As we pulled up to the front of the little white wooden building--Blandin Funeral Home--we played another hymn, "Just a Little While to Stay Here." Then the crowd stood around waiting for them to bring the body out so the music could start again. Most of the musicians went over to a little bar room across the street for beer and shade from the sun. The heat was almost unbearable.

I followed Kid Sheik into the bar.

"Don't look like it's gonna rain rain today," said Sheik, laying his trumpet down on the bar. "So hot today, man. We sure could use a little rain."

"If it rain while we buryin' a man," Booker-T said seriously, "that mean they washin' away the man's sins. If it be a big sinner--rain like hell!"

"I wish we was buryin' you, then," Sheik grinned. "Man, we'd have us some rain!" The old man let out a shrill laugh. I didn't even know who we were burying that day.

NEW ORLEANS still has a good number of organization--"benevolent societies"--which give brass band funerals to their departed brothers. The Olmypia Brass Band is one of the last marching jazz bands remaining in the city. Most of its members are aging black jazzmen who have played in the city's back streets, dives, honky tonks, and dance halls since the early part of this century. The brass band tradition in New Orleans goes back further than the lives of these men. Funerals and parades just like this one had been going on long before the turn of the century, possibly even before the Civil War.

Perhaps Walt Whitman observed a black brass band funeral during his stay in New Orleans in 1847. These lines from "Song of Myself" capture--though perhaps by coincidence--the spirit of a jazz funeral:

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,

I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons . . .

I beat and pound for the dead

I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Loudest and gayest. Beat and pound for the dead. That is it! The New Orleans funeral has always been an occasion for rejoicing as well as sorrow, celebrating a good man's release from pain and toil, and his passing into a happier life. Even the titles of the spirituals they play express a bittersweet longing for the release: "Just a Little While to Stay Here," "My Life Will Be Sweeter Some Day," "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," "Bye and Bye, When the Morning Comes."

To the slave, death was a moment of peace, dignity, and freedom which could not be known in life. Sorrow in death was always tempered by a sense of relief. This great boisterous celebration of death could only have sprung from such conditions as black men faced in America. Why it took the particular form it did in 19th-century New Orleans--the jazz funeral--is impossible to answer precisely. Black men found horns and drums and created a great music--a music that would express a powerful, heartfelt message. It was the blues, ragtime, spirituals, marching music dancing music. They lived by it; they played by it; and when death came, they bade an orgasmic farewell with their loudest and gayest music. They would march soberly to the cemetery playing dirges and hymns, and returned with jazz, shouting, and dancing.

Who the man was didn't really matter. The crowds came for the music and excitement whether they knew him or not. There was a noisy tribute to this anonymous brother just as there had been for the great trumpeter "Papa" Celestin several years before. "I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons.

I GOT BACK over to the funeral home just in time. They were bringing the body out already. The casket was almost hidden under wreaths of flowers. As it passed by the band, we played "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," in dirge tempo. The crowd was silent as the mourners in black followed the casket. One heavy old woman with fleecy white hair was weeping into a handkerchief and singing out the words of the hymn in between sobs. Her rich voice wailed above the brass with a clear, poignant tone.