Papa

Every Sunday in New Orleans, a crowd of jazz fans thread their way into a Bourbon Street gin mill called The Paddock. The lucky ones find seats close up at the bar, where the music is loudest, and with a deference equaling that of longhair purists, listen to an eight-piece band playing oldtime, home-town jazz. The leader of the band is a smiling, coal-black trumpet player named Oscar ("Papa") Celestin, 69 (or maybe 74), who has been playing the same kind of straight, hard jazz for more than 50 years.

As usual, at this week's performance, Papa Celestin was blowing Dixieland hot and strong. Sometimes it was St. Louis Blues. Other times it was Muskrat Ramble, When the Saints Go Marching In, High Society, or one of the other old standbys. The blues were played as blues, the marches as marches. The fans kept yelling for more.

In all his years of jazz, Papa Celestin has learned to play what his audiences like--"Loud," he says. That's not too hard, since that style makes him happy: "When I get warm and my lips are right, the music comes pouring out."

Papa has been pouring out music around New Orleans practically all his life, and is proud of it. During a summer concert not long ago, he stepped to the microphone to make his point: "Will all of you who danced to my music ten years ago please stand?" Most of the audience rose. Then Papa called for those who first danced to his music 20 years ago. Many stood. Across three, four and finally five decades, Papa carried his question. And even at the last, a few oldtimers stood. That kind of reminder took the edge off the fact that outside Louisiana, Papa Celestin is not well known at all.

Serious jazz fans have to admit that Papa has his limitations. He has plenty of talent, but he was never a Louis Armstrong, a King Oliver or even a Bunk Johnson. Those performers had jet flights of imagination as they improvised on their horns. Papa is a groundling, but for those who accept him as such, he remains a steady, sturdy pillar.

As one jazz fan put it: "There'll be better trumpet players. But they won't learn jazz as Oscar did, marching in parades and funerals. And they won't play jazz the way he plays it."

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