NEW YORK (AP) – Terrell Batiste has no idea where his grandmother is – or even if she’s alive – more than two months after Hurricane Katrina.

All the 21-year-old trumpeter has now is a temporary home, a donated horn and a chance to eke out a living by playing New Orleans music in other parts of America.

On Wednesday night, the Jazz Foundation of America held an auction to help Batiste and hundreds of other hurricane-displaced musicians with food, clothes, housing and jobs.

Among those playing at the fund-raiser was 95-year-old tenor saxophonist Max Lucas, who once performed with Louis Armstrong, and 91-year-old alto saxophonist Fred Staton, who played with Art Blakey, Count Basie and Billy Strayhorn.

On the auction block were more than 50 jazz treasures ranging from Miles Davis’ boa constrictor snakeskin jacket to the Boesendorfer grand piano from Manhattan’s Blue Note club. The auction raised more than $300,000 Wednesday night, with Davis’ jacket fetching $13,000; bidding on some items, including the Blue Note piano, was to continue online for another week.

A 1961 New York Times photo showing Armstrong playing for his wife in front of the pyramids in Giza, Egypt, sold for $1,600. A vocal coaching session from Roberta Flack went for $5,000, and a jazz piano lesson from Billy Taylor went for $2,500.

The presale estimates ranged from $200 for the Times photo to $65,000 for the Blue Note piano.

The online component of the fund-raiser also offered the chance to record a track with the bass player and drummer for Jimi Hendrix’s original Band of Gypsies.

Members of the Hot 8 Brass Band – Batiste and nine other young men whose edgy new jazz was at the heart of pre-Katrina New Orleans – were flown in for the evening at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square. The band previously performed a New Orleans-style funeral procession at the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village.

The New York-based foundation, which fields up to 20 requests a day for help, already has delivered more than $120,000 worth of new instruments, from accordions to banjos and pianos. More than 100 musicians have been relocated into new homes or helped with mortgages on destroyed homes.

A New Jersey hospital provided free care to members of Hot 8; one has diabetes, another chest pains.

Trumpeter Alvarez “B.I.G. AL” Huntley was treated for a leg gash suffered while escaping his house. He waded through toxin-filled water with the open wound. “He doesn’t have anywhere to go when we’re finished on the road,” said Batiste, who lives in a Red Cross-sponsored apartment in Atlanta.

Batiste’s grandmother, Ethel Anna Herbert, 82, was floated on an air mattress from the family home to safety, suffering a stroke at the sight of the destruction and bodies in the water. She was airlifted from New Orleans’ Superdome in a helicopter.

“Nobody could go with her, and the people on the chopper wouldn’t take her medical file,” said her grandson. “We’ve been looking everywhere for her.”

Batiste keeps on playing with the Hot 8 band, which is getting a motor home from a Pennsylvania woman to travel at low cost, said Jazz Foundation executive director Wendy Oxenhorn.

The foundation, with money from the band Pearl Jam and other donors, will pay 126 New Orleans evacuees to perform in the next six months for schoolchildren in Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and New York.

“People are hearing a lot more of what was just in the streets of New Orleans,” said Hot 8’s manager, Lee Arnold. “It’s a good opportunity both for the country and the musicians.”

The foundation was created in 1989 by Taylor and businessman Herb Storfer to help elderly jazz musicians in crisis.

Young and old, the New Orleans musicians are rooted in America’s homegrown soundtrack.

“This music was born out of the atrocities of slavery, when families were tortured and separated,” Oxenhorn said. “They became these magnificent, strong, powerful people who ended up giving back a gift to the world that has gotten all of us through life. The musicians will survive.”

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On the Net:

Jazz Foundation of America: http://www.jazzfoundation.org

Hot 8 Brass Band: http://www.hot8brassband.com

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