Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
Flea Finds His Jazz Thing
In the relatively small pantheon of certifiable rock stars venturing into the intersection of pop music and jazz, the…
“You cannot quit,” drummer Adonis Rose, right, told vocalist Phillip Manuel. “There’s no way in hell you can stop being a performer, as great as you are.”
(Photo: Noe Cugny)As if Grammy-winning drummer, composer, producer and educator Adonis Rose didn’t already have his plate full as artistic director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, a position he’s held since 2017, he’s now joined forces with another New Orleans native, acclaimed singer-lyricist Phillip Manuel, on Unusual Suspects. Backing the two principals on this recording for the Moocha Music label are a crew of Crescent City rising stars in bassist Max Moran, saxophonist Ricardo Pascal, trumpeter Stephen Lands and pianist Seth Finch, along with veteran guitarist Steve Masakowski. Pianist Michael Pellera, Manuel’s longtime songwriting partner, served as musical director and arranger on this potent project.
Rose, who comes from a prominent musical family in New Orleans (his father, Vernon Severin, and grandfather Wilfred “Crip” Severin Jr. were both first-call drummers in the Crescent City, while his uncle is the renowned and prolifically recorded bassist Chris Severin), calls Manuel a local treasure. “I met Phillip through my uncle because he played gigs around town with Phillip all the time. So I’ve been knowing Phillip pretty much all my life. And then when I got old enough to be able to play professional gigs, Phillip would hire me. So I worked a lot of gigs around New Orleans with him and I played on one of his early recordings on Max Jazz (2000’s Love Happened To Me). We kept in touch and maintained a great relationship over the years, and then I reached out to Phillip a couple of years ago to see how he was doing and if he was still singing. He was like, ‘Man, I’m doing real estate, I’m not really doing gigs. I’m thinking about quitting.’ And I was like, ‘No! You cannot quit. There’s no way in hell you can stop being a performer, as great as you are. You are a New Orleans legend. You’re one of the best male singers that I’ve worked with. There’s no way you can stop. We need to do a project, we need to put it out and we need go on a road and tour before you feel like you can’t do this anymore.’ And that’s how we came up with Unusual Suspects.”
Manuel not only brings his gift for scatting and Jon Hendricks-inspired vocalese to the project, particularly on two instrumentals that he penned lyrics for — Lee Morgan’s “Party Time” and Keith Jarrett’s “Bop Be” — he also imbues ballads like Pellera’s “Is This Love” and “Coincidence,” along with Joe Sample’s “I’ll Love You” and “The Road Less Traveled” and a bossa treatment of Bill Withers’ “Hello Again” with a warm baritone voice reminiscent of Johnny Hartman. And his original lyrics on those tunes are both thoughtful and poetic. “I love writing lyrics and I love figuring out how to tell a story in as few words as possible,” he said. “Next to singing, writing is my great love. I’ve got a book of poetry and essays that I want to publish, and I’ve written my memoir as well.”
The blues-infused title track, written by pianist Peter Martin, who spent a significant amount of time in New Orleans before returning to his hometown of St. Louis, is an uptempo swinger that finds Manuel channeling Al Jarreau, while the infectious closer, “Sixth Ward Strut,” is a showcase for some serious second line grooving (with the singer writing new lyrics to Masakowski’s instrumental “Sidewalk Strut” from Astral Project’s self-titled 1997 debut album).
A big surprise on Unusual Suspects is the rendition of Michael Jackson’s mega-hit “Thriller.” Opening with Manuel’s wordless vocal bass line (vaguely reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead” riff), the piece gently glides into a soulful, medium-tempo swing vibe with walking bass by Moran, loosely syncopated drumming by Rose and lush horn fills from Pascal and Lands. Manuel said the unique arrangement came about at a Halloween gig he was playing at Snug Harbor in New Orleans with songwriting partner Pellera.
For Rose, who deftly moves from ballads to bossa to burn and a bit of second line, alternating between brushes and sticks from song to song, it was all familiar territory. “Even from my first Criss Cross record (1998’s Song For Donise), the thing that I’ve always wanted to project as a musician and as a drummer is versatility, because that’s what we do in New Orleans,” he said. “When you think of a Herlin Riley, he can play anything. He played with Dr. John, he played with Wynton Marsalis and George Benson and Ahmad Jamal. So I always try to mix it up. When we put the set list together for this record, I wanted to make sure we touched on everything, because I get bored. I don’t want to just do a record full of swing tunes. I need to be able to play rhythmically, I need be touching different styles and making sure that that’s represented in the music.”
With seven albums as a leader to his credit, the latest being 2023’s For All We Know on Storyville Records, Rose remains fully engaged with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, whose most recent recording was 2021’s Petite Fleur featuring singer Cyrille Aimée. “We’ve been actively working with festivals during my tenure with the NOJO,” he explained. “I’ve been involved with JazzAscona in Switzerland for six years now. Every year the orchestra goes there and performs a two-week residency. And this year we’re starting a new festival in Tuscany in a town called Peccioli, which happens for a week right after JazzAscona. And we’ll be also be playing the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with Andromeda Turre as our special guest, which we’re planning to record. Then later in the year we have had some other residencies that we were working on in Benin, West Africa and then Lagos, Nigeria. So there’s a lot going on.”
An inaugural member of Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead program back in 1993 (along with Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton, Greg Hutchinson, Cyrus Chestnut, David Sánchez and Joshua Redman), Rose was also a member of Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra before it had found a permanent home in the Time-Warner Building on Columbus Circle in October 2004. And now as artistic director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, he still regards Marsalis as an important mentor.
“He’s the reason why I was so invested into making sure that the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra was successful,” said Rose. “I was literally on the phone every week with Wynton when I first took the job to help me figure things out. And through those calls he helped me understand the basic fundamentals about non-profit governance and certain skill sets that I needed to improve on, like being able to understand how businesses work, how to be able to read budgets, how to work with accountants and get to audits, how to manage a board, how to manage a staff, how to manage musicians in the orchestra, how to fundraise. So all of those things I learned from him really helped me established a solid foundation. Everything else comes by trial and error, but it’s great when you have a person of Wynton’s stature that can walk you through things.”
Balancing his responsibilities as an administration with the NOJO with his joy of playing, Rose now looks forward to going out on tour with Manuel this summer. “This project means a lot to me, and it’s really more about Phillip than it is about me,” he said. “I feel like this is the second opportunity for him to get out here and show people how talented he is and the quality of the work that he does. So this is more like a second chance collaboration, as far as the way I look at it.”
Added the 72-year-old Manuel, “It’s hard to maintain your voice as you get older. That’s something singers have to deal with. It is a perishable skill and we have to do our best to hold on to as much of it for as long as we can.”
Judging by his stellar performance on Unusual Suspects, Manuel’s still got plenty left in the tank. DB
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