Calvin “Boom Boom” Manuel

Calvin “Boom Boom” Manuel, a Seabee, was playing drums with the Seaman Raiders, stationed at Manana Barracks, when B-1 arrived there in May 1944. His association with B-1 is as a drummer with the Moonglowers, one of two dance bands cut from B-1’s ranks; he’s the drummer on the Moonglowers’ only extant recording, a 1944 radio transcript.

Manuel joined the Navy on October 23, 1942. He told Otto Harris that after the war, his chief ambition was to return to New Orleans “and try for big time.”

In New Orleans, he he began playing drums in the band at Tommy LaFon Elementary School and continued at Booker T. Washington High School, studying with Valmore Victor much of that tine. Among Victor’s other drum pupils: Ed Blackwell, Thomas Moore, Wilbert Hogan, and Albert ‘June’ Gardner.

One of Victor’s students, trumpeter Earl Turbinton, recalled that Victor, who also taught Ellis Marsailas, Irving Mayfield, and Sing Miller during his 30-year career, “had a house which must have had a thousand instruments; tuba, maybe 20 or 30 saxophones, 20 or 30 trumpets and trombones. You’d bring your mouthpiece and Professor Victor would say, ‘Go in there and get an alto ’til you find the one that feels good to you. Play all these horns.”

Prior to World War II, Victor led a popular New Orleans dance band comprised of his best students. 

Al Kennedy writes in his history of public school music education in New Orleans, Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: “It was highly unusual for African Americans to have a full-time music teacher. Under Professor Victor, Lafon put together what must have been one of the first elementary public school marching bands, which played for funerals and community events. He was  the first person to point out to students that the same elements that prevailed in jazz could also be heard in much of the church music.”

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Sources

Berry, Jason. “Looking for the Resurrection.” Gambit. 23 Apr. 2007. Nola.com. 25 Feb. 2025.

Harris, Otto. “Musically Speaking.” The Mananan. Pearl City, HA. 4 July 1945: 7.

Kennedy, Al. Chord Changes on the Chalkboard. Scarecrow P., 2005.

June 24, 2025