For anyone waiting to hear the story of Ben Jaffe, director of Preservation Hall, apologies but you’ll need to wait a bit longer.
Ben and I got started on a fantastic interview but technology was not cooperating. He was on his cell phone at a French Quarter theater, preparing to shoot video of a Terence Blanchard show the next night, and his phone kept dropping the call. I think the theater is probably built like a bomb shelter and wouldn’t let the signal through. Since he had much work to do and needed to stay on site, we had to postpone the finish of the conversation.
I’ve been trying to reconnect, and Ben e-mailed today that the band just landed in Kuala Lumpur and we’ll need to wait until he’s home in September. If his cell gave him grief doing an interview down the block from Preservation Hall, I think it’s a fair deal not to try it from Malaysia. Here’s their tour schedule, in case you’re curious.

In the meantime, here’s a snippet of the Spike TV documentary Ben has been working on with Ron Rona — aka Ronnie Numbers of New Orleans Bingo fame.