Ronell Johnson, a fixture at Preservation Hall, dies at 49

Ronell Johnson, the trombonist, sousaphonist, and vocalist who was a fixture with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for over two decades, died on June 14, 2026, of complications from a heart attack he had suffered in April. He was 49.

Born in Marrero, Louisiana, on the West Bank of New Orleans, Johnson grew up in a household saturated with music. He was the youngest of four brothers, all musicians, and his mother, a pianist, put instruments in their hands early. By age six he was playing trumpet; by ten, he had secretly taught himself trombone in a single weekend while an older brother was away, then went straight to church and played for the congregation. “I knew immediately that the trombone was for me,” he later said. The tuba followed at twelve, and he began playing it at gigs in short order.

His formal training began with the St. Augustine High School Marching 100, and continued with the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), where a classmate was Irvin Mayfield, and an occasional substitute teacher was a young Ben Jaffe, not yet knowing what that connection would mean. Johnson earned a B.A. in music from Southern University at New Orleans. Among his formative encounters was playing a parade at around age 14 and being invited onstage by Danny Barker, who gave him and Mayfield high praise.

In the mid-1990s, Johnson co-founded the Coolbone Brass Band with his brother Steven “Coolbone” Johnson, a family brass band that landed on the cover of OffBeat magazine in July 1997. Johnson joined the Preservation Hall orbit beginning around 2003, initially playing Sunday nights with the Olympia Brass Band before becoming a Hall regular on both trombone and tuba. In 2012, Ben Jaffe made it official: Johnson would be his replacement on tuba for the touring Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He also appeared on the band’s 2013 album That’s It! and traveled with them to Cuba and Haiti in 2015, experiences he described as transformative. In recent years he led Ronell Johnson’s NOLA Jazz Band at local venues.