Former Dutchess County resident Sally Newhart is the author of “The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, More Than A Century of A New Orleans Icon,” published in 2013 by The History Press and available at Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck. Raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Newhart moved to Dutchess County in 1974, where she started a successful slipcover business, married and raised a daughter. She relocated to New Orleans in 2006 in pursuit of its music and its unique cultural experiences.
Q How did you start writing?
A I have been reading or writing something my entire life. Journals and character studies seem to make up the biggest part of my files. The thriller I started writing in 1986 was rejected 43 times, so I think I’ve gotten that out of my system. I’ve always been interested in history, as told by someone who is able to make it more about the humans involved and not so much about dates or trying to support a theory. When the economy tanked, and the slipcover business slowed down, I saw it as an opportunity to use my free time to write.
Q How did you come to write the book?
A I was friends with Bob French, radio personality, local character and leader of the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, for a few years before I moved to Louisiana. He was a dear and irreplaceable family friend who my daughter called Uncle Bob. His family is one of the musical treasures of New Orleans going back at least 4 documented generations. His grandchildren already playing music. In the summer of 2009 I offered to write the family’s history and he agreed. Two months later he asked if I would, instead, write about his band which would be celebrating their 100th anniversary in 2010. I told him, “Sure, we’ll have it ready for Jazz Fest”. I meant 2010, but it IS ready for Jazz Fest this year. Bob passed before the book was published, but he did see the final manuscript.
Q What was the writing process like?
A I started the process by combing the internet and expanding my searches to cover musicians, venues and anything else that would lead me to more information about the people and times involved. Some of what I found was factual. I recorded interviews with Bob, where I would ask one question and he would fill a three-hour tape with stories and interruptions to field phone calls, schedule gigs, berate friends and foes alike, and discuss the chances for the Saints in the coming season. I talked to members of the band, past and present and spent months at the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University where Dr. Bruce Raeburn and Lynn Abbott encouraged and guided me through an immense collection of jazz information. I had the pleasure of reading and listening to oral interviews from the mid 1950s made by musicians who were in then in their 60s and 70s.
Q Can you talk about some of the things that surprised or inspired you as you were working?
A The more I researched, the more I wanted to know. New Orleans is a city that celebrates tradition. The present-day Jazz Funeral, which is now promoted as a must-see by the tourist bureau, started as a benefit for citizens that joined one of the local benevolent associations, an early form of an HMO. Your dues got you medical coverage and when you died, you were entitled to a “funeral with music.” The benevolent associations kept the local musicians employed during all the plagues and small pox outbreaks and enabled musicians’ families to lead a very middle class life. By the end of my research I felt that I had seen the entire history of jazz play out in the span of this band’s existence. The hardest fact to accept is that so many people I’d love to meet have been dead for decades.
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