Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Appear At SNL50: The Homecoming Concert Streaming Live From Radio City Music Hall on Peacock February 14th

Preservation Hall Presents Preservation Brass For Fat Man, an album dedicated to the memory of longtime Preservation Hall Percussionist Kerry “Fat Man” Hunter. The album is available today, Friday January 31st worldwide from Sub Pop on all DSPs and on vinyl through megamart.subpop.com in North America, MM2 in UK and EU, Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and at your local record store. 

Kevin Louis Cornet of Preservation Hall offers this lovely tribute, “Fat Man was a beautiful, peaceful soul. If I wanted to know what was going on in the streets, where the second line was, or who was playing, I’m calling Fat. With him checking out the way he did and when he did, it’s only right we dedicate this album to him. I mean, his funeral literally had the whole brass band community there – every single brass band in New Orleans was represented! Fat Man forever!”

On Valentine’s Day, Friday, February 14th (at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT), Preservation Hall Jazz Band will perform at SNL50: THE HOMECOMING CONCERT. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon and featuring a lineup of chart-topping musical guests from across the decades, SNL50: THE HOMECOMING CONCERT will celebrate 50 years of SNL musical and comedy performances. 

Streaming live on Peacock from Radio City Music Hall, the SNL homecoming celebration will bring together legendary Saturday Night Live hall-of-famers and surprise special guests including Arcade Fire, Backstreet Boys, Bad Bunny, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard, Chris Martin, David Byrne, DEVO, Eddie Vedder, Jack White, Jelly Roll, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Mumford & Sons, Post Malone, The B-52s, The Roots and more to be announced.  

The one-night-only event is executive produced by Emmy Award winner Lorne Michaels and Grammy and Oscar winner Mark Ronson.

SNL50: THE HOMECOMING CONCERT will stream live on Peacock on Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT. 

The special will also play at fan screening events in select IMAX theaters at Regal Cinemas across California (Regal Edwards Ontario Palace), Pennsylvania (Regal UA King of Prussia), Texas (Regal Lone Star), New York (Regal Deer Park), and Florida (Regal South Beach). Free tickets for fan screenings will be made available exclusively for current Fandango FanClub, Regal Crown Club members, and IMAX subscribers at a later date.

More on Preservation Brass For Fat Man:

BOOM.

It’s the first thing you hear, the first thing you notice. A bass drum strike so hard and heavy, its sound carries for blocks. In fact, you probably feel it before you actually hear it. 

BOOM BOOM.

A bottom-end so deep, it lets everyone know: the band is on its way.

BOOM BOOM BOOM

And before you can even see ‘em, you can hear ‘em, clearing the way: angel trumpets, devil trombones, rat-a-tat snares, pulsing tubas, and at the center of it all, the anchor, the rock, the gravity that keeps it all from spinning out and flying off into space, the bass drum. The steady beat that lays the foundation for every feat the brass band can accomplish. The beat that sets the slow and reverential pace for a walk of remembrance towards the cemetery. The beat that dictates the rhythm of the joyous dance on the corner. The beat that puts butts in motion. That bass drum beat is the heartbeat of New Orleans, the organ that pushes the blood through the arteries and veins of our city streets, and the biggest and strongest heart was Kerry “Fat Man” Hunter. When the bass drum was strapped over his shoulders and the mallets were in his hands, he let ‘em know–loud, proud and undeniable was his style, and it’s that style that’s at the heart of For Fat Man, the new recording by the Preservation Hall Brass.

The album was guided from inception to completion by Preservation Hall cornet player Kevin Louis, He wanted to capture what was going on at the Hall on Monday nights, and from the beginning, Fat Man was key to the recording. “Fat Man and Jap [Julius McKee] came to me and said, ‘We need to lay this down, nobody’s doing this,’” Louis explains. “I called on Mark to be my extra ear. It took a while to assemble the A team, ‘cause everyone’s in demand but when everybody had the time, I called Marigny Studios, brought the cats in and we laid down four or five songs, listened to that and said, ‘Yeah, we got something.’ And once we made it happen, it happened like a mf!”

The album kicks off with the sort of atmospheric percussion you might hear from a distance on a Mardi Gras or St. Joseph’s Day, or emanating from a neighborhood bar during the legendary practice sessions held by New Orleans’ Masking Indian tribes. It’s one of the unique sounds of our city. “Fat Man and my podna Gerald French came in and we made those interludes,” says Louis. Those sound pieces are interwoven with the songs on the album, and together, they create a stunning document of a group bound by tradition, anchored in the now, and looking towards what’s to come. This is the sound of the past, present and future getting down all at once.

“We had just grown as a band so much, we had established such a great repertoire and camaraderie,” says trumpet player Mark Braud, describing the bond between the band that can be heard between the lines and the notes throughout For Fat Man. “Playing together every week for years and years, you develop a certain thing as a band. It’s not just a gig anymore.”

But that’s the bittersweet thing about life. The bonds of friendship and love we form lift us up, but those bonds will inevitably be broken, sometimes tragically. We all know how it’s going to end, and in New Orleans we choose to live with that knowledge and make it a part of our day to day. We figure, why not acknowledge the reality of the wheel of life and make its inherent sadness and inevitable happiness a part of how we face every day? There’s pain for the loss and that pain is no joke, but we can’t forget that there’s a life to be remembered, a journey to be celebrated with our tears of memory and our joyful noises, each in their time, and often at the same time. That’s just the way it is here, and we’re lucky to have our music to help us mark these milestones.

“Fat Man was the heartbeat of all of this,” says Ben Jaffe, the Creative Director of Preservation Hall. “He brought a sense of freedom whenever he played. He understood the ability and power of music to make people feel joy, happiness and be therapeutic. It was important to him. This record’s an incredible tribute to him and who he was. He was entirely a singular, unique human being. There’s not many that embodied second line culture in New Orleans like him. It’s a way of life, and such a beautiful thing to be a part of.”

Equal parts remembrance, document, and party, For Fat Man wasn’t meant to bear that title. Kerry’s untimely passing during Mardi Gras is sadly but irrevocably now a part of the story of this record, which began as a celebration of where the brass band tradition at Preservation Hall was at and where it’s going. And thank goodness, the story doesn’t end. Life, like any good brass band, keeps moving. This record is a joyous link in the chain that is the story of New Orleans and its music. It’s for the ancestors, for the culture, for the people in the street, for those that mourn and those that celebrate and everybody somewhere in between. This record is the sound of that chain, that heartbeat, that rhythm. That sweet and thunderous BOOM.

And it hits so hard that the Fatman can probably hear it up in Heaven.

Kevin Louis - long cornet

Mark Braud - trumpet

Wendell Brunious - trumpet

Ronell Johnson - trombone

Richard Anderson - trombone

Roderick Paulin - tenor saxophone

Bruce Brackman - clarinet

Julius McKee - sousaphone

Glen Finister Andrews - snare drum

Kerry “Fat Man” Hunter - bass drum

Gerald French - percussion

Preservation Hall Presents Preservation Brass

For Fat Man

Tracklisting

1. Indian Percussion Intro

2. Bagatelle

3. Lucky Dog

4. Hot Sausage Rag

5. That Dada Strain

6. Big Chief Coming (Interlude)

7. Slide Frog Slide

8. Climax Rag

9. Bill Bailey Won’t You Please

Come Home

10. Careless Love

11. Medley

12. Fiyaya

Today, Feb 25th, 89, the debut record from Charlie Gabriel, the senior member of the legendary New Orleans Jazz ensemble, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is available on DSPs. The album will be released physically on CD/LP/CS July 1st, 2022 worldwide from Sub Pop.
 
Charlie’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band just then also included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer, J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.
 
Since 2006, he’s been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and has developed a tight musical relationship with the group’s bassist and tuba player, Ben Jaffe. The two men, along with guitarist Joshua Starkman, recorded Charlie’s new album 89 throughout 2020 and 2021.
 
As previously announced on Sunday, January 30th legendary New Orleans Jazz venue, Preservation Hall was the subject of a CBS Sunday Morning segment, which was taped in December 2021 with Ted Koppel and features interviews with the Hall’s creative director and sousaphonist, Ben Jaffe and Charlie Gabriel. You can watch this segment by clicking here.

89 is now available for preorder on CD/LP/DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers in North America, in the UK, and in Europe will receive the album on translucent gold.

Charlie Gabriel
89
 
Tracklisting:
1. Memories of You
2. Chelsea Bridge
3. I’m Confessin’
4. The Darker It Gets
5. Stardust
6. Three Little Word
7. Yellow Moon
8. I Get Jealous 

Charlie Gabriel has signed to Sub Pop to release his debut album 89. The album, which features the highlights “I’m Confessin’” and ”The Darker It Gets,” will be available on DSPs February 25th, 2022, and released on CD/LP/CS July 1st, 2022 worldwide from Sub Pop.

Charlie is the most senior member of the legendary New Orleans Jazz ensemble, Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Charlie’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band just then also included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer, J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.
 
Since 2006, he’s been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and has developed a tight musical relationship with the group’s bassist and tuba player, Ben Jaffe. The two men, along with guitarist Joshua Starkman, recorded Charlie’s new album 89 throughout 2020 and 2021.
 
89 includes six jazz standards and two new pieces, “The Darker It Gets” and “Yellow Moon”.” Charlie describes the repertoire, which includes “Stardust,” “I’m Confessin’” and “Three Little Words,” as “standard material that every musician if they’re an older musician like myself, will have played throughout their career. Every time I play one of these tunes the interpretation is a little bit different.” 
 
He plays tenor sax and clarinet throughout, Starkman plays guitar, and Jaffe plays bass, drums, and keyboards. You can listen to the debut offerings, “I’m Confessin’” and “The Darker It Get” by clicking here. There is also an official video for “I’m Confessin’,” which was directed by Alex Hennen Payne. You can watch the video by clicking here. 

89 is now available for preorder on CD/LP/DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers in North America, in the UK, and in Europe will receive the album on translucent gold.

 About Charlie Gabriel’s 89:

“I’ve been playing since I was 11 years old,” says Charlie Gabriel, the most senior member of the legendary Preservation Hall Band, “I never did anything in my life but play music. I’ve been blessed with that gift that God gave me, and I’ve tried to nurse it the best way I knew how.”
 
While he’s faced plenty of challenges nursing that gift for more than 78 years, none likely rank with last winter’s passing of his brother and last living sibling, Leonard, lost to COVID-19. For the first time ever, Gabriel put down his horn, filling his days and weeks instead with dark reflection, a stubborn despondency broken now and then by regular chess matches in the studio kitchen of Hall leader Ben Jaffe, working overtime to bring his friend some light.
 
One such afternoon also included Joshua Starkman, sitting off in a corner playing his guitar and half-watching the chess from a distance. When Charlie returned the next day, he brought his saxophone. “I was just inspired to try it, to play again. It had been a long time, and a guitar makes me feel free. I do love the sound of a piano, but it takes up a lot of a space, keeps me kind of boxed in.”
 
That day was to be the first session for 89, almost entirely the work of Gabriel, Jaffe and Starkman, recorded mostly right there, in the kitchen, by Matt Aguiluz.
 
Charlie Gabriel’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band just then also included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer, J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.
 
Since 2006, Gabriel has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, featuring prominently on That’s It, So It Is, and Tuba to Cuba. 89 was different, and not simply due to a smaller ensemble.  “We had no particular plan, or any particular insight on what we were gonna do. But we were enjoying what we were doing, jamming, having a musical conversation,” Charlie says, further musing, “Musical conversations cancel out complications.”
 
89 includes six standards and two newer pieces on which Gabriel is a writer: “Yellow Moon,” and “The Darker It Gets”.” The record also marks Charlie’s return to his first instrument, clarinet, on many of the tracks. “The clarinet is the mother of the saxophone,” he says. “I started playing clarinet early in life, and this [taught me] the saxophone.” 
 
Finally, 89 includes three tracks of Charlie singing…
 
“I always sung, but it wasn’t my forte to become a singer,” he says. “The truth is, people often develop a real relationship with a song once they hear the words. Sometimes I enjoy singing them.”

Charlie Gabriel
89
 
Tracklisting:
1. Memories of You
2. Chelsea Bridge
3. I’m Confessin’
4. The Darker It Gets
5. Stardust
6. Three Little Word
7. Yellow Moon
8. I Get Jealous 

Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,”  is the legendary group’s rendition of the black national anthem, recorded for MLK/FBI, the forthcoming Critics’ Choice award winner for “Best Archival Documentary” and multiple IDA-award nominee. The official video for the song features footage from the film, and is co-directed by Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Ben Jaffe and Kenneth Alexander Campbell. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is available now worldwide at all DSPs through Sub Pop.

[Photo credit: Dru Bui] 

The Preservation Hall musicians who perform on “Lift Every Voice and Sing” include Charlie Gabriel (Tenor Saxophone),  Wendell Brunious (Flugelhorn), Ronell Johnson (Piano, Organ, Trombone), Kyle Roussel (Piano), Ben Jaffe (Upright Bass), and Walter Harris (Drum Set) and are joined friends by Louis Ford (Tenor Saxophone), Walter Harris (Drum Set), Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (Snare Drum), Calvin Johnson (Soprano Saxophone), Kevin Louis (Trumpet), and Stephen Lands (Trumpet).
 
Sam Pollard, the director of MLK/FBI, is an Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker. Pollard says of the song, ”MLK/FBI is a movie experience I am proud to have been a part of. Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s performance of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ is an astounding version of the iconic anthem, and a perfect ending for our film. We are thrilled it will now be given a wider release.”
 
Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Jaffe offers this, “It’s always an Honor and Privilege that comes with huge responsibility to perform ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing.’  All of us were touched when Ben and Sam reached out to us.  To perform such an important composition, at this moment in time, for MLK/FBI and with this ensemble, makes it all the more personal and relevant.”
 
MLK/FBI is the first film to uncover the extent of the FBI’s surveillance and harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on newly discovered and declassified files, utilizing a trove of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and unsealed by the National Archives, as well as revelatory restored footage, the documentary explores the government’s history of targeting Black activists, and the contested meaning behind some of our most cherished ideals. Featuring interviews with key cultural figures, including former FBI Director James Comey, MLK/FBI tells this astonishing and tragic story with searing relevance to our current moment. The film is produced by Benjamin Hedin, and written by Hedin and Laura Tomaselli.
 
MLK/FBI will be released in theatres and video-on-demand services on Friday, January 15th, 2021 through IFC Films.
 
What the critics are saying about MLK/FBI:
“One of the most urgent films of the year…” - Vanity Fair
 
“Powerhouse doc. Rewarding. Meticulously damning.” - Los Angeles Times
 
“Sam Pollard has assembled an engrossing, unsettling documentary…Rigorously focused on the facts of the past, the movie is also as timely as an alarm clock.” [“10 Great Movies at the New York Film Festival”] - New York Times
 
“Artfully assembled. It may be the best of this year’s very impressive slate. Illuminates the darkest, most insidious corners of American power and racism—past and present.” - Entertainment Weekly
 
“The film is a sobering watch and a timely reminder that King’s struggle for racial justice wasn’t straightforward, nor is it close to complete.” [“4 Films You Need to Watch This Fall”] - The Atlantic

Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s “Keep Your Head Up,” is a spirited tune and a standout from their acclaimed A Tuba To Cuba documentary and soundtrack. The song was released in the spring of last year, with Cuban singer Eme Alfonso on the album version and in the official video. Later that summer, an update with rapper Pell was released for Penguin’s Original Tracks series and was performed on the streets of the artists’ hometown of New Orleans. 
 
Last month as a Stay At Home order was declared in Louisiana, Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Ben Jaffe began performing ‘Keep Your Head Up” every evening from his New Orleans home (and filming it on Instagram Live) encouraging his fellow citizens to participate by opening windows, hanging on their porches, in their backyards, and decks to make musical sounds and rhythms with pots, pans, instruments, and their voices. A daily, uplifting, 5-minute break from everything, bringing people together by connecting families with their neighbors, community through sound, and through music.
 
Jaffe says of Pell’s contribution to “Keep Your Head Up,” “We couldn’t be more grateful to have a dear friend as talented and kind as Pell lend his spirit and voice to our song.”
 
Pell offers this, “This song is more important than ever in reminding us to enjoy every day, despite how much uncertainty and adversity this global tragedy has brought upon us. Stay safe, inside, and keep your head up high. Love.”

[Photo credit: Chris Swainston]
 
Late last week, the Preservation Hall Foundation launched the Legacy Emergency Relief Fund. The fund provides grants to the Hall’s Musical Collective to help with vital living expenses resulting from loss of work due to the Coronavirus. 
 
Jaffe, who is also Preservation Hall Foundation’s creative director, had this to say, “The doors at Preservation Hall are closed for the foreseeable future and our 60-member Musical Collective is facing great uncertainty. We’re focusing all of our attention towards caring for our musicians in helping them weather the crisis.”
 
The Musical Collective performs over 1,500 concerts at Preservation Hall, serves over 30,000 students through numerous education and community engagement activities and performs globally at major music festivals, theatres and performing arts centers throughout the year.

None of what Preservation Hall does is possible without its Musical Collective and community. To learn more or to donate, please visit the Preservation Hall Foundation website: https://www.preshallfoundation.org/legacy-program-emergency-fund.