The Dirty River Dixie Band is a traditional, New Orleans-style jazz band hailing from San Antonio, where the group was mentored by veteran cornetist Jim Cullum Jr. When the Texas sextet with the Louisiana sound toured the Northeast in June, it offered its audiences a jazz geography lesson with tunes such as “Jungle Nights in Harlem” and “East St. Louis Toodle-oo.
The northern performances included a wedding reception in Maine featuring vocalist Sarah Ulloa, and a high-profile Saturday-night showcase on June 22 at the KGB Bar’s Red Room speakeasy at 85 E. 4th St., in Manhattan. The tour concluded June 24, in Liverpool, N.Y., before a crowd of 400 at the Johnson Park amphitheater, as the traveling musicians performed material from their newest CD, Live & Krazy. The disc – which is being sold in both CD and vinyl formats– was recorded this past January at Jazz, TX.
The Dirty River group is managed by drummer, arranger, and vocalist Chris Alvarado, whose clearly articulated and well-phrased singing in Liverpool cultivated both “Honeysuckle Rose” and “La Vie en Rose.” They kicked off their first set with Alvarado vocalizing a vibrant “Dinah” before cornetist Kris Vargas took over to credibly recreate Pops’s famous opening cadenza on “West End Blues.”
Onstage, the band is fronted by Vargas and backed by trombonist Ian Anderson, clarinetist Nick B
