Two Hours with ROGER LEWIS and His Music. Timeline for the expanded 'Spiritual as Music' Edit.
With 17 Tracks or musical Excerpts and 19 Tributes and/or Birthday Greetings
Nov 3 2025
Today the Two-Hours edit from MARYSE’s WWOZ Show celebrating ROGER LEWIS and his Music airs between 4:30 and 6:30 Central Time. The Show features greetings and tributes from GREGORY DAVIS, KIRK JOSEPH, KEVIN HARRIS, TRAVARI HUFF-BOONE, KAREN DOMINO WHITE, BENNY JONES, DONALD HARRISON JR., DELFEAYO MARSALIS, KEITH SPERA, JAN RAMSEY, NICK SPITZER, NICK HARRIS, DAVID FARRELL, MALIK IHSANN, NORAH JONES, HERMAN. LEBEAUX, DON VAPPIE, and LOUIS MICHOT.
17 Tracks also play in the Two Hours that will become part our ‘Spiritual as Music’ series. 12 are from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band from 1984 onward. Five are from Don Paul and Rivers Answser Moons (DPRAM) in 2024 or 2025 or from Roger’s 2022 album ALRIGHT! . The TIMELINE is below. Thank you, ROGER. Thank you, MARYSE. Thank you, CATHIE RUGGIERO for the photos and logistical support during the Show. Thanks to WWOZ for the broadcast, to DAVE ANKERS for suggesting this celebration, and to BETH ARROYO UTTERBACK for steering the Station into its current High Waters!
“I’m into that Spirit … Period!”
Two Hours with Roger Lewis, Hosted over New Orleans’ WWOZ
With music from Roger as leader, from 48 years with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and from Don Paul and Rivers Answer Moons (DPRAM) between 2022 and 2025
0:00 ROGER LEWIS speaks onmusic “being spiritual for him”
0:12 MARYSE PHILIPPE DEJEAN introduces the tribute to Roger for his 84th birthday AND his 67th year of “playing out” (The Dew Drop Inn, 1958)
1:01 “Little Things” with Roger on Piano and Saxophone from his 2022 début album ALRIGHT!
2:OO “I Know You New Orleans” EDDIE BO
2:52 Roger’s solo in “Shake, Rattle ’N Roll” with FATS DOMINO’S big Band at 1980 North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands
3:18 Maryse gives further introduction Roger and his decades with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band
4:48 The DDBB and their 1984 version of “Bongo Beep” from 1984
6:07 MD on KEITH SPERA in OffBeat’s documentary by NOE PIERRE DUGUY
6:32 Keith on the DDBB as Brass Band equivalent to Duke Ellington
7:00 DDBB “My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now” excerpt
9:19 JAN RAMSEY’s tribute to Roger
10:17 MD with thanks to DAVE ANKERS and BETH ARROYO UTTERBACK of WWOZ and with noting of Tracks that feature Roger charting at #1 in September 2025
11:49 “Glory Glory Glory Is For Us All” by DPRAM (Don Paul and Rivers Answer Moons) with guest singer ERICA FALLS.
12:42 Roger is welcomed on-air along with DON PAUL. Both express pleasure. Roger talks about how the early Dirty Dozen Brass Bands “sped up the tempo” and brought diverse kinds of Jazz into Brass Band music.
17:10 Going back to Fats Domino’s band at the 1980 North Sea Jazz Festival with FREDERICK KEMP’s solo on “Jambalaya”
18:46 Roger on his best friend, “Kemp”
20:31 LEE ALLEN’s solo on “Honey”
21:37 Roger on Lee Allen and Herbert Hardesty, Smokey Johnson, and more from “the Julliard” that he experienced with Fats Domino’s Band.
23:13 Roger’s solo on “Shake, Rattle And Roll”
25:12 Roger on how Fats “gave him that solo” … and let him— “Chrome-Dome with the Big Horn”—play 10 or more Choruses … Choruses that Fats might not end when he got back on Stage
27:32 Birthday greetings and congratulations from Karen Domino White
28:19 Roger on Karen
28:47 Benny Jones greets Roger
29:56 Much more of “Bongo Beep” from the DDBB
31:08 Roger on “Bongo Beep” coming to the DDBB through Gregory Davis and Roger on Kirk Joseph’s key role in “speeding up tempos” for Second-Lines and hence creating “fancy footwork”
32:44 Kevin Harris, co-founder of the DDBB, greets his “very good friend”, Roger
33:30 Roger on being “so tight” with Kevin as a player and person
35:06 “Bongo Beep” second half, featuring Kevin’s tenor saxophone
36:29 Benny Jones again—on Roger bringing “a good flavor” to the current Treme Brass Band
36:39 “My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now” opening
37:35. Roger: “Jenell Marshall! The drummers in that first Band! Those cats could just play!”
39:33 Donald Harrison Jr. on the DDBB forging “a new sound for Brass Band music” and welcoming him to play with them at the Glass House and Roger being “Baritone at the top of the League”
40:29 Roger on Donald being “such a great player” with so many “ideas”
41:26 Delfeayo Marsalis on Roger Lewis’ practicing three hours a day, over four months, for the first Uptown Jazz Orchestra concert in December 2006. “I have the utmost respect for Roger Lewis and his dedication to music.”
42:34 Roger: “Man, playing in that Uptown Jazz Orchestra was like the epitomy of my musical journey.”
43:22 Gregory Davis, also co-founder of the DDBB, on his “brother in music and life … needing only 16 more years to be celebrating 100 … Love you, brother.”
44:03 Roger: “This is blowing my mind. People talking this way about me … I’m speechless.”
44:27 “Blue Monk” from the DDBB’S 1984 album My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now
46:44 Roger on Charles Joseph as Trombone in this Track. Charles and Kirk are the sons of “Waldron (Frog) Joseph who played with everyone in the business”. The DDBB brought “Blue Monk”, too, into New Orleans’ Second-Lines.
48:30 “Voodoo” from the DDBB’s first album for Columbia Records, 1989’s Voodoo
52:29 Roger on playing Baritone and Soprano Saxophones on this Track.
53:40 Nick Spitzer of American Routes on the DDBB’s making old songs sound modern, while their new songs were rooted in tradition.
54:57 Roger speaks again of having his “mind blown” by how “people are talking about” him.
55:34 Malik Ihsann of WWOZ’s former show Soul Serenade. “Thank you for your contrbutions to New Orleans’ music and culture, brother.”
55:58 Roger: “Thank you very much. I appreciate that.”
56:09 “Lost Souls Of Southern Louisiana” from the DDBB’s 1991 album What’cha Gonna Do With The Rest Of Your Life?
59:58 Roger: “Oh, that’s a beautiful piece of music.” Gregory Davis composition. Dance-group performed it with the DDBB on tour then.
61:06. Delfeayo Marsalis on teaching “Snowball” to students and calling Roger so that the “Bari sax player ,,,, could hear how it’s actually supposed to sound.”
61:57 “Snowball” from the DDBB’s 1990 album New Orleans.
64:41 Nick Harris, Executive Director of Dillard University’s Community Relations, thanks Roger for preserving New Orleans’ music and culture … so that Dillard is now starting its Jazz Studies program.
65:17 Roger: “Thank you very much. I appreciate it…. On “Snowball” that was Efrem Pierre Townes, Hot-Dog we used to call him, on the trumpet-solo.” Efrem joined the DDBB before “My Feet […]” at age “15 or 16” and “pretty much grew up with the band.”
66:07 “Jungle Blues” from the DDBB’s 1993 album Jelly.
68:48 ROGER talks about Jelly Roll Morton
69:34 WWOZ PSA for donating blood through New Orleans Blood Center
70:11 Donna Poniatowski Sims on the DDBB rehearsing for their 1999 album Buck Jump at her and her husband CHARLIE’S club Donna’s Bar & Grill. About Roger: “One incredible musician … When he got going, clicking on that mouthpiece, nobody could sound like him.” The “epitomy” of New Orleans’ wealth of wonderful musicians
70:52 Roger and Maryse on how “wonderful” Monday nights at Donna’s were for musicians and audiences over many years.
72:34 “Unclean Waters” by Kevin Harris from the DDBB’s 1999 album Buck Jump
78:29 WWOZ PSA on New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic now in partnership with Crescent Care for culture-bearers’ “regardless of insurance-status.”
78:45 Roger tries to determine which two of three Trombone Players for the DDBB around 1999—KEITH “WOLF” ANDERSON or TREVERT “PEANUT” ANDREWS or BIG SAM WILLIAMS—played on “Unclean Waters” MARYSE and try to find KIRK JOSEPH and DAVID FARRELL among our pre-recorded file of birthday-greetings
80:00 KIRK JOSEPH on his “big brother”, Roger.
80:41 Roger on Kirk, his “partner” in “burning midnight-oil” of practicing, the same age as his oldest son, and in “pulling each other’s chain”
81:23 DAVID FARRELL is happy to call Roger—who “never phones it in”—for whom and the DDBB he’s engineered five records—his friend
81:59 Roger on David getting the sound of the Baritone Saxophone “right” and having “six or seven of those little things” (Grammies) in his studio
82:51 NORAH JONES on her being brought by producer CRAIG STREET to record with the DDBB for the Band’s 2002 album Medicated Magic … and being “pushed by one of the guys” to “feel the pain” in IRMA THOMAS’ 1963 hit, written by ALLEN TOUSSAINT, “Ruler Of My Heart”.
83:34 “Ruler Of My Heart” by Norah and the DDBB
85:33 Roger on wanting Norah to feel the song “even more”—“ ‘Brother of my soul’—that’s deep!”—and on his working with Irma on the 1960s “Chitlin’ Circuit” of the Deep South and then in 1970s’ California.
88:09 “What’s Goin’ On” from the DDBB’s 2006 What’s Goin’ On?
90:50 Roger on trombonist Revert Andrews’ “making that song his own”
91:51 “Use Your Brain” by Roger from 1991 as played by the DDBB on their 2017 NPR “Tiny Desk Concert’
93:42 Roger: Charles Joseph “came up with the title” for Wha’cha Gonna Do With The Rest Of Your Life, the 1991 DDBB album that includes “Use Your Brain”. Full title adds: “To make it right!”—“That’s deep,” Roger says.
95:18 DDBB 2023 live in Buffalo, New York with “Talk About Do It”!
97:38 “Almost out of town” … More LAUGHTER in Live Radio…. Introducing TRAVARI HUFF-BOONE of the current DDBB—“a fantastic young musician,” Roger says, “very serious” as a players and “a very nice fellow”
98:38 Travari on Roger and the inspiration he draws from Roger’s “hauling around that big old Baritone Saxophone” for the 5:00 a.m. Flights—and from Roger’s general energy and watchword of “You got to keep moving!”
100:35 Many THANKS. Thanks in particular to CATHIE RUGGIERO for help in the Control-Room. Thanks by Don to HERMAN LEBEAUX, DON VAPPIE, and LOUIS MICHOT for greetings that running-out-of-time precluded from play over WWOZ this day. Thanks by Roger to all those people “who said such wonderful things about me. It was mind-blowing.”
101:36 DELFEAYO: “Roger Lewis embodies New Orleans. One night after a gig guy tells me … Roger Lewis was the only one look like nothing else he could possibly do was play that Saxophone.
101:50 LAUGHTER and “Delf” as (Roger) “alright, a cool dude.”
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SUPPLEMENT to the LIVE SHOW
102:06 DP on coming back in the edited Show’s last 17 or so minutes to “where we started”: to Roger’s “Spirit”
102:45 “Little Things” from Roger’s 2022 album ALRIGHT!, Instrumental whole, with Roger on Piano and Saxophone
106:10 Don on Roger often saying that he just wants to make “beautful music”. “Bobee (What A Spirit Walks That Way!)” is another track from ALRIGHT!. With HERLIN RILEY’s opening drum-riff and accompanying voice and Kirk’s bass-line all coming out of “the love that informed that session” in August 2021.
106:40 Opening minute of “Bobee (What A Spirit Walks That Way”, also recorded on Aug 1 2021 at RICK G. NELSON’s Marigny Studio.
107:42 MARYSE on what an “inspired” Track. And: Not this, but “That way” (107:58), and more laughter
108:03 Closing 35 seconds of “Bobee […]”
108:39 Birthday-greetings and praise from HERMAN LEBEAUX and DON VAPPIE
110:16 Roger, again: “Music to me is a spiritual thing. I’m trying to make a connection a Power more greater than you or I … Period!”
110:24 “My Mother’s Spirit Speaks To Me, Whispering Of Eternity”with Don Vappie, Kirk Joseph, and Roger Lewis, in the album LOUISIANA STORIES, closing 75 seconds
111:57 Maryse on this “example” of Roger’s expressiveness, soulfulness, musicality and “tapping into the Spirit.”
112:14 LOUIS MICHOT on “one of the most amazing musical experiences of my life…. I just hope to be as active and collaborative as he [Roger] is at his age.
113:11 Opening 1:15 of “Our Trains Keep A-Comin’”, the second-to-last Track of the album and stage-show LOUISIANA STORIES with Roger, André and Louis Michot, Kirk Joseph, Alexey Marti, Don Vappie, and Don Paul.
114:27 Introducing the “last three and a half minutes or so” of the whole DPRAM, Herman LeBeaux included, performing ‘Marsha’s’ in the New Orleans Jazz Museum’s Mint Theater on September 3, 2025.
114:57 Roger, once more, on Music as Spirit.
115:11 ‘Marsha’s’, closing 3:30
118:41 Maryse with final thanks to Roger and his music, to participants for the love that they put into their pieces, and to the ‘dear listener’ out there somewhere.
1:19:34 En
Photos by CATHIE RUGGIERO at WWOZ on October 13, 2025.