Talent Inquiry

It all began in November 1988 when six people with a tuba, piano, trombone, clarinet, trumpet, drums and four charts borrowed from the local high school band department got together to try something called Dixieland. No one in the group of seven had an extensive background in music. They simply enjoyed playing music as a hobby. Soon they fell under the spell of Dixie and the group began to take shape. After a few public appearances, the band began to grow both musically and physically. New charts were purchased and a tenor saxophone, banjo and vocalist were added. The band now has a membership of ten performers and a repertoire of more than two hundred toe-tapping tunes. In 1989 the group officially adopted the name ?The Salt City Dixieland Band.? Historically, Manistee was noted as the Salt City because of the salt mining and processing plants. The two most notable plants being Hardy’s Salt and Morton Salt. The band has produced five cassette tapes and five compact discs. The first tape, before CD’s, is titled Victorian Port City Dixieland Jazz and the second tape is Dixieland Live at The Historic Ramsdell Theater in Manistee. The other three tapes and CD?s, recorded at Interlochen Arts Academy, are 1. Gospel, 2. Dixie/Big Band and 3. Dixie and Much More. On the third recording the band demonstrates its versatility by including Dixie, Blues, Rock, Polkas, Swing, Gospel and Patriotic tunes. Because of this versatility and the wide variety of music, the band is now called “The Salt City Dixie Jazz Band.” Under the new name the band recorded a new CD at Frontier Recording Studios titled So Rare and features a number of musicians on solo numbers. In the fall of 2012 the band produced a new recording at West Shore Community College with one half comprised of Big Band renditions and the other half of the CD comprised of Dixie favorites. In addition to performing in many Michigan communities, including the Upper Peninsula, the band was featured in a symphony concert at Hill Auditorium, University of Michigan and the Kellogg Center, Michigan State University, and a fun engagement on the Badger Love Boat Cruise. Dixieland worship services are a very popular and regular activity of the band with the most notable being the communion service for the 500 members attending the Northwest Lower Michigan Synod of Lutheran Ministers in Lansing in 1992. Since then the band has traveled to Detroit, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek numerous times, many years at Sault Ste. Marie and Muskegon on a regular basis.