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Mobile's Best-Kept Secret Is 143 Years Old — And It's Just Getting Started
03/17/2026
Mobile's Best-Kept Secret Is 143 Years Old — And It's Just Getting Started
Something genuinely exciting is happening in Mobile — one of the city's most treasured cultural institutions, the 143-year-old Excelsior Band, is on the verge of a remarkable renaissance. Led by Hosea London, this legendary walking jazz band — founded in 1883 by Creole firemen who played instruments between calls — is preparing to establish a permanent home at the historic Ace Theater on Davis Avenue, a beautifully symbolic resurrection of both a band and a neighborhood. Developer John Ruzic and his firm Porch Light are restoring the 1943 segregation-era theater into a jazz performance venue and education studio that will train the next generation of Mobile musicians, feeding young talent directly into the Excelsior Band's living, unwritten, tradition-to-tradition legacy. The vision is breathtaking: a place where Mobile's extraordinary musical heritage — a city that has quietly produced world-class talent for over a century — is finally given the spotlight it deserves. Top Four Points: 143 years of living tradition — The Excelsior Band has no playlist, no rehearsals, and no written music; everything is passed down person to person, making it one of the most authentic oral jazz traditions in America The Ace Theater revival — The historic Davis Avenue theater, built in 1943 to serve Black audiences during segregation, is being restored by Porch Light Development as a permanent home and performance venue for the band A jazz studio for young Mobilians — A new jazz education studio connected to the Ace Theater will expose local youth to professional music careers — not just performing, but composing, engineering, and producing Mobile's musical legacy is staggering — The city has produced nationally and internationally recognized jazz artists for generations, and this project aims to tell that story proudly to a new audience
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