"We didn't have no time. It all happened so fast. After' Gilbey run out, I packed up my horn and put it behind the bandstand. Man, I was shakin' like this," he waved his hand in the air. "Pretty soon, Gilbey run back in the all with a shotgun, and I jumped head first out the window. Everybody scattered. Then he ments with that gun, pickin' 'em up started blowin' holes in the instru-and throwin' 'em on the ground. Slashed the drum heads with his knife. Man, he went good and crazy. Wrecked Bunk's cornet for good. Bunk never played no more until we made those records. Eveybody's instrument but mine was busted. And I have that clarinet case, yet."

Just then another friend of George's came in to see him, and I had to leave. I grabbed George's hand. "Take care of yourself, George."

"You, too, podner." That was the last time I ever spoke to George Lewis. He died of pneumonia three months later.

* * * * *

WHAT IS New Orleans jazz, anyway? What made it different? What made it great? Who were these old men? What priestcraft and sorcery had it worked on me and my counterparts overseas?

All over Europe, young men looked up wide-eyed after hearing a Bunk Johnson record, or a rare George Lewis concert, and said, "I can't be satisfied with listening to records. I must learn to make music like that myself. Some day I will go to New Orleans with my horn, and I will play with George Lewis, and Kid Thomas, and Percy Humphrey." Young foreigners flocked to this Mecca all through the sixties. Some gave up their careers, or postponed them, to spend years at a time soaking up the music and the culture which created it. I had a great advantage in living there. But in the whole city, I was the only young musician--white or black--who was interested in these men and their music, although a thousand Englishmen would have broken their necks to have that chance.

I think it says something about America that it has by-and-large ignored its greatest cultural endowments, or has discovered them second-and from Europe. It took the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to turn Americans on to the rhythm and blues that blacks had been making right under their noses. It took an Eric Clapton and a John Mayall to turn Americans on to B.B. King.

Europeans have been into New Orleans jazz for 15 years, now. Perhaps, one of these days, some young Americans will put aside their Janis Joplin, or their Velvet Underground, or their Dr. John the Night Tripper--just for a moment--and will listen to a Lewis record, or a Bunk record and say, "This is genuine. These men are saying something eternal, something tragic, something joyful, something real."

It probably won't happen. It's too genuine, and such things do not often catch the fancy of a fashion-conscious generation, a generation which rides on fads which Madison Avenue designs for them, a generation which grooves to the music of whatever group Columbia Records' promotion department spends the most money on each month. But sometimes, I get a feeling that it could be different. Maybe the people around here are real enough and human enough to grasp the significance of this music and the lives which created it. If they could just hear it, and learn about it.

* * * * *

IT WAS A cold January night. Three or four people were standing on the front porch of Blandin Funeral Home when I arrived.

I opened the door and saw maybe two hundred people crowded around, talking quietly to one another. Some were sitting on folding chairs, some were standing up in the back of the room. The hallway was jammed and two other rooms were full of people. Every musician I knew was in there: the old men, the young foreigners, women, children, black and white. There were brief smiles and handshakes and soft words. There were tears. There were cameras and floodlights, and reporters from magazines.

At the front of the room sat a handsome old black man in a mason's uniform. Behind him was a cloth-covered casket, surrounded by gay wreaths of flowers. One wreath was in the shape of a clarinet. Another was a mason's insignia. Above the casket was a stained-glass portrait of Jesus, lit from behind. I went up to the casket and looked down. There was a small black man inside it in a mason's uniform. it was George Lewis.

The next day, three brass bands and several thousand people turned out on a gray, rainy day to bid George Lewis farewell. The Eureka Brass Band was there, the Olympia, and a third brass band made up of the young musicians who were in town. The latter had come a long way to hear the music and see the city. They had come from Japan, Sweden, Connecticut, San Francisco, and England. They had gradually gotten better and better seats for the performance, and now they were themselves on stage, playing dirges for their fallen hero.

It was an unforgettable experience. Thousands made the long, slow march from the funeral home to the little white church, and then to the cemetery by the Mississippi River. There were dirges, and hymns, and muffled drums. They lowered the casket into a simple plot with a whitewashed concrete border. "G. Lewis" was painted on it in black letters. We played "The Old Rugged Cross" at graveside, then filed silently out of the cemetery.

One by one, the ranks of the old musicians are thinning out. Four musicians died last year. Slow Drag Pavageau died a week after George Lewis. Of the Lewis band that I heard in 1962, only two are still alive. Twenty or more have died since Preservation Hall opened. With each new death, it seems that the dirges played by the remaining old men are dirges for themselves. When they are gone--as they surely will be in ten years--the show will be over. There will be no one left to play at their funerals.

As we filed out of the cemetery I sensed that it was not only George Lewis that we were playing for, but also a tradition, a culture, and a great people. And so, when the drums picked up the tempo out in the street, and the second line shouted and began to dance, and the flame-painted umbrellas appeared, I played my loudest and gayest music