Kermit Ruffins Livin' A Treme Life

 
Kermit Ruffins can blow a horn, but he is far from just a trumpet player. He fronts as tight a quartet as New Orleans has to offer.  Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers will, in the course of any given set, mock and obliterate the boundaries that separate straight jazz from funk, standards from hip hop. This music comes correct!
Livin' A Treme Life is not only named for a cherished historical and culturally imbibed New Orleans neighborhood but also the lifestyle essential to the town's musical and cultural history. All of the city and it's great history lives in his horn lines, from Ruffins' native Lower Ninth Ward to the Bywater where he gigs, to the Treme where he lives, to the Uptown streets where he can routinely be seen videotaping the latest second line down St. Charles Ave. Play it loud. And remember how much is at stake!

According to Basin Street Records: "It takes all of 30 seconds.Whether listening to a track on his newest CD, engaging him in conversation or hearing his voice on an answering machine message, one word springs immediately to mind to describe Kermit Ruffins. Passion.
The 44-year-old New Orleans native lives it, plays it and sings about it, and nowhere is it more evident than when he discusses his craft  the swinging, good-time jazz that lured him in as a teenager and continues to whet his appetite even three decades and 10 solo recordings later.

JazzTimes (pp.127-128) - "Many of the songs are built on blues riffs or vamps, and when these guys start blowing, it's hard to sit passively..."