IN THE SPRING of 1942, two jazz collectors followed up a rumor that a survivor of the legendary Buddy Bolden jazz band was living and working as a day laborer in the rice fields of rural Louisiana. They drove all the way across the country hoping just to see him, to speak to him, to learn what New Orleans jazz had been before the turn of the century, before the first World War, before the "dixieland" musicians and the arrangers of the swing era had diluted and transformed its raw power and beauty almost beyond recognition.

He was Bunk Johnson, an old man who had spent a lifetime playing his cornet in the rural south in and around New Orleans. He had never recorded, but among the old timers in New Orleans, he was remembered with great respect. The collectors finally located Bunk in New Iberia, Louisiana. He was slight and dark with snow white hair, well into his sixties by then. Did he play anymore? No, haven't touched a horn in ten years. Did he have a horn? Nope. My horn got wrecked the night Evan Thomas was murdered on the bandstand in 1932, and I haven't played since then. Could he play again? No teeth. No horn.

They bought him some teeth and a cornet, and threw together a band of unknown black jazzmen from New Orelans. In the fall, the old men gathered in a piano warehouse to make some home recordings because the professional studios in the city refused to record Negroes. When the crude recording machine was warmed up, Bunk stomped off the first number, "Make Me a Pallet on the Flood," and the "revival" of traditional jazz began.

When the recordings were released, they trickled into the hands of American collectors, and then overseas, to England, Germany, Scandanavia. Suddenly, collectors realized something that they had never dared to believe: There were black men living in New Orleans who had created and could still play unadulterated traditional jazz.

It was almost as if some anthropologist who had spent a lifetime studying cave drawings suddenly encountered a surviving Neanderthal. These men were playing the music which had developed out of 200 years of enslavement, out of a thousand years of African culture, out of Civil War marches, creole melodies, ragtime, blues. It had all meshed on the back streets of New Orleans around the turn of the century, and blossomed in the grand houses of Storyville, the city's legendary red-light district.

Until the discovery of the Bunk Johnson band, most jazz collectors assumed that New Orleans jazz had died when the red-light district was closed in 1917. They assumed that all the jazz musicians were out of work and either went north to Chicago or New York, or gave up music entirely. Many great musicians did go north--King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong. The New Orleans music they took with them began its metamorphosis in the 20's and 30's, evolving into swing and big band dance music, and later into bop and progressive jazz. Most collectors in the 40's thought that the traditional black jazz of New Orleans remained only on a few early discs as a faded chapter in the history of American music.

But when Bunk's, band was recorded in 1942, people realized that there was another half to the story. Many musicians stayed in the city after 1917, and continued playing the same pure style of jazz that had developed around the turn of the century. When Storyville closed up, the music went on as it always had--on the streets of the black sections, in the back yards, in the little churches, at parades, picnics, dances, funerals. The culture which produced these men and their music didn't change very much in those 50 years or so, and the music was still very much alive on those back streets.

Bunk was a symbol of the perseverence of that music and the culture which had engendered it. His career stretched all the way back to the 1890's when he had played with the famous Buddy Bolden band. Bunk had been the idol and teacher of many great New Orleans trumpet men, including Louis Armstrong. "They was all crazy behind old man Bunk's playing" he said himself in 1942. He had worked in every joint in Storyville, and played countless parades and funerals throughout the city. And now in the 40's, ten years after his "retirement" from music, he was discovered and marveled at by listeners all over the world. He lived only a few years to enjoy his comeback, but the recordings he made as an old man were so exciting that they inspired a tremendous revival of interest in the pure New Orleans music that was still available.

BUNK'S clarinetist, George Lewis, was to become the focus of that revival. When Bunk died in 1949, George Lewis took over the leadership of the band. The Lewis band, all previously unknown New Orleans veterans, became internationally famous during the next decade, and George Lewis was halted as the greatest living exponent of New Orleans style clarinet playing.

After playing in oblivion for the first 30 years of his career, George Lewis became so popular in Europe that the arrival of his band was sufficient to touch off riots. There were maybe a hundred European jazz bands trying to copy the Lewis sound. Even young men in Italy, Australia, and Japan were crowding around their record players, religiously copying all the Lewis imports they could get their hands on.

English teenagers mobbed him, trying to touch him, to see his face, to hear his voice. He played before packed concert halls, mesmerizing huge audiences with the simple, lyrical beauty of his horn, receiving wildly enthusiastic ovations at the end of each number. What was the magic of this frail little black man from the back streets of New Orleans? What was there in his music that spoke its message to the hearts of these Englishmen, Swedes, Danes, Germans, and Japanese as it had spoken to his own people for almost 50 years?

Six years ago, I wandered into Preservation Hall in the French Quarter of New Orleans on a night when George Lewis was playing. I was knocked out by his music. I didn't know what it all meant then; I didn't really know who those old men were, what their lives had been like, or what made their music so great. I only knew that it was great, and that Lewis' clarinet was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

I went back to the hall night after night. The Lewis band played there three nights a week at that time, and although they were all old men, I think they must have been playing close to their peaks.

THERE WERE OTHER great bands playing there, too. In 1961, someone had discovered that there was a whole city full of traditional jazzmen. Some were almost unknown; others had been forgotten, lost, or given up for dead. Some had never played for white audiences before. Some had led proud, full bands before the depression. Nearly all of them had played with the greats of New Orleans jazz in their youths--Armstrong, Edmund Hall, Johnny Dodds, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet. These were just fellow musicians to these old men. There were only a handful of active musicians when Preservation Hall opened its gates to French Quarter audiences. When it became successful, the few active professionals were joined by others who had put their instruments down long ago. Before long, they were all playing as if nothing had happened to their music or to their lives, though in some cases, it meant the return of white-haired old men to bands and friends they had left 30 years before. Some have since become internationally known: Billie and Dede Pierce, Sweet Emma the bell gal, the Kid Thomas band, and the Eureka Brass Band all rose from relative obscurity as a result of the Preservation Hall revival.

IT WAS SO EXCITING that I couldn't stand just to listen to it any longer. I had to do something more. I got the chance when someone gave me an old clarinet in 1963, and I went right to George Lewis with it.