If one imagines the mythical lumberjack Paul Bunyan taking up music, New Orleans would be the only plausible birthplace. Few other locales host such outsized legends about their instrumental forebears. Manuel “Fess” Manetta satisfies the first requirement of such stature by entering the world before 1890. Mastery of six instruments spanning multiple families followed, a command he demonstrated by performing on two separate brass horns simultaneously well after his seventieth birthday. Brass playing ran through the entire Manetta household, and the residence at 331 Alix Street—his home for two decades beginning in 1913—still stands for visitors to see. Early professional work came on piano after initial study of violin and guitar; shortly before the Alix Street years he also took up cornet, saxophone, and trombone.
Listeners therefore encountered him in the Eagle Brass Band and the Tuxedo Hall Brass Band without knowing in advance which instrument he would play on any given night. Surviving 78s capture him on violin for one title and piano for another. Contemporary accounts describe these abilities as extraordinary. Buddy Bolden reportedly placed Manetta in charge whenever an unusually strong ensemble was required for major engagements.
Manetta left the city for stretches as well. In 1919 Kid Ory brought him to the West Coast, where duties soon changed from violinist to pianist with the Martels’ Family Band. Riverboat work followed, including a piano chair under bandleader Ed Allen. From the mid-1920s forward he remained largely in Louisiana, performing regularly with the orchestras of Oscar Celestin, Arnold Du Pas, Manuel “Manole” Perez, and others. By the time of his death in the late 1960s, his standing rested equally on his own playing and on his unmatched skill at conveying the finer points of New Orleans jazz to younger musicians; he continued to perform until the end.
