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1974. By then I was sixteen; Danny had taught me how to deal with business, like “Make sure you get your contract straight, always count your money, make sure you get a deposit.”
    We played every weekend. We were the hottest thing on the second line circuit. All of the social and pleasure clubs wanted the Fairview band and then, later, the Hurricane Brass Band. We created such a stir that the Olympia Brass Band, in particular, were getting jealous of us. Danny had to stop being associated with us because of the flak from the union. A false rumor was generated by some musicians who were jealous of what was going on, and it made the scene difficult for Danny. We weren’t all in the union, but some of the older guys were. At that time the AFM [American Federation of Musicians] was very strict about nonunion labor, or “scabs,” as they called us .

    Hurricane Brass Band at George “Kid Sheik” Cola’s birthday party, September 1973 (Anthony Lacen, Kid Sheik, Daryl Adams, Leroy Jones, Greg Stafford) Photo by Bill Dickens
    Danny gave us the name [for the Hurricane Brass Band]. He said, “Y’all come down the street blowing like a hurricane.” That’s what gave us the name. I was the leader of the Fairview. Danny saw leadership qualities in me when I was thirteen years old. He saw I was a serious young man, and very focused, which is probably how I could practice four or five hours a day. So when the Hurricane band formed, I did the business for that, in conjunction with Gregg Stafford, who would cover for me if I wasn’t available .
    Gregg and I were very tight with that. We were the commanders of that group. We’re very different musically, but at that time we were playing brass band music. We had people like Henry Freeman, a saxophone player who had been on the road with Ray Charles. He was a professional, man. He had been up to Baton Rouge, played in that [Southern University] Jaguar band; he knew Alvin Batiste—I mean, he could play, you know. So he was like a big influence. Magic Johnson, he came with the Hurricane. We had people like that coming in. I learned a lot from them. I mean, they knew music, not only just playing, but from a theoretical standpoint as well. I kept my mouth shut and my ears open, because I was absorbing a lot of information from these people .
    Then Greg Davis and the Joseph brothers, Kirk and Charles, joined the Hurricane. Then Kevin Harris came along. So part of the core of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band were in the Hurricane at one time. We started to play original stuff, juxtaposing the funk and pop music with the traditional stuff. Later on, the Dirty Dozen took it to the next level .
    In 1976, I branched off from the brass band thing and started playing rhythm and blues. The Hurricane still did gigs up to 1980, but then I got so involved with Bourbon Street, and I had a music scholarship to Loyola. I went there for a semester and dropped out because I didn’t like the program and wanted to make some money. My parents were going through changes. They eventually busted up when I was nineteen, so I wanted to get out of the house. So I got my first jazz gig in the Quarter at the age of twenty at the Maison Bourbon in 1978. It was Dixieland and swing .
    The job I took over was Jabbo Smith’s spot. The One Mo’ Time show came out, and Jabbo went up to New York with the show. That opened up the gig. Walter Payton was on bass with us, Joe Lambert on drums. That’s when I started singing. Nobody else in the band sang. I started learning two or three tunes a week, including singing and scatting. I used to scat a lot, from listening to Jabbo and Thomas Jefferson .
    It was great fun. It was exciting. It was just nice to be playing music. At the end of the week, you would be paid cash money, didn’t have to pay taxes or nothing. I moved into the Quarter and got an apartment. There was music everywhere, and all the clubs had jazz. I