Deano Assunto was only a child, but he remembers the good times as well as the bad.  The good times – great times, really – saw his daddy’s band, The Dukes Of Dixieland, with its name in lights.  Carnegie Hall, recording contracts, jamming with Louis Armstrong.  Then everything seemed to fall apart.

    First his uncle died, then eight years later his father, who had never overcome the shock of that first death.  That left 15-year-old Deano to nurse an ailing mother, a former Miss New Orleans, struggling with brain tumors that soon would kill her, too.

     By the time Deano came up for air to take stock of the family finances, there weren’t any.  The Dukes were dead.  More than that, the Assunto family was told it no longer had a legal claim to the name.

     “Everyone was walking around shell shocked,” Deano Assunto, now 41, recalled.  “Before we could pick up the pieces, the pieces weren’t there to be picked up.”

     But unlike many members of the New Orleans music aristocracy who think they’ve been wronged and ripped off by the industry, the Assuntos have gone to court seeking to recover lost royalties and, if possible, the rights to the Dukes’ famous name.  Deano Assunto recently filed a civil suit on his family’s behalf, claiming that others have collected royalties from the jazz group’s music since his father’s death on the eve of Mardi Gras 1974, money that should have gone to the Assuntos, the lawsuit says.

     The suit names local businessman John Shoup as the main defendant, along with record companies such as RCA, Capital, and Sony.  The record companies allegedly distributed royalties for the Dukes’ music to Shoup, who formed the “new” Dukes of Dixieland soon after the death of Frank Assunto, Deano’s father.

     “We are not money-hungry, vindictive people,” Deano Assunto said, surrounded by family photos and news clips in his Metairie dining room.  “We are after our heritage. … And for some reason, someone is out there profiteering off of what the family did.”

     The lawsuit says Shoup “never obtained authority” from the Assunto estate “to collect any royalties on the behalf of The Dukes of Dixieland.”

     The suit also alleges that Shoup and other defendants “misappropriated the name of The Dukes of Dixieland and wrongfully represented to others that they have rights to the name and music recorded by The Dukes of Dixieland.”

     In filing suit, the Assuntos join a roster of New Orleans musicians or their relatives seeking redress from music’s money managers.  Heirs of New Orleans piano saint Professor Longhair – Henry Roeland Byrd – have formed a corporation called Songbyrd to try to legally regain control of his music.  Singer Aaron Neville reportedly has earned no royalties from his 1966 classic “Tell It Like It Is.”  And Al “Carnival Time” Johnson last fall won a 40-year battle to regain rights to his popular 1959 tune.

     Losing legal rights “is a perennial problem musicians have faced,” said Bruce Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University.  “They have frequently been at a disadvantage.”

     To so many musicians, especially in times past, performances were jobs, Rayburn said.

     “You get paid for the job and that’s the end of it,” he said.  “They didn’t realize the potential.  … Who knew that a song like ‘Muskrat Ramble would be popular 75 years later.”

     And if the artists aren’t savvy about copyrights and royalties, the ignorance of their heirs is sometimes only greater, Raeburn said.  “The copyright laws can be fairly complex, and a third party can preempt a family because they frequently aren’t paying attention and don’t know, for instance, that copyrights come up for renewal.  The people who do follow (such legal procedures) are corporate officials, because they are businessmen.  … And popular music can be very good investments.

     Adding to the musicians’ dilemma, these legal fights are long and costly.  A good lawyer can make or break a fight for royalties, Raeburn said, “and when it comes to having the money it takes to hire one, musicians are usually at the low end.”

     The core of the original Dukes, founded in 1949 was trumpeter Frank Assunto and his brother, Freddie, on trombone.  Their father, high school band director “Papa Jac” Assunto, also played trombone and banjo, and early members included Pete Fountain and Harry Shields on clarinet, and Chink Martin on bass.

     The group grew to include “girl singer” Betty Owens, a McMain High School student who later married Freddie and became “Duchess.”

     The band played steadily at the Famous Door on Bourbon Street in the early 1950s.  Then in 1955, with family in tow, they pulled up stakes and headed for Chicago and Las Vegas to earn more money and carve out a national reputation.

     The Dukes were the first Dixieland group to sell more than a million albums and the first jazz group to record in stereo.  They became regulars on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Woody Allen delighted in sitting in on late night sessions.  And their playing of “O, Didn’t He Ramble” at Nat “King” Cole’s funeral made the papers.

     But a dozen years of success began to crumble after 1966 when Freddie, then 36, died of cancer, Deano Assunto said.  His father died eight years later at 42 from grief-driven alcoholism, he said, flipping through years of his father’s diary entries about how much he missed his brother.

     Deano Assunto was a teenager when his father died.  He had an older sister and brother, and a younger brother.  His mother, Joan Cecile Bartet, a former Miss Pontchartrain Beach and Miss New Orleans, already was afflicted with the brain cancer that would take her life five years later at the age of 45, he said.

     The death of his father marked the end of the band and the family’s income, Deano Assunto said.

     So dire were the family’s circumstances that a 1974 benefit for Frank Assunto’s widow and children was held at the Fairmont Hotel, with performances by Al Hirt and Fountain.  “Let us hope that his contribution to New Orleans and that of his family will not be forgotten,” journalist Mel Leavitt said about Frank.

     Just before “Papa Jac” died in 1985, Deano Assunto said, he promised his grandfather that he would try to bring control of The Dukes back to the family.

     “I know my dad would never give away everything,” Deano Assunto said.  “It should have never come to this.  … Now it’s for the courts to figure out.”

     Current Dukes manager Shoup, recently called the lawsuit “a fishing expedition” after saying he uncovered official notice of it in a stack of mail collected while he was out of town.

     Shoup said he has had trademark rights to the band name since 1975 and “Kept the name going and kept it up.”

     The band was in the red when he stepped in, Shoup said.  When he first approached record companies, they said “they needed to recoup advances made to Frank” because he was down and out, he said.

     The only royalties Shoup has collected since 1975 have been on recordings made after Frank Assunto’s death, he said.