Paul McCartney teamed up with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to perform a lockdown rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” alongside Dave Matthews, Dave Grohl, Elvis Costello, Jim James, Irma Thomas, Nathaniel Rateliff and several others.
The performance was part of the ‘Round Midnight Preserves livestream hosted by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which was put together to raise money for the Preservation Hall Foundation Legacy Relief Fund. The three-hour event also featured Dave Grohl and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s take on “Come With Me to New Orleans,” Elvis Costello delivering a solo acoustic rendition of “The River in Reverse,” Jim James tackling My Morning Jacket’s “Wonderful” and Irma Thomas singing “Time Is on My Side.” The event culminated with everyone from the event uniting for the New Orleans standard “When the Saints Go Marching In” with Paul McCartney taking a rare turn on the trumpet.
The Preservation Hall Foundation Legacy Relief Fund was established to raise funds for musicians that have struggled to earn a living in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Foo Fighters recorded at Preservation Hall during the sessions for their 2014 LP Sonic Highways. “We loaded in all of our equipment to record this loud rock song,” Grohl told Preservation Hall Artistic Director Ben Jaffe during a Q&A portion of the livestream. “I’m looking at all these beautiful paintings on the wall and these lightning fixtures and pews that had been there for decades. I’m thinking, ‘We’re going to bust this place.’ It was exciting in that experiment.”
A couple of years before Sonic Highways, Grohl and the surviving members of Nirvana came together with McCartney to record the new track “Cut Me Some Slack.” Grohl and McCartney have played together a number of times since that historic session, but this new version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” is the first time that the Beatle brought his trumpet to the festivities.
