Keep the Music Playing: How the Excelsior Band Is Preserving Nearly 143 Years of Legacy
Keep the Music Playing: How the Excelsior Band Is Preserving Nearly 143 Years of Legacy
“The Excelsior Band has been entrusted to my husband, Hosea, to nourish, protect, and grow the band’s footprint and ensure its long-term vitality.” – JerryIn Rushing London
There are some sounds that belong to a place. In Mobile, Alabama, the sound of the Excelsior Band is one of them. Before you see the black suits, the white shirts, the caps, or the sousaphone with 1883 painted across its bell, you hear the brass rolling down the street, and something in the city stands a little taller.
For nearly 143 years, Excelsior’s musicians have helped soundtrack Mardi Gras parades, weddings, funerals, family reunions, birthdays, conventions, and other moments when Mobile gathers to celebrate or remember.
Their story began on November 23, 1883, when John A. Pope, president of the Creole Fire Company, organized the band to celebrate the birth of his son, John C. Pope. What began with Creole firemen playing during their downtime became a tradition woven deep into the city’s cultural life.
But the remarkable part is not simply that Excelsior is still here. It is that people are still committed to doing the work required to keep it here. Because legacy does not preserve itself.
Someone has to protect the history, manage the money, book the performances, maintain the records, develop the next generation, and make sure a leader is ready when today’s leaders step aside. For Jerryln Rushing London, Business Manager of Excelsior Band, Inc., and Hosea London, the current band leader, it is work worth doing.
“It has been an extreme pleasure to continue the work that has provided joy to Mobile and the Gulf Coast for 143 years,” Jerryln remarks.
What Happens When the Music Has to Run Like a Business?
Most people experience Excelsior from the front. They see the distinctive attire, hear the horns, and watch the band move through a parade. What they do not see is the operation required to get those musicians there.
That responsibility grew even more important after Hosea took over leadership in 2014, following the death of longtime leader and educator James Seales. “The Excelsior Band has been entrusted to my husband, Hosea, to nourish, protect, and grow the band’s footprint and ensure its long-term vitality,” Jerryln says.
Her job is not simply to organize performances. It is to make sure the organization has a solid structure. That means contracts, invoices, payroll, scheduling, marketing, recordkeeping, tax requirements, state and federal guidelines for contract workers, forecasting, and relationship-building, including partnerships with Visit Mobile and the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. It may not have the glamour of a parade, but it is essential. Preserving the music also means preserving the organization behind the music.
The Mobile Chamber’s 2024 profile described how Hosea moved the organization toward formal business practices, including incorporating the band and shifting musicians away from informal cash payments toward documented compensation. Excelsior was also among the recipients of the Chamber’s 2024 Eagle Awards, which recognize minority-owned businesses making an impact.
What Happens to History When the People Who Remember It Are Gone?
One of Excelsior’s biggest challenges has nothing to do with learning new music. It is remembering the people who came before. Jerryln says the hardest part of preservation is documenting members from before the 1970s, since there are very few written records from that time. That creates a race against time.
The band is answering it through oral history, working with the University of South Alabama’s Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library to record interviews with members. The collection, started in 2022, now includes 14 interviews. Much of the early history still lives in photographs, clippings, recordings, and personal memory. Jerryln hopes the project continues and eventually becomes a documentary. This is not just archival work. It is making sure the people who shaped Mobile’s musical heritage are not forgotten.
Music Is Not Just Played. It Is Inherited.
Part of what makes Excelsior distinctive is the music itself. The repertoire reaches beyond a single style: jazz standards, religious music, blues, and Mardi Gras tunes. The Alabama State Council on the Arts has documented the band’s traditional approach and noted that musicians historically learned the repertoire without relying on sheet music.
That matters. When the music is learned by being inside the band, listening and playing alongside more experienced musicians, every new member becomes part musician and part keeper of the tradition. A 2022 oral history with Excelsior musician Sean Thomas described the band’s reliance on playing by ear, on knowledge of keys and scales, and on what he learned from senior players. That knowledge cannot be downloaded. It has to be taught, experienced, and passed on.
The Awards Are Important. But What They Recognize Matters More.
In 2013, the Alabama State Council on the Arts presented Excelsior with its Alabama Folk Heritage Award. Then came a larger honor: in 2022, the National Endowment for the Arts named the Excelsior Band a National Heritage Fellow, one of the nation’s highest honors for folk and traditional arts, which carries a $25,000 award. The NEA describes Excelsior as a Black brass marching band that has embodied Mobile’s culture and Mardi Gras traditions for generations, serving as the city’s official band and leading parades for both the Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association and the Mobile Carnival Association. The band is also widely believed to be the oldest continuous marching jazz band in the United States. These honors recognize something increasingly rare: a living tradition still connected to the people and place it came from.
What Does Entrepreneurship Have to Do With Preserving a Cultural Treasure?
Quite a lot. Jerryln’s experience with Vivian’s Door’s StreetWise MBA program reinforced something crucial to the band’s future: legacy needs structure. She says the program strengthened their documentation and marketing efforts and broadened her understanding of what it takes to run a successful business.
One lesson stood out. Plan ahead. “The classes helped broaden my awareness of what is needed to have a successful business and to have, at a minimum, a three-year plan,” she says, adding that it reinforced keeping accurate records and numbers to forecast growth and sustainability. For an organization approaching its 143rd year, the question is no longer simply, “How do we keep performing?” It becomes, “How do we build an organization strong enough to survive the people currently running it?”
Building the Next Generation Instead of Just Hoping for One
This is where the Londons refuse to leave anything to luck.
“The charge is to identify the next leader of the band and to prepare Mobile-area youth who have the passion and interest in maintaining the band’s legacy – ‘A Tradition of Excellence,'” Jerryln says.
The Excelsior Band Preservation, a nonprofit, was established in 2022 to preserve the band’s history and support its future. Its programmatic arm, The Jazz Studio, provides year-round jazz education for Mobile-area students in grades 6 through 12, meeting on the second and fourth Saturdays at Spring Hill College.
The goal is bigger than teaching young people to play. The program introduces students to musical fundamentals, improvisation, working with different skill levels, time management, and personal responsibility. “The charge is to identify the next leader of the band and to prepare Mobile area youth who have the passion and interest in maintaining the band’s legacy, ‘A Tradition of Excellence,'” Jerryln says. That is community investment in its most practical form: knowledge, mentorship, access, cultural history, professional discipline, and opportunity. This is what “Keep the Music Playing” really means.
Who Gets the Baton When Today’s Leaders Step Away?
That future leader will inherit far more than a collection of songs. They will inherit standards, history, relationships, a reputation built over generations, business systems, and the responsibility of protecting something that belongs to more than one family. A business plan determines where an organization is going. A succession plan determines who will carry it there. Jerryln puts the stakes plainly:
“If we are not systematic in producing younger musicians who are interested, appreciate, and learn the music and the need for professionalism, we risk losing this jewel as we have known for 143 years.”
The more serious threat is not that people stop booking the band. It is possible that the knowledge, standards, and commitment required to be Excelsior could fail to move from one generation to the next.
A New Home Could Give an Old Tradition a New Future
The band is also preparing to move into a new home at the former Ace Theater at 501 Congress Street. The historic theater opened in 1943 and served Mobile’s Black community during segregation before closing in the 1970s. Redevelopment plans envision it as part of a broader effort to preserve the area’s African American cultural history, with the project expected to be completed around early 2027. Reporting on the project suggests Excelsior will use the space for music, education, and community work, including The Jazz Studio. It could become another bridge between Mobile’s past and future: a place where music is performed, young musicians learn, and history can be encountered rather than simply read about.
The Sound of Mobile Is Still Playing
But there is a bigger story behind those horns: a business operation making the performance possible, and musicians carrying knowledge passed down from those who played before them. That is what makes the Excelsior story bigger than its age. Legacy does not preserve itself. People preserve legacy. They protect it, document it, teach it, and invest in it. And then, when the time comes, they hand it to someone else. That is how the music keeps playing. That is how legacies last for generations to come.
This feature is part of Vivian’s Door’s Entrepreneurship & Legacy Series, created in recognition of Black Business Month and Black Philanthropy Month, and featured in the Vivian’s Door Media Hub. The series shares the stories of entrepreneurs, leaders, and changemakers who are building wealth, creating opportunity, strengthening community, and creating a legacy for future generations.
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