This album is vol. 2, “Now,” of a two-volume set of the Easy Riders Jazz Band, “Then” and “Now,” on the Jazz Crusade label. (“Then” – vol.1 – is on JCCD3037.) The band personnel on vol. 1 was that of the 1965/66 band, and the late Big Bill Bissonnette (as he liked to be called) tried a reunion of sorts of that group for vol. 2 in 1998. Two of the original line-up were deceased by 1998 and were replaced by Russell and Mark, and McCarthy, who was not enjoying the best of health, was replaced on most tracks by Hyman.
Bissonnette, as many traditional jazz fans know, was dedicated to the preservation of New Orleans-style jazz, and three of his projects toward that end were first the formation in Connecticut of the Easy Riders Jazz Band in the early 1960s and second the creation of the record label Jazz Crusade to record local groups and musicians. After a period of inactivity of some fifteen years during the 1970s and 1980s, Bissonnette resumed his musical ventures and the third project was setting down in 1990 his record of the 1960s revival of traditional jazz in the book The Jazz Crusade: The Inside Story of the Great New Orleans Jazz Revival of the 1960’s (the book’s publishing date was given as 1992) and beginning to play again.
In addition he arranged tours and recordings with New Orleans jazz veterans, most of whom he brought up from New Orleans. He ass
