Hot 8 Brass Band

Formed: New Orleans, 1995 — Grammy-nominated, Tru Thoughts recording artists

Formed in 1995 from the fusion of two neighborhood bands — the Looney Tunes and the High Steppers — the Hot 8 Brass Band welds traditional New Orleans brass to hip-hop, funk, and bounce. The UK label Tru Thoughts’ first American signing, the band earned a Grammy nomination for The Life & Times Of... and was featured on Jon Batiste’s We Are, which won Album of the Year at the 64th Grammy Awards.

Never heard the Hot 8 before?

🎺 Signature

Their globe-trotting “Sexual Healing” cover

🏆 Grammys

Nominated 2013 · Album of the Year win 2022 (with Jon Batiste)

🎷 Home Turf

Sunday nights at Howlin’ Wolf · Jazz Fest

Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke and HBO’s Treme both put the Hot 8 on screen — a band that has played its own remarkable story back to the world.

Why We Love Hot 8 Brass Band

The Hot 8 are the sound of a tradition refusing to sit still. They can roll down the street behind a social aid and pleasure club like the old-line bands, then flip a Snoop Dogg or Joy Division tune into a brass-band anthem without breaking stride. They have survived Hurricane Katrina and the devastating loss of bandmates and kept playing — because in New Orleans, the band plays on. Few groups carry the city’s past and future in one set the way the Hot 8 does: second-line roots, hip-hop lungs, and a groove that has filled rooms from the Howlin’ Wolf to the Roundhouse in London.

Biography

Still on the Spot

The Hot 8 Brass Band was formed in 1995 by sousaphonist Bennie Pete, trombonist Jerome Jones, and bass drummer Harry Cook, fusing two bands — the Looney Tunes Brass Band and the High Steppers Brass Band — into one. Rooted in Uptown New Orleans, they came up the traditional way: Sunday second-line parades with the social aid and pleasure clubs, jazz funerals, the Zulu parade, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. But their sound reached beyond tradition from the start, folding hip-hop, funk, and bounce into the brass-band blast.

In 2004 the British DJ and producer Quantic fell for their cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and introduced the band to his label, Tru Thoughts — which signed them in 2007 as its first American act and released their debut, Rock with the Hot 8. In 2006 Spike Lee featured the band in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, and as NPR noted, “a new legion of fans caught onto the band’s mix of traditional marching music, hip hop, and R&B.”

“A new legion of fans caught onto the band’s mix of traditional marching music, hip hop, and R&B.”

— NPR, on the Hot 8 after When the Levees Broke

Triumph and tragedy have walked side by side for the Hot 8. The band lost members to violence and illness over the years — including trumpeter Jacob Johnson, trombonist Demond Dorsey, Joseph “Shotgun Joe” Williams, and percussionist Dinerral “Dick” Shavers — and trumpeter Terrell Batiste lost his legs in a 2006 car accident. They played on, starring as themselves in several episodes of HBO’s Treme. Their album The Life & Times Of... (2012) was nominated for Best Regional Roots Music Album at the 2013 Grammys, and they were featured on Jon Batiste’s We Are, which won Album of the Year at the 64th Grammy Awards in 2022.

Today the Hot 8 remain international ambassadors for the Crescent City: they have toured Japan, Brazil, Morocco, and across Europe, collaborated with the Blind Boys of Alabama, Basement Jaxx, Mos Def, and Mary J. Blige, and backed Lauryn Hill on tour as her horn section. At home you’ll find them holding down Sunday nights at the Howlin’ Wolf — and on record with On the Spot (2017), a 20-year celebration, and the Take Cover EP (2019), which turns Joy Division, Michael Jackson, George Benson, and the Jacksons into full-throated brass anthems.