Bringing The Music Back

Some Special Musicians Get Help Returning To Post-Katrina Big Easy

(CBS)  Think of New Orleans and you conjure up images of Mardi Gras and gumbo.

And for many tourists, the Treme Brass Band comes to mind as well.

The band's members lost almost everything to Hurricane Katrina and had to leave the city they love.

So, as part of its special "Week of Wishes" series devoted to helping Katrina's victims, The Early Show is helping some of the band's members return to the Big Easy.

Tourist Pat Lindgren of St. Paul, Minn., alerted The Early Show to the musicians' plight.

She wrote that she'd had a great time visiting New Orleans and, after Katrina, couldn't stop thinking about the band she'd heard at Donna's Bar & Grill, a little jazz club.

Based on her letter, The Early Show decided to lend the band's nine members a hand.

They were displaced by the hurricane and wound up seeking shelter hundreds of miles from home.

The Early Show is making it possible for them to go home again by giving them airline tickets, temporary housing, jobs and instruments to replace the ones they lost in the hurricane.

The musicians are definitely "old school," a traditional New Orleans-style brass band. They grew up playing their horns and drums in the streets and nightclubs, at Mardi Gras, and in the "second line" of jazz funerals. The "first line" refers to family and friends of the deceased; then comes the "second line" of jazz musicians and assorted other folks who turn the funeral procession into a celebration of life.

The Treme Brass Band, named for the Treme district of New Orleans, is recognized as one of the premiere brass bands in the world. The band has toured throughout the United States, Japan and Europe, and has also been featured in some jazz documentaries.

Some of the members have played backup for Gladys Knight and the late Ray Charles, and the band was often booked at Preservation Hall and LSU football games.

However, Treme is best-known as the house band at Donna's, which is on the fringes of the French Quarter, where they packed the house every Friday night.

Treme, says co-anchor Rene Syler, was "part of the soundtrack of New Orleans life."

Donna's, says owner Charlie Sims, is "a real soulful joint. I don't call it a club. I call it a joint. J-O-I-N-T."

Sims and wife Donna kept the joint jumping for 13 years, Syler says, showcasing homegrown talent such as the George French Band. Some of the biggest names in jazz have graced its stage.

But it was Treme that made Donna's a favorite destination for locals and tourists alike.

New Orleans resident Bill Harris says he knows "of people who have come … from Japan and around the world, and they come back on a yearly basis."

"Before Katrina," Sims says, "Treme packed the house every Friday night."

Katrina changed all that.