The saints came marching in Saturday at Terry B. Roberts’ funeral. Just like the lifelong music lover, and former funeral home owner, wanted it: Lou...
The saints came marching in Saturday at Terry B. Roberts’ funeral. Just like the lifelong music lover, and former funeral home owner, wanted it: Lousiana jazz style. Mel Tukey’s Jazz Society Orchestra, directed by former Winthrop teacher Mel Tukey, who has known the Roberts since the 1950s, fulfilled Roberts’ wish to have a Louisiana jazz funeral, playing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” in a dirge tempo, traditional at raucus New Orleans funerals, as the procession traveled to Roberts’ gravesite at the Glenside Cemetery. Tukey said Roberts and his wife Janice were longtime fans of his style of festive jazz music, and had been following jazz, and his band, since 1954. Following a brief graveside committal service, the band struck up “When the Saints Come Marching Home,” and Leon Roberts, who now owns the family business, Knowlton Hewins, Roberts Funeral Home, with his sister, Lynn Roberts Reed, encouraged the well-over-100 attendees to follow along behind the jazzy procession. “Make some noise,” Leon Roberts encouraged the crowd as the six-piece band began to play. Some attendees even broken into an impromptu dance on the driveway of the cemetery.
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