"New Orleans' most passionate and well-known brass band that finds the funk regardless of which genre they decide to delve into."
- Hal Horowitz
   
★2013 DownBeat Critics Poll, The Dirty Dozen's Roger Lewis ranked among the Best Baritone Saxophone players

2013 Nominated for FOUR Best of the Beat Awards by OffBeat magazine including Best Brass Band Album for Twenty Dozen as well as nominations for members Roger Lewis, Kirk Joseph and Terrence Higgins in their respective instrument categories

★Latest album TWENTY DOZEN (May 1, 2012) celebrates their 35th Anniversary

Gregory Davis (trumpet) and Roger Lewis (saxophone) are featured on 2012 GRAMMY Winning Best World Music Album Tinariwen's, Tassili.

★TV performance of "From the Corner to the Block" with Galactic and Juvenile on HBO's Treme featured on the soundtrack, Treme, Season 2: Music from the Original Series

★Featured in NFL Season Kickoff festivities in New Orleans. The Dirty Dozen joined Trombone Shorty and Dave Matthews Band during the NFL Opening Kickoff 2010 pre-game concert, broadcast live on NBC. The Dozen, Trombone Shorty and Kermit Ruffins collaborated with DMB on the Talking Heads' classic "Burning Down the House" while the Mardi Gras Indians danced on stage.

★The Dirty Dozen's "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" was featured in Episode 8 of HBO's Treme

2009 Best of the Beat Nominee for Best Brass Band, presented by Offbeat magazine, an award they have won a number of times in the past. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band's Kirk Joseph was nominated for Best Tuba/Sousaphonist in the 2011 Awards and is nominated again for the 2012 Awards.

★Honored with Music Heritage Award at the 2009 Big Easy Music Awards

"Brass-band music used to be a singular strain of New Orleans' cultural heritage. It was defined by its free-wheeling polyphony, its repertory of dirges and stomps and its appearance primarily at parades and funerals. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band has changed everything but the instrumentation to reinvent a modern omnivorous brass-band music that embraces be-bop, funk, and rhythm-and-blues. The arrangements are crisply focused and the music sounds at home in a club as well as on the march. Yet for all the changes, the Dirty Dozen has retained an essential part of the tradition - their performance still conveys a sense of communal jubilation." - Jon Pareles, NY Times

 

In 1977, The Dirty Dozen Social and Pleasure Club in New Orleans began showcasing a traditional Crescent City brass band. It was a joining of two proud, but antiquated, traditions at the time: social and pleasure clubs dated back over a century to a time when black southerners could rarely afford life insurance, and the clubs would provide proper funeral arrangements. Brass bands, early predecessors of jazz as we know it, would often follow the funeral procession playing somber dirges, then once the family of the deceased was out of earshot, burst into jubilant dance tunes as casual onlookers danced in the streets. By the late '70s, few of either existed. The Dirty Dozen Social and Pleasure Club decided to assemble this group as a house band, and over the course of these early gigs, the seven-member ensemble adopted the venue's name: The Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

Thirty-five years later, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is a world famous music machine, whose name is synonymous with genre-bending romps and high-octane performances. They have revitalized the brass band in New Orleans and around the world, progressing from local parties, clubs, baseball games and festivals in their early years to touring nearly constantly in the U.S. and in over 30 other countries on five continents. The Dirty Dozen have been featured guests on albums by artists including David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Dr. John and the Black Crowes. The city of New Orleans even has an official Dirty Dozen Brass Band Day.