At one point in the early ’70s, Fats Domino’s band contained seven saxophonists, including the singer’s longtime collaborator Herbert Hardesty, pioneering rock ‘n’ roller Lee Allen and 30-year-old Roger Lewis.
“I listened to Fats Domino coming up, but playing with the guys who created that music, it was a whole ‘nother thing. He had some of the best musicians in the world, and he was a lover of saxophones,” says Lewis, now 74, who would graduate from Domino to form the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. “But I came up in New Orleans. I ain’t intimidated by nothing. I could be in bands with John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, and I wouldn’t be intimidated. You can only do what you can do.”
Lewis and trumpeter Gregory Davis are the only remaining founders of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which formed in 1977. The New Orleans band’s big idea was to add contemporary touches, including funk, bebop and a cover of the Jacksons’ “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground),” to a traditional jazz foundation. Lewis anchors the rhythm section with his baritone sax, as he did with Domino years earlier.
“When I went into Fats’ band, I was supposed to be the baritone player, and I didn’t have no baritone — I came in with a tenor. Then he came in one day and said, ‘What happened to the baritone?'” Lewis recalls, by phone from the car outside his New Orleans home, where he’s preparing to take his 68-year-old brother, who has dementia, to an assisted-living home. “Fats loved my playing. I raised the bass lines around his voice. I never stopped. I’d be playing with the rhythm section — that’s what I do with Dirty Dozen.”
Dirty Dozen performs 200 shows a year, playing a mixture of instrumental originals, contemporary covers and “Dirty Old Man,” which Lewis gets to sing. A typical concert might jump from the band’s “Tomorrow” and “Jook” to quotes from James Brown’s “Super Bad,” Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog.”
“We’re musicians, and musicians play music. We play anything, no matter what it is,” Lewis says. “It’s a matter of figuring it out — changes, what scales to play and rhythmically — in the style we want to play it in. Anything from Chopin to Muddy Waters. It’s a matter of sitting down, practicing and getting it all together.”
Lewis told the National Post he learned music by shaping newspapers into saxophones. His mother arranged 50-cent piano lessons so he could play in church; his father, a dockworker, bought a tenor sax while he was in junior high. “I forgot all about the piano — that was the dumbest thing I ever did. Later in life, I found out how valuable that instrument really is. Everybody who’s studying music should be able to play the piano,” he says. “If it wasn’t for my mother and father, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.”
At 12, Lewis landed a saxophone gig with a band at a tavern and made $47 in one night, according to the Post — more than his father made in a week. He became a full-time musician and began touring on the Chitlin’ Circuit, performing with Marvin Gaye, Big Joe Turner, the Impressions and many others. Early on, the Dirty Dozen performed upbeat versions of jazz standards, from Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” to Thelonious Monk’s “Blue Monk,” then hooked up with producer George Wein, who booked shows around the world. The band’s debut album, “My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now,” came out in 1984. A year after Hurricane Katrina, the band put out a version of Gaye’s protest classic “What’s Going On,” with rapping from Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Gang Starr’s Guru.
Lewis, like other members of the band, lost nearly everything after Katrina filled his New Orleans home with water — family photos, a DVD recording of his late mother renewing her wedding vows and some musical instruments. Lewis’ wife, pianist Mari Watanabe, lost thousands of rare Japanese novels and her great-grandmother’s piano with ivory keys. “That was heartbreaking,” Lewis recalls. “But I was able to recover some things.”
It didn’t take long for the band, like many in New Orleans, to shift from despair to anger. Gaye’s political 1971 classic was an obvious choice. “All this stuff is happening in the world that shouldn’t be happening, so: ‘What’s Going On,'” Lewis says, referring to the post-Katrina aftermath. “People stranded on their rooftops. I had a cousin stranded on top of his roof about three days. All kinds of things were happening during that flood. Things were happening in the Superdome that shouldn’t have been happening.”
Dirty Dozen hasn’t released an album since 2012’s “Twenty Dozen,” because it spends so much time on the road. For the band’s 40th anniversary in 2017, Lewis hopes to put out new music, but he won’t elaborate, saying with a laugh: “World’s best-kept secret.
“We’re musicians, so we always try to reinvent ourselves. A lot of other musicians like the way we do what we do, and they invite us to play on their CDs,” he adds, rattling off a list of past collaborators from Elvis Costello to Modest Mouse. “That keeps the music fresh and puts you in front of a new audience. It makes you challenge yourself.”
Steve Knopper is a freelancer.
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When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Prairie Center for the Arts, 201 Schaumburg Court, Schaumburg
Tickets: $38; 847-895-3600 or www.prairiecenter.org