Roger Lewis’ mother wanted him to learn the piano and accompany the church choir. Instead, he shaped toy saxophones out of newspaper.
“I had a bunch of different kinds,” he said. “Big ones, little ones, you know. And I’ll be in the backyard going, ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.’”
Nearly seven decades later, the Grammy winner and his Dirty Dozen Brass Band will play the 21st Scranton Jazz Festival on Aug. 8. The Aug. 7-9 festival also features Grammy Award-winning bassist Ron Carter playing with local musicians.
Other festival events are free for customers of restaurants and bars or completely free.
Legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter performs at the 21st annual Scranton Jazz Festival on Sunday, Aug. 9 at the Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple. (COURTESY OF SCRANTON JAZZ FESTIVAL)
When Lewis did get a saxophone, he took it apart to see how it worked. “I put it back together, but I had a couple of pieces left over,” he said. “So, I figured out how to put it back together.”
Lewis dropped the piano. At the time, he didn’t realize its importance. “I should have kept the piano up,” he said. “One of the reasons why I probably didn’t keep it up was because we didn’t have a piano at the house.”
He was already a veteran performer when he co-founded the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in 1977, a reference to a New Orleans benevolent association called the Dirty Dozen Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
Lewis doesn’t know for certain if he has played in Scranton before; at one point he was doing 300 shows a year and will soon turn 85.
That adds up to too much music to single out favorite genres, compositions or co-stars. “If it’s gospel, avant-garde, bebop, swing, pop, you know, all these different titles that people put on the music, I just like music,” Lewis said.
Scranton audiences can expect a large sampling and may have the chance to dance on stage, he said.
“We got music for your mind, your body and soul. We cover it all,” Lewis said.
Hosting the Dirty Dozen Brass Band one night and Carter another brings living musical history to Scranton during the semiquincentennial, said festival artistic director Marko Marcinko.
“In that 250 years, the greatest art form that we gave to the world, of course, is the art form of jazz. It’s our classical music,” Marcinko said. “So, having a representation of the roots of that music, by inviting the Dirty Dozen Brass Band to come up from New Orleans and perform at the Scranton Jazz Festival, is going to be just an awesome thing for us.”
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band performs at the Theater at North, 1539 N. Main Ave., on Saturday, Aug. 8, at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $44.80.
The other headline event pairs local musicians with Carter, the bassist named as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 1998. He was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet from 1963 to 1968. He set a Guinness World Record for recording more than 2,200 albums, including albums with Lena Horne, Bill Evans, B.B. King and Aretha Franklin.
Carter performs with the Emmy-nominated Scranton Jazz Festival Big Band on Sunday, Aug. 9, at the Scranton Cultural Center, 420 N. Washington Ave. The Pennsylvania Jazz Institute at Misericordia University Student Ensemble will perform at 6 followed by Carter and the Big Band at 6:45 p.m. Tickets start at $38.
Marcinko directs the Scranton Jazz Festival Big Band and is a musician. “It’s going to be absolutely incredible, and the band is super, super stoked, very excited that we’re going to have Ron Carter performing with us,” he said.
Musicians will be playing in bars, restaurants and other venues all three days of the festival.
See scrantonjazzfestival.org for schedules and concert tickets.
If you go
What: The Scranton Jazz Festival includes dozens of performances, headlined by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band on Aug. 8 and Ron Carter on Aug. 9.
Where: Spots throughout downtown Scranton.
When: Aug. 7-9.
Tickets: scrantonjazzfestival.org