“Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” (PDF) from the Delfeayo Marsalis album, Kalamazoo

As the final encore to their performance at Kalamazoo’s Western Michigan University, Delfeayo and Ellis Marsalis sent the audience home with their version of the dreamy ballad “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans,” a modern standard that has beared extra weight since the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. Originally written for Hollywood by New York City composers Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter, in what jazz historian Ted Gioia described as “a Disneyland take on the birthplace of jazz,” the song tends to resurface with every jazz revival because those who do know what it means understand the Native, African, and Southern traditions upon which a “wonderful” and “magical” world was built.

In his attempt to bridge the early and modern traditions of New Orleans jazz, Delfeayo Marsalis approached “Do You Know What It Means” with the intellectualism of bebop by utilizing major-sevenths, altered dominants, and the shifting tonality during the song’s bridge to reveal the depth and complexity of African-American traditions for The Last Southern Gentlemen tour.

Here is a YouTube video of Delfeayo Marsalis explaining the variety of jazz traditions on Frenchmen Street:

Recommended reading: The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire by Ted Gioia. Published by Oxford University Press.