Al Hirt: The King of Bourbon Street Had a Trumpet and a Smile

The King of Bourbon Street Had a Trumpet and a Smile

Alois Maxwell Hirt was born on November 7, 1922, in New Orleans to a police officer's family. He got his first trumpet at age six from a local pawnshop and joined the Junior Police Band. By sixteen, he was playing professionally alongside Pete Fountain while attending Jesuit High School. The two would become the twin pillars of New Orleans popular jazz for the next half century.

After studying at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and serving as a bugler in World War II, Hirt played with Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman before doing what every great New Orleans musician eventually does — coming home. He settled into Dan's Pier 600 in the mid-1950s and then opened his own club, Basin St. South, on Bourbon Street in 1962. It ran for over twenty years.

Java Changed Everything

In 1963, Hirt released Honey in the Horn, which went gold. Then came "Java" in 1964 — a million-selling instrumental that won the Grammy and turned Hirt into a national sensation. The man could play. His technical skill was conservatory-level, but his showmanship was pure New Orleans. He was six-foot-two with a handlebar mustache and a grin that could fill a room before a single note hit the air.

He earned eight Grammy nominations over his career. He recorded "The Green Hornet Theme," which Quentin Tarantino later featured in Kill Bill. He became a part-owner of the New Orleans Saints when the franchise launched in 1967. He was New Orleans in a way that transcended genre — too skilled for the purists to dismiss, too entertaining for the academics to ignore.

The Jumbo of Bourbon Street

They called him Jumbo. He played Mardi Gras parades so often that getting hit by a flying object during a krewe procession — which cost him part of his lip in 1970 — was practically an occupational hazard. He came back from that injury, because of course he did. New Orleans musicians don't quit for anything short of the final second line.

Al Hirt died on April 27, 1999, at seventy-six. He left behind eight children, a legacy of gold records, and a Bourbon Street that still sounds a little bit like him every single night. He was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2009, a decade after his death — proof that some sounds never really fade.