When Emanuel “Manuel” Perez left New Orleans in 1915 to play cornet with Charles Elgar’s Creole Orchestra in Chicago, he couldn’t wait to get home.
“This was my only trip out of New Orleans,” he said, according to his niece, Gisele Perez. “It was enough for me! Since then, I have not left the Creole neighborhood!”
Born in the 1870s, Perez was considered to be “an excellent reading musician” who played picnics, parades and on riverboats.
“Emanuel couldn’t speak so much English (he spoke French), but his horn would talk any language,” jazz icon Louis Armstrong said. “I remember as a kid of 10 years old, I was so crazy about Perez’s brass band. I would follow them on the streets when they paraded with the Elks and Moose and other societies.”
According to The Syncopated Times, he led the 12-member Onward Brass Band from 1903-1930. Armstrong said the band “sounded like a 40-piece brass swing band.” In 1901, Perez formed the Imperial Orchestra, which disbanded in 1908.
Perez also had many music students.
“He would teach for the love of the music itself,” the Creole Genealogical and Historical Association states, “and didn’t charge a dime for the lessons he gave.”
In 1931, dental issues forced Perez to put down his horn and return to cigar making. In the 1940s, he had a series of strokes.
“By the time students of New Orleans jazz history realized they needed to record these seminal musicians, Uncle Manuel was old and in very poor health,” Gisele said. The strokes “devastated his speech, memory and ability to play.”
He avoided talking about his musical contributions. “Besides the illness,” she added, “I suspect there was an attitude of misguided humility, which caused him not to honor his gift and contribution.”
Perez died in 1946.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.