Beginning Aug. 16, 2024, Ruffins will be broadcasting each and every Friday evening at 5 p.m. PST from Kermit’s Mother in Law Law Lounge in the heart of the Treme.
By Matt Silver
When the time came to find a new host for “Jazz Across America: New Orleans” (Fridays, 5 to 7 p.m. PST), Ken Poston, general manager of San Diego’s KSDS Jazz 88.3 FM, wanted not just to get someone good; he wanted to get someone perfect. Someone who wears the soul, the traditions, and the aspirations of New Orleans, jazz’s foundational city, on his richly designed, elegantly tailored sleeves.
Though New Orleans continues to be a city steeped in talent and musical pedigree, it also remains a place where the concept of musician-as-performer is venerated, considered part of a sacred, often unspoken but always understood covenant between artist and audience. When Poston looked at the decision before him through that lens, he knew that out of everyone he could ask, there was really only one he felt he had to: Kermit Ruffins.
Kermit Ruffins is not just a celebrated trumpeter and vocalist but a true performer in keeping with the tradition of the great New Orleans bandleaders. Photo by Braden Piper.
“Kermit Ruffins personifies New Orleans and the New Orleans Jazz tradition. He’s representative of the past, present, and future all rolled into one, and we are extremely proud to have him part of the KSDS on-air staff.”
Ruffins, a polymath trumpeter, vocalist, and composer, is, perhaps above all, “...an unabashed entertainer,” as the New York Times once described him. Growing up busking for tips in the French Quarter, Ruffins idolized and diligently studied the masters of the New Orleans idiom like Cab Calloway, Louie Prima, and, especially, Louis Armstrong. Before he finished high school, Kermit had already co-founded a group — the Rebirth Brass Band — that would effectively forge the template for contemporary New Orleans brass bands by foregrounding cherished second line traditions yet simultaneously infusing them with elements of funk, jazz (modern bebop, hard-bop, and post-bop), soul, and even hip-hop.
”Possessed of a bright, shining trumpet tone and warm, relaxed vocal style, Ruffins recalls Louis Armstrong in personality and presentation, but moreover represents the friendly good-times vibe of the Big Easy,” writes New Orleans Magazine. Photo by Braden Piper.
So frequently homesick for his hometown during a decade of touring with Rebirth, Ruffins, like Fats Domino before him, would tote his own pots and pans from city to city — to at least try to approximate the flavor of home.
Let there be no doubt: This is a man who truly knows what it means to miss New Orleans. New Orleans Magazine issued this variation on the theme of Kermit’s exceptionalism in 2012: “Ruffins embodies the laissez les bon temps rouler attitude that many try to copy but don’t quite succeed.”
That’s why Ruffins is the best possible man for the job. Not only does he know the music and its history inside and out; he knows that the allure of New Orleans — as a culture, a state of being, and a portal to the fantastical and supernatural — transcends the music.
When trends favored minimalism and specialization, Ruffins favored omnivorous maximalism and is the ultimate testament to a New Orleans that is greater than the sum of component parts that are already entire universes unto themselves. He’s a brass band revivalist and an evangelist for traditional New Orleans showmanship and, yet, was ahead of his time by regularly incorporating hip hop and R&B into his repertoire long before that became de rigueur for New Orleans bandleaders.
“Kermit Ruffins is one of the city’s favorite sons, and his civic pride and infectious joie de vivre just exude from his bar. Free food, cheap drinks, and music that flows like the lifeblood of this neighborhood,” wrote Conde Nast Traveler in its 2023 review of Kermit’s Treme Mother in Law Lounge.
Any given week might find Ruffins, one night, fronting a big band playing ’40s-style swing arrangements, the next recording reworked songbook classics from Rodgers and Hammerstein, Arlen and Harburg, and Edith Piaf at New Orleans’s Basin Street studios, the next sitting in with Jon Batiste and The Late Show Band, and the next manning the grill outside the Mother-In-Law Lounge —the bar, restaurant, and live music venue Ruffins owns in the heart of the Tremé — saucing and smoking his prize-winning BBQ (Kermit’s even appeared on Top Chef!) in anticipation of weekly home-venue hits with the Barbecue Swingers (his celebrated quintet) or good pal — and fellow New Oreleans trumpeter and entertainer par excellence — Irvin Mayfield.
He’s part sorcerer, part musician, part ambassador, part spirit guide, part prize-winning grillmaster, and part TV star (check him out playing himself — who else?! — on HBO’s award-winning series Treme). But, really, it’s simpler, and more accurate, to recognize this man as 100% Kermit Ruffins, a son of New Orleans and an embodiment of its expansive musical and artistic tapestry, one who wields the charms of the Crescent City so deftly that he can — and will — make those who’ve never even visited feel homesick for the place.
And he’s all ours — except for when he’s doing all that other stuff mentioned above.
Do not miss Kermit Ruffins, the new host of “Jazz Across America: New Orleans” every Friday evening from 5 to 7 p.m. PST, on KSDS Jazz 88.3 FM in San Diego and streaming all around the world at jazz88.org and via the KSDS mobile app.
