Anniversaries aren’t always happy affairs and this one has more than its share of melancholy. Forty years ago, on February 25, 1974, Frank Assunto, New Orleans trumpet player and leader of the Dukes of Dixieland, died of a heart attack at the untimely age of 42. Frank’s older brother, trombone player Freddie Assunto, died a similar early death eight years before, felled by cancer and heart disease when he was only 36. But it was Frank’s passing that marked the end of an era, the end of the ba...