Kidd Jordan composed this work for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band prior to their first European appearance in 1982, Jordan also performed with the band.
Edward "Kidd" Jordan is an American jazz saxophonist and music educator from New Orleans, Louisiana. After completing a music degree at Southern University in Baton Rouge, he relocated to New Orleans. He also taught at Southern University in New Orleans from 1974 to 2006. While in high school, Jordan began performing arrangements for three or four saxophones with older musicians and immersed himself in the music of Charlie Parker. Jordan learned Parker's music and solos by ear. He credits Illinois Jacquet with first giving him the idea of playing free improvisation and was profoundly affected by the free jazz of Ornette Coleman. He originally planned to become a classical alto saxophonist, but when he moved to New Orleans he began playing frequent R&B gigs. Jordan described these gigs as being a part of the thing that I want to have most in my playing.” Jordan has performed and recorded with a wide selection of musicians in styles ranging from R&B to avant-garde jazz, including Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M., Ornette Coleman, Ellis Marsalis and Cannonball Adderley. In his performances and recordings his music is entirely improvised: "Everything you hear on my albums is improvised." he explains. "It's collective improvisation, but there are no tunes. I tried writing down ideas a long time ago but I don't do that anymore." The French Ministry of Culture bestowed upon him their highest artistic award for his impetus as a visionary educator and performer and made him a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985. Jordan taught Branford Marsalis while he was a teenager at the New Orleans Centre for Creative Arts. As an instructor of jazz studies at Southern University, Jordan encouraged his students to pursue new approaches to traditional musical forms. One of Jordan's students was trombonist Charles Joseph who would go on to co-found the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Second line parades are part of the cultural heritage of New Orleans. The main line or first line being the main section of the parade, while those that followed the band were called the second line. The second line's style of traditional dance, in which participants walk and sometimes twirl a parasol or handkerchief in the air, is called "second lining." It has been called "the quintessential New Orleans art form – a jazz funeral without a body."
