Hundreds of visitors pack New Orleans’ Preservation Hall nightly to hear veteran musicians perform time-honored traditional jazz standards. The noisier (and more lascivious) attractions elsewhere in the city’s French Quarter have not been a major distraction for its audience for more than 40 years. But this trad temple faces a different challenge, as its recently launched independent record label is poised to compete in an entirely new marketplace.

Preservation Hall Recordings released its first batch of discs in January. The label revisited its history with the compilation The Best Of The Early Years. It’s also presenting its more recent musicians on Shake That Thing, which includes such local heroes as trumpeter Leroy Jones, and Preservation Hot 4 With Duke Dejan, which features a small band backing the late vocalist. Along with the music itself, the distinctive cardboard packaging is the disc conveys an attention to artistic detail that’s all too rare.

“As a consumer, I have all the same frustration that everybody has right now,” says Ben Jaffe, manager and bassist of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. “That you’re paying a lot of money for inferior product. I miss the days of owning LPs that were not just a piece of art musically, but the entire production was a piece of art.”

The Preservation Hall milieu has surrounded Jaffe since he was born. His father, Allan Jaffe, was a tuba player who helped establish the institution in the early 1960s. Allan and his wife, Sandra Jaffe, transformed the band from a local group of revivalists to an international touring operation. When Allan died in 1987, Ben stepped in to help Preservation Hall, “survive into our third and fourth decades.”

Part of this survival included recruiting musicians to replace the legendary players who were dying in the early 1990s, including clarinetist William James Humphrey. Jaffe says that since “there’s a common language that all New Orleans musicians speak to each other,” it was not too hard to find them. He also started discovering the recordings that his father left behind. Those tapes comprise part of the new releases.

“I never knew that there was this much material,” Jaffe says. “It was amazing to come back and find the master tapes, and find them in good condition. Every minute there’s another treasure.”

While Preservation Hall has always maintained a small label to self-produce its records, and a distribution deal with Sony, Jaffe says he felt the time was right to step up its own operations. Steve DeBro (formerly of Atlantic) and Albert Lee (formerly of Nonesuch) are also involved with the New Orleans company.

But this is not an optimal time to dive into a slumping record business. The big question at this juncture is does a label adhering to early jazz stand much of a chance? One observer who believes it does is Scott Aiges, the director of music business development for the City of New Orleans (he’s also a prominent music critic in Louisiana). Aiges, whose position is to create jobs through developing his city’s music scene, believes that Preservation Hall Recording has already covered the essential bases for a start-up operation in any industry.

“They’ve got undeniably fantastic product and they know exactly where they live in the universe,” Aiges says. “They know who their audience is because they have a spot where people come from far and wide and wrap around the block every night of the week. But they also go and find their audience. They have a good distribution network and public relations.”

Jaffe says his other aspiration is for the label to become, “The farm team to help musicians get the recognition and acknowledgement they need to take that step from being an incredible local act.” He and Aiges agree that while their city is rich in talented performers, there needs to be a stronger network of producers, agents and publicists in New Orleans. While Preservation Hall Recordings will set out to change this situation, Jaffe knows that it could be a long struggle.

“We’re isolated in many ways from the industry,” Jaffe says. “The industry is centered in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, and New Orleans is this little guy in the middle of a swamp.”

As Jaffe discusses these issues during the band’s tour in Pennsylvania, he says he just witnessed one reason why he believes that Preservation Hall’s music will not have much trouble building its audience.

“We just got back from playing for a middle school and the principal told me, ‘I’ve been here for 30 years and I’ve never seen these kids get this excited about anything we’ve done here.” –Aaron Cohen

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