Hot from New Orleans

The most consistently popular jazz in the U.S. is played neither by the young men with beards nor by the aging heroes of early jazz mythology. Instead, it is pumped and pounded out by Dixieland outfits--Turk Murphy's Band, the Salt City Six, Bob Scobey's Frisco Band--which draw nostalgic fans to hear new crackling arrangements of old fancies. Last week the Dukes of Dixieland, slickest and most successful of latter-day Dixieland groups, were shaking the walls and the waiters at Manhattan's Roundtable.

The Dukes are headed by two brothers from New Orleans: Frank and Fred Assunto. Trumpeter Frank, 28, and Trombonist Fred, 30, learned to play from their father, a onetime high school music teacher and now a regular member of the seven-man band (trombone and banjo). Too young to hear original Dixieland, the brothers listened to the New Orleans greats on records, played on weekends (for $3 a night) in pickup combos, formed their first band while they were still in high school. Their recent success they owe chiefly,to records: Audio Fidelity has issued eleven fast-selling albums, all of them in stereophonic sound, which is ideally suited to the Dukes' brawling style. Are they ever tempted to play their Dixieland cool? "We don't go for that chamber stuff," says Frank. "It isn't jazz if it doesn't swing."

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