Music: 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...

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