From his teenage years until his death, Bill Bissonnette (or “Big Bill Bissonnette,” as he liked to be known) was a staunch champion of traditional jazz, especially the variety known as New Orleans style, who “practiced what he preached,” becoming something of a “Renaissance man” in the process. He played drums and trombone; hosted a jazz radio program while in the army in San Antonio; later started his own jazz band, The Easy Riders; and founded a record label, Jazz Crusade.
In addition he stayed several times in New Orleans, during which occasions he took trombone lessons from Big Jim Robinson—from whom he undoubtedly borrowed the “Big” he affected—and later drum lessons from Sammy Penn, whom he named as his idol. So he was embarked on a crusade—to save traditional jazz and its early black practitioners from fading into oblivion and to acknowledge and aid those aging musicians he so admired, particularly those who did not migrate from New Orleans, to achieve some recognition and financial reward where possible.
In 1992 Bissonnette published his memoirs, titled unsurprisingly The Jazz Crusade. As part of that endeavor, the book included a CD titled The Best of Jazz Crusade, which was not given a Jazz Crusade catalog number, appearing only affixed inside the book’s back cover. The compilation disc featured many of the musicians that Bissonnette brought up fro
