The Times-Picayune is marking the tricentennial of New Orleans with its ongoing 300 for 300 project, running through 2018 and highlighting the moments and people that connect and inspire us. Today, ...

Despite his international fame as a symbol of New Orleans music and bonhomie–or perhaps because of it–Al Hirt rarely received serious recognition as a trumpeter. But the classically trained virtuoso, ...

Al Hirt, 76, the portly Dixieland jazz trumpeter who was a symbol of the exuberant laissez-faire way of life of New Orleans, died yesterday at his New Orleans home. Mr. Hirt had been hospitalized ...

Al Hirt, 76, Dixieland jazz trumpeter who was a symbol of the exuberant laissez-faire way of life of New Orleans; one of the nation’s most recognizable performers in the 1960s, he recorded 55 albums ...

Paul Cacia was Al Hirt's lead trumpet player and contracted the brass section for what Al Hirt called his dream band, formed in the fall of 1979. At the time of receiving the phone call to join Al ...

“Nobody,” says a fellow Bourbon Street trumpeter, “ever outblew Al.” Even allowing for civic partisanship, the boast is not unreasonable. New Orleans Trumpeter Al (“The Monster”) Hirt, 38, is a ...