The Shotgun Jazz Band is the brainchild of bandleader and trumpeter Marla Dixon, one of Frenchmen Street's most commanding voices. WWOZ calls the band one of the most in-demand, exciting traditional jazz bands to emerge in recent years. Their ethos is simple: New Orleans traditional jazz is party music, made to get dancers dancing, feet stomping, and toes tapping. The repertoire stretches from deep traditional cuts like Jelly Roll Morton's "I Hate a Man Like You" to Randy Newman's "Guilty," and their playing moves from street-parade fire to sweet dancehall swing.
The lineup has been an all-star cast of the trad scene: banjoist John Dixon, bassist Twerk Thompson, pianist David Boeddinghaus, trombonist Charlie Halloran, clarinetist and saxophonist James Evans, clarinetist Tom Fischer, and trumpeter Ben Polcer. Dixon herself is, as clarinetist Orange Kellin put it, an uncommon and exuberant spirit whose trumpet playing and singing dominate any context she appears in — and she is just as much at home leading her own band as she is in the Shake 'Em Up Jazz Band.
The band keeps three weekly residencies — the Spotted Cat, Three Muses, and Maison Frenchmen — and has played the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and WWOZ's studio. They sell their catalog themselves on Bandcamp: eight releases from Algiers Strut (2011) through Live at The Dew Drop (2018), including Yearning (2014), which landed in OffBeat's Top 50 Louisiana albums of the year, and Steppin' On the Gas (2017), an 18-track set recorded at Luthjen's Dance Hall that WWOZ's spotlight traced back to the band's start as a Marla-and-John Dixon duo.
