eventually morphed from classical to jazz, and they started traveling the vaudeville circuit. Records and movie appearances would come later.

“And they did it in close harmony,” Titus says.

Close harmony is an arrangement of the notes of chords within a narrow range. The notes are usually within the same octave.

“That was difficult to do,” Titus continues “There was no technological equipment to enhance their voices like they have today. They did it themselves, and it was during the 1920s and ’30s. Their harmony made people feel good during the Great Depression, one of the worst times in our country’s history.”

Titus has proof of this. She’s writing a book about her grandmother and aunts, and she’s received letters from Boswell admirers worldwide.

“A man from Australia sent a letter about how the Boswell Sisters’ music gave him hope during the Great Depression,” Titus says. “That really says a lot.”

Titus will attend the exhibit’s opening reception on Tuesday, March 25. She’ll return for the collection’s 15th annual Bill Russell Lecture on Thursday, April 10, which also will feature a performance by the close harmony trio, the Pfister Sisters

“The show includes photography, memorabilia, programs and musical instruments that they played,” says Mark Cave, senior curator and oral historian. “We even have an old radio that belonged to the family, a steamer trunk the sisters used on tour and Connee Boswell’s wheelchair.”

The Boswell Museum in East Springfield, N.Y., donated its artifacts to The Historic New Orleans Collection after Chica Boswell’s death in 2010. She was the museum’s founder. Titus and museum board members then brought the sisters home.

“I’ve been working with Mark Cave for the past year on this exhibit,” Titus says. “We call this the Year of the Boswell Sisters’ Revival. There are three major things happening this year, beginning with the exhibit, then my book and the Joshua Tree’s public television documentary ‘The Boswell Sisters: Close Harmony’ in December.”

Martha was the oldest sister, born in 1905. Connee was born in 1907, and Vet in 1911. Their family lived in different locations in the country before their father landed a job at the Fleischmann’s yeast plant in New Orleans.

The sisters began making appearances at the Saenger, Orpheum and Palace theaters in New Orleans while in their teens and eventually struck out on a national vaudeville tour.

“This was a tour that usually didn’t include women,” Titus says. “I remember Connee saying, ‘What did they think we looked like? Ducks?’ They were always joking, and they loved to laugh. I called my grandmother Nana, and I once asked her, ‘Nana, why are you always laughing?” She quoted Abraham Lincoln, ‘If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.’ ”

Titus never met her Aunt Martha, who died before Titus was born. But she knew her Aunt Connee well, and she was close to her grandmother.

“My mother and father divorced, so my mother and grandmother were the two closest people in my life,” she says. “We lived in Peekskill, N.Y., and my Aunt Connee had an apartment in Manhattan. We visited her often.”

Connee Boswell also had a solo career that was as successful as the close harmony with her sisters. But Connee had a drawback. Remember the wheelchair that’s going to be on display at the exhibition? Connee couldn’t walk.

“Some people speculate that she had polio,” Cave says. “But the family’s story is that she suffered a go-cart injury when she was a child.”

“The Boswell Sisters had small parts in movies, but never anything major,” Titus adds. “Connee was in a wheelchair, and a lot of directors didn’t know what to do with that.”

But that didn’t stop Connee Boswell’s influence as a singer. Ella Fitzgerald started out emulating her style, as did Bing Crosby. Frank Sinatra also credited Connee Boswell’s influence on fellow singers, and decades later, the Judds also would acknowledge her musical influence on their act.

“Her style wasn’t just about women soloists,” Titus says. “Men looked to her, too.”

Titus has so many other stories to tell, such as the time the sisters joined New Orleans trumpeters Louis and Leon Prima on a hayride tour through Louisiana after the 1927 flood. All proceeds from their tour stops benefitted flood victims.

There’s also the story of how Connee wanted to entertain troops with the USO overseas during World War II but wasn’t allowed because she was in a wheelchair.

“So, she went to hospitals and encouraged soldiers there,” Titus says.

This was after the trio disbanded in 1936. Titus speculates the cultural climate of the time contributed to the break-up.

“Women were still expected to abandon their careers when they got married,” she says. “They were raised as proper young ladies, but they were way ahead of their time. My grandmother kept her marriage secret for a year, and my aunt Martha had been married, had a child and divorced when she began in the act.”

Now the sisters are together again at home in The Historic New Orleans Collection.

New repository for New Orleans' music

Photo: John McCusker, The New Orleans Advocate

BY JOHN WIRT

JWIRT@THEADVOCATE.COM

The Louisiana Music Factory, an independent retailer in the business of selling CDs and vinyl recordings, most of them by New Orleans and Louisiana artists, survived even while most sellers of physical music product vanished.

The thousands of closed record stores include locations of the Tower Records and Virgin Megastore chains that once were just blocks away from the Louisiana Music Factory in the French Quarter.

Now there’s a big change in store for the Louisiana Music Factory, too. After operating in the Quarter near Canal Street for 22 years, the store closed its Decatur Street location Saturday, Feb. 1. Its first day of business at 421 Frenchmen St., just outside of the Quarter, is this Saturday, Feb. 8.

The store’s lease at 210 Decatur St. ended Dec. 31. Although that building recently was sold, the store’s new landlord didn’t want the business to leave, owner Barry Smith said.

“But this opportunity presented itself down there,” Smith explained. “And we’ve been kind of struggling in the past few years. I’m hoping this will give us a fresh start and be a better neighborhood for us.”

The new location, just below the second-story office of Offbeat, a monthly magazine devoted to New Orleans music, is more affordable, though somewhat smaller, than the previous space.

The now-closed instrument retailer, Werlein’s Music Store, the Music Factory’s former next-door neighbor on Decatur, as well as the House of Blues plus some neighboring music venues that didn’t last, had helped Smith’s business by bringing musicians and music fans to Decatur Street.

Smith’s move to Frenchmen Street again puts it in an area of multiple music venues, including Blue Nile, The Maison, d.b.a. and Snug Harbor.

“I hate to leave the House of Blues, but we’re moving to a more concentrated area of music clubs,” Smith said. “For the most part it’s all booking local music, which we specialize in. A lot of music fans go there in the evening. I’m hoping I’ll do more business.”

Smith and Louisiana Music Factory co-founder Jerry Brock opened the business in February 1992. It was Brock’s idea to create a retail space devoted to local and regional music.

The Louisiana Music Factory’s customers, Smith said, are largely tourists who visit New Orleans regularly, even multiple times a year.

“A lot of that is brought on by the Jazz and Heritage Festival,” he said. “It’s mostly tourists who have a passion for the local music. And I do have a local customer base. I’m hopeful that going down to Frenchmen Street might get me more regular local customers.”

The store’s specialty in Louisiana music enabled it survive in a business that’s mostly receded from the retail landscape.

“I credit that to helping us beat the odds,” Smith said. “Downloading and Internet competition have taken its toll on my sales in the last few years. But I manage to hang in there because of the local music, the majority of which is released on compact disc.

“If I were just a regular store that sold the Top 40 and whatever the flavor of the week is, I would have been gone a long time ago.”

Smith describes the store’s first day of business on Frenchmen Street as a soft opening. He’s opening the doors but doesn’t expect the space to be complete yet.

A grand opening for the new location, fe

Louisianans featured at Grammy Awards

Zachary Richard, photo: Acadiana Center for the Arts

BY JOHN WIRT
JWIRT@THEADVOCATE.COM
New Orleans songwriter, pianist and producer Allen Toussaint has been nominated for two Grammy awards. He is among several New Orleans and Acadiana artists who received Grammy nominations Friday night in Los Angeles.

Toussaint’s album, “Songbook,” is up for best Americana album. He recorded the album, which features solo voice and piano performances, in the fall of 2009 at Joe’s Pub in New York City. “Songbook” track “Shrimp Po-Boy, Dressed” earned a nomination for best American roots song.

Toussaint, a member of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame and recipient of many other honors, is a previous Grammy nominee for his 2009 album, “The Bright Mississippi.”

Grammy nominations for the best regional roots music album include New Orleans’ Hot 8 Brass Band’s “The Life & Times Of...The Hot 8 Brass Band” and two albums by Acadiana acts, Zachary Richard’s “Le Fou” and Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience’s “Dockside Sessions.” Simien won a Grammy in 2008.

Hot 8 Brass Band

Also from New Orleans, Bishop Paul S. Morton Sr., pastor of the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, was nominated in the best gospel album category for “Best Days Yet.” Morton’s tenth album, “Best Days Yet” features songs written by his son, PJ Morton, and vocals by his daughter Jasmine Morton-Ross.

PJ Morton has a Grammy nomination of his own for “Only One.” Recorded with Stevie Wonder, “Only One” received a nomination for best R&B song.

Breaux Bridge native Hunter Hayes, a nominee for numerous country music industry awards this year, received a Grammy nomination for best country solo performance for his No. 1 hit, “I Want Crazy.”

Jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, a New Orleans native and a previous Grammy winner, received a nomination for his improvised solo for “Don’t Run,” a track from Blanchard’s album, “Magnetic.”

New Orleans singer-songwriter Andrew Duhon’s “The Moorings” is nominated for best engineered album, non-classical. Trina Shoemaker, a previous Grammy winner based in Fairhope, Ala., engineered “The Moorings” and Eric Conn served as its mastering engineer.

Country singer and north Louisiana native Tim McGraw received a best country album nomination for “Same Trailer Different Park.” Blues singer Bobby Rush, a north Louisiana native and Mississippi resident, has a best blues album nomination for “Down in Louisiana.”

The Grammy Awards will be broadcast Jan. 26 from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Jazz artist Donald Harrison joins Tulane staff

By Alison Fensterstock, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune 

Music students at Tulane University will, this coming fall, be treated to a special opportunity to learn from one of New Orleans’ pre-eminent cultural figures. The renowned jazz saxophonist, composer, music educator and Congo Nation Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. will join the music department for the 2013-14 school year as jazz artist in residence, teaching six master classes to young studio musicians each semester, as well as theory and improvisation classes.

Harrison is a graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and a co-founder of the Tipitina’s internship program, where he worked with now well-known artists, including trumpeter Christian Scott and Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews. As a musician, he is noted for an innovative style that fuses modern jazz with funk, R&B and traditional New Orleans street sounds, particularly the Mardi Gras Indian tradition in which his family is steeped.

“His personality, his status as an educator, his investment in training young musicians…” said Tulane Center for the Gulf South director Joel Dinerstein, “we’re very happy.”

Music department assistant professor Matt Sakakeeny, whose book on the New Orleans brass band tradition (“Instruments of Power: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans”) is forthcoming from Duke University Press in fall 2013, sees Harrison’s hire as part of an increased effort, on Tulane’s part, to engage with and promote its city’s culture. In part, Sakakeeny said, that focus is a direct response to the demand of students who choose Tulane because of strong interest in the culture as well as in the school.

“Enrollment in music is way up, in jazz studies and across the board,” he said. “As a faculty, we’re struggling to accommodate the huge interest.” Sakakeeny's own undergraduate class on the history of New Orleans music is capped at 45 students; because every semester it fills up, with a long wait-list. He recently was asked to add another section.

“It’s a response to the students who’ve come here post-Katrina, who are much more engaged with the city. The student interest in local music and culture is so high that we’re struggling to meet it,” he said. “It’s very exciting.”

Another recent addition to Tulane jazz studies is Adam Benjamin, a Grammy-nominated pianist recognized as a Rising Star in Jazz by DownBeat magazine for six straight years. He moved to New Orleans after a stint at Cal Arts this year to become a professor of practice at Tulane. He joins the pianist Jesse McBride, who came to Tulane as a visiting professor in 2007.

Benjamin and Harrison will work with McBride and other accomplished local musicians who are instructors at Tulane, including Detroit Brooks, Delfeayo Marsalis, Leah Chase, guitarist John Dobry, electric jazz bassist Jim Markway and sax player Allen Dejan. They teach both Tulane music students and children attending the brand-new Trombone Shorty Music Academy, housed on campus through a partnership with the Center for the Gulf South (which itself offers a freshly minted, regionally focused major, in Musical Cultures of the Gulf South.) College-level music students at Tulane also can assist with the middle- and high school Academy pupils to fulfill the service learning requirement in the liberal arts degree program.

“A lot of what we’re trying to do,” in terms of attention to regional culture and the New Orleans community, Sakakeeny said, “you can see through the Trombone Shorty Academy. Underscoring the significance of local music, outreach into the community, and working with this world famous jazz musician who’s a very accomplished culture bearer. It’s win-win.”

© 2013 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

British R&B band discovers mother lode

On a recent Friday night, Tipitina finally met Tipitina’s. Back home in England, singer Debbie Jones and pianist Justin Randall front a band called Tipitina. Throughout Europe, they showcase music from, and inspired by, New Orleans, especially rhythm & blues.

But the title of their first CD, “I Wish I Was In New Orleans,” was hypothetical: Neither Jones nor Randall had ever actually been to New Orleans, the source of the sound they’ve dedicated their lives to learning.

Instead, they were smitten from afar. By reading books about the city. By studying its music intimately. By David Simon’s New Orleans-set HBO drama “Treme.”

“I care about the place,” Randall says. “I fell in love with New Orleans.”

They finally resolved to consummate the long-distance romance. For 16 days and nights in August, they would immerse themselves in New Orleans. “These places have always just been something in a book, or on TV,” Randall said. “To experience it for real…”

It would be overwhelming.

After booking the trip, the couple learned Jones was pregnant with their first child. The baby isn’t due until November, but the pregnancy would alter their New Orleans adventure.

“Normally, we’d be staying up until the morning,” Randall said. “But we’d have to pace ourselves, and get home at reasonable times.”

Canceling wasn’t an option. “Not for a minute,” Jones said. “If we don’t go now, we might not get a chance to go for years.”

So, on Aug. 9, she and Randall found themselves at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street, contemplating Tipitina’s, a destination they previously had known only from lyrics, legend and Google Maps. “It’s weird,” Jones said, “but good weird.”

And it was about to get better.

*****

Randall, 42, grew up in Leyland, a small town in England’s northwest not far from Manchester. His father compelled him to take classical piano lessons as a child. Later, an album by British pianist Jools Holland, “A to Z Geographers’ Guide to the Piano,” introduced him to the boogie-woogie style.

In the album’s liner notes, Holland cited such inspirations as Professor Longhair, Dr. John, James Booker and Allen Toussaint. Randall had never heard of these exotic-sounding musicians. Pre-Internet, he rode the bus to various record stores, seeking information.

And thus he started connecting the dots to New Orleans. He realized it was Dr. John whose performance of “Such a Night” in “The Last Waltz,” Martin Scorsese’s 1978 chronicle of The Band’s final concert, had so impressed him years earlier.

His obsession grew. He soaked up the New Orleans second-line beat via the instructional DVD “New Orleans Drumming,” with Johnny Vidacovich, Earl Palmer, Herman Ernest and Herlin Riley. He speaks knowledgeably about James Booker’s influence on Harry Connick Jr., and about the contributions of Freddie Staehle, the drummer on Dr. John’s classic “Gumbo” album.

Around 2000, he was toiling as the pianist in a 12-bar blues band. At the Dublin Blues Festival in Ireland, New Orleans pianist Henry Butler, one of his idols, took a seat near the stage as Randall played. Afterward, Butler didn’t mince words: “You’re good, but you ain’t that good.”

Butler suggested Randall study the exercise regimen created by Charles-Louis Hanon, the 19th-century piano master. Randall promptly bought a Hanon book. He realized he still had work to do.

He’s still doing it. He recently spent two months dissecting New Orleans pianist Tom McDermott’s approach to “Maple Leaf Rag” on YouTube.

And so Tipitina now deploys a McDermott-inspired “Maple Leaf Rag” as a segue into “Such a Night.”

***

Jones, 37, also is from Leyland. Her father was a guitar-playing Ray Charles fan. Family sing-alongs were not uncommon; she learned guitar and piano, too.

The New Orleans sound first seduced her surreptitiously: She adored the piano part in Elvis Presley’s recording of “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy,” not realizing the song was written and first recorded by Kenner native Lloyd Price.

Later, she “found” Aretha Franklin via “The Blues Brothers” movie. Franklin’s “The Delta Meets Detroit: Aretha’s Blues” album impacted her own soulful approach to singing.

She and Randall met on the Leyland music scene. One night in a pub, Randall propositioned her with, “How’d you fancy gettin’ a band together?”

Their first project played disco music at weddings. Gradually, “we realized we had this shared love of blues, jazz and gospel,” said Jones, who still sings with a gospel choir in Leyland. “He introduced me to all these incredible piano players from New Orleans, and that was it for me.”

Seven years ago, they formed a band to play New Orleans music, the music they loved. “It was just for enjoyment,” Randall said. “We had no plans to do anything with it at all.”

Henry Butler’s 1990 album “Orleans Inspiration” inspired their new band’s name. On it, Butler storms through Professor Longhair’s “Tipitina”; on the album cover, he poses next to the red neon Tipitina’s sign in the nightclub’s window.

“The name is so connected to the music,” Randall said. “You couldn’t really pick a name that is more connected.”

And so they became Tipitina.

***

As Tipitina, they joined the relatively small community of New Orleans-style rhythm & blues bands in the United Kingdom. Kindred spirits include London-based pianistDom Pipkin & The Iko’s.

Their repertoire covers such standard fare as “Something You Got,” “Big Chief,” “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” and “Tipitina”; Allen Toussaint’s “Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)”; Jon Cleary’s “Go Ahead Baby”; and Irma Thomas’ “I Never Fool Nobody But Me.”

“We could make a lot more money playing other music, but we’re happy now,” Randall said. “And it’s building slowly. The work’s getting better.”

Their name causes some confusion overseas. Jones is occasionally asked, “So are you Tina, then?”

Advertising themselves as a “New Orleans Band” wasn’t specific enough. One busload of traditional Dixieland jazz fans left a Tipitina gig particularly disappointed.

“When some people see ‘New Orleans Band,’ they’re expecting banjos and clarinets,” Randall said. “So we’ve started saying ‘New Orleans Rhythm & Blues’ to make it more obvious what we’re going to do.”

They worked the clubs in Leyland and beyond. Festival promoters throughout Europe started calling. So did Jim Simpson, founder of Big Bear Records, the venerable blues and jazz label based in Birmingham, England.

Simpson has a history with Louisiana music: In 1974, Big Bear released an album by Pleasant “Cousin Joe” Joseph called “Cousin Joe: Gospel-Wailing, Jazz-Playing, Rock ‘n’ Rolling, Soul-Shouting, Tap-Dancing Bluesman from New Orleans.”

Simpson signed Tipitina to Big Bear. They’ve released two albums so far. The new “Taking Care of Business,” recorded live at the Birmingham International Jazz & Blues Festival, opens with “Hey Pocky Way” and continues with “Such a Night” and Huey “Piano” Smith’s “Rockin’ Pneumonia & the Boogie Woogie Flu.”

And as of Aug. 5, the title of their first album, “I Wish I Was in New Orleans,” was no longer wishful thinking.

***

Jones and Randall prepared for their New Orleans odyssey by reading Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” and pouring over WWOZ-FM’s nightclub listings online, plotting an ambitious itinerary.

Scheduled to arrive in New Orleans at 8:30 p.m., they intended to drop their luggage at a downtown hotel and proceed directly to the Maple Leaf to hear Jon Cleary — himself a British piano player fallen under the spell of New Orleans — and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen.

But their connecting flight out of Washington turned back because of a fuel leak; fire trucks lined the runway as the plane landed. Twenty-six hours after departing England, they finally arrived in New Orleans at 3 a.m. — way too late for Cleary.

“We were gutted,” Jones said. Translation: They were extremely disappointed.

They next day, they strolled along Bourbon Street and the Mississippi River, brimming with excitement to walk streets they had fantasized about for years.

They made amends for the previous night’s snafu by catching Cleary’s solo piano gig at Chickie Wah Wah. Cleary offered them a ride back to their hotel, which turned into a nighttime tour of old New Orleans. They drove through Treme and past the one remaining building from the Storyville era, and a house where Jelly Roll Morton lived.

“For the first day,” Randall said, “it was just amazing.”

***

Their Manchester accents, and the linguistic challenges of proper names in New Orleans, resulted in occasional communication breakdowns. Aboard the Esplanade Avenue bus, the couple informed the driver they were bound for “Lee-EW-aza’s.” He had no idea what they meant.

They repeated their destination for a woman aboard the bus; she, too, was mystified. Finally they figured it out: Liuzza’s By the Track, where they sampled gumbo for the first time.

Adventures piled up. They rode the Canal Street ferry to Algiers Point. A sudden, afternoon monsoon drove them back to the boat before they reached the Tout de Suite Cafe.

“We were scared at one point,” Randall said. “The lightning and thunder was so loud, it sounded like the storm was on top of us.”

They looked back toward the city, Jones recalled, “and you just couldn’t see anything. And within five minutes, the rain was gone. It was unreal.”

On Bourbon Street, a strip club barker propositioned Jones with, “Do you want to change careers, baby?” He apparently didn’t notice, or care, about her pregnant belly.

Sitting on a bench near the Mississippi River, they fell for the oldest of New Orleans hustles: The “I bet I can tell you where you got them shoes” scam. Randall balked at the guy’s initial demand for $20 and talked him down to $5.

Night after night, they heard music. Trumpeter Kermit Ruffins at Vaughan’s. Trumpeter Jeremy Davenport at the Ritz-Carlton (Davenport, it turns out, uses the same sound system as Tipitina). Herlin Riley at Snug Harbor. Johnny Vidacovich at the Maple Leaf, where owner Hank Staples regaled them with tales of James Booker, Randall’s favorite pianist.

“James Booker actually died on my birthday,” Randall said. “It’s full circle.”

At d.b.a. one night, Cleary asked Randall to join him on stage for a bout of tandem, four-handed, boogie-woogie piano. The crowd ate it up.

So did Randall: However briefly, he had played music in his city of dreams. “I was floating on air. It was somethin’ else.”

Jones held out hope that she’d get a chance to sing. “That,” she said, “would be a dream come true.”

***

On their fourth night, they made their first pilgrimage to Tipitina’s. The club’s size surprised them. “On ‘Treme,’ it doesn’t look as wide,” Jones said.

The room was full, the New Orleans Suspects on fire. Drummer Willie Green personified the New Orleans groove; Jake Eckert wailed on slide guitar. The band sounded like a Big Easy Allman Brothers.

Taking it all in, Randall nursed a draft beer — and a secret. He had planned to propose to Jones during the Aug. 16 Dr. John show at Tipitina’s.

But as the Suspects soared, the music and moment were just too perfect. It doesn’t get any better than this, he thought.

And so, shortly after midnight, during an epic solo by Suspects saxophonist Jeff Watkins, Randall turned to Jones and spontaneously popped the question. Caught off guard with a cup of orange juice in her hands, she tearfully answered yes.

Tipitina got engaged at Tipitina’s.

An hour later, the band was still going strong, but Jones was exhausted. Pregnancy and emotion had taken a toll. On the way out, Randall and Jones rubbed the head of the Professor Longhair bust for luck.

“It was a night we’ll never forget,” he said.

***

More such days and nights followed. On Aug. 15, Randall bought the first hat he tried on at Meyer the Hatter. At Naghi’s, on the corner of Canal and Royal streets, Jones fell for the first engagement ring she saw — a New Orleans ring to mark a New Orleans engagement.

Later that day, they saw Fats Domino’s historic home in the Lower 9th Ward and paid a visit to Irma Thomas, one of Jones’ heroes. On the drive to eastern New Orleans, a star-struck Jones wondered, “What do you say to Irma Thomas?”

Turns out, she didn’t need to say much. Gregarious and gracious, Thomas told stories and shared tips on vocal maintenance (avoid lemons) and motherhood. She predicted Jones’ baby would be a boy.

And she assured the mother-to-be that she’ll be fine for a Tipitina gig at the legendary Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London on Oct. 20, four weeks before the baby is due: “Your stomach’s pregnant, not your mouth!”

Thomas sent them off with copies of her new CD single, “For the Rest of My Life,” and a signed poster.

“I’m shell-shocked,” Jones said afterward. “What a lovely, lovely woman.”

“For the first 15 minutes, I couldn’t say anything,” Randall said. “Then she was so warm, welcoming and friendly, I had to keep reminding myself that this was Irma Thomas, and not a friend I’d known for years.”

***

Jones and Randall have seen Dr. John in England, but were eager to hear him at Tipitina’s, his spiritual home. From their vantage point on the club’s balcony, they could see his set list. To their dismay, neither “Right Place, Wrong Time” nor “Tipitina” were on the list.

But like just about everything else on this trip, it worked out. Rebennack inserted both songs into the set.

At a Sunday afternoon house party at jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield’s house, the couple listened, enchanted, to 102-year-old trumpeter Lionel Ferbos & the Louisiana Shakers.

Ferbos sang — quietly at first, but with determination — “When I Grow Too Old to Dream.” Jones dabbed at tears, not for the last time on that dreamy afternoon.

Afterward, Ferbos happily let Jones give him a peck on his cheek.

“I feel like I’ve been to the whole series of ‘Treme,’” Randall said.

***

With only two nights left, Jones still had not sung anywhere in New Orleans. Randall already had made his second appearance on a New Orleans stage, lending a hand during Johnny Vidacovich’s Sunday afternoon student workshop at Tipitina’s.

Determined to help his fiancée live out her New Orleans fantasy, Randall approached drummer Shannon Powell at d.b.a. Could Jones sing something with the band?

“You’ll have to ask the boss,” Powell replied, indicating keyboardist David Torkanowsky.

Randall went over to Torkanowsky. “You’ll have to ask the boss,” Torkanowsky said, indicating Powell.

Eventually, they all agreed. Backed by Powell, Torkanowsky and bassist David Barard, Jones made her New Orleans debut with “Something You Got.” Thrilled, she pronounced it a “brilliant experience.”

By the final day, they were spent. They relaxed by the hotel pool, bought gifts for friends, sat for an interview and shot a video at Snug Harbor. “The thing is, we’ve got to go home,” Randall said. “I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it.”

They made the most of the final hours. Together, they performed “Such a Night” and “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” with a band at the French Market. They saw Cleary at Chickie Wah Wah again, Davell Crawford at Snug Harbor and, as their finale, the Treme Brass Band at d.b.a.

Appropriately enough, Treme sent them home with “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

“Having been here for 16 days, we feel like we’ve soaked the city into our hearts even more so than before,” Randall said. “That’s bound to come out the other way, when we go and play the music again when we get back.”

Fantasy doesn’t always live up to reality. For Tipitina, it did.

“It was exactly as I thought,” Randall said, “and more.”

Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@nola.com or 504.826.3470. Follow him on Twitter @KeithSpera.