The Dirty Dozen (on this occasion it was a sextet, but the name comes from the New Orleans club where the band was born) has been locking into a groove and ecstatically staying there since 1977, and what space there was to gyrate around in the Jazz Cafe was used to the full for this gig.
Brass bands combining funk backbeats, old New Orleans instrumentation and harmonies and a mixture of jazz, pop, R&B, gospel and rock are not so uncommon now, but the Dirty Dozen pioneered this particular eclecticism. The city of New Orleans even has an official Dirty Dozen Brass Band Day. They hurl styles together with cavalier optimism, play with relentless bravura, and have zero patience for navel-gazing of any sort.
A bandana-clad Julius McKee arrived first and wrapped the colossal sousaphone - an instrument that looks like a factory ventilation system - around himself. McKee is the cornerstone of the Dirty Dozen, sustaining fluid lines on the instrument as flexibly as an electric bassist. Guitarist James McLean dug into an R&B chordal groove over exhilaratingly tight percussion, and after that piece of tantalising scene-setting, baritone saxophonist Roger Lewis - a founding member of the band - meandered on to play gruff and rugged jazzy horn lines on it. Then came trumpeters Gregory Davis and Efram Towns, to rapturous whoops.
From then in the band barely drew breath. Early on, the sound at times resembled one of Miles Davis's 1980s fusion groups rather than a New Orleans traditional band, particularly in the clipped and brittle improvisations of the trumpeters. Ain't Nothin' But a Party was played at breakneck pace, like a 1970s Jazz Crusaders record at double speed. Davis kept his volume - and pitch - high, but Towns was often the more interesting with his more spacious constructions.
Santa Cruz, a fast, riffy piece with a Latin brass feel, produced an inventive, rock-infused guitar break from McLean, and a circular-breathing Davis sustained one note on the flugelhorn for several choruses, to ecstatic applause. A Michael Jackson-like piece emphasised how rock-solid the rhythmic side of the band is, and how exuberantly it splices pop materials with jazz improvising (Lewis was impressive, and almost Coltrane-like in his abstract soprano saxophone solos) and its illustrious New Orleans history. A party band that shows no sign of letting up.
