You can’t talk about New Orleans without talking about great drummers and drumming. In the last few years, Modern Drummer has featured New Orleans drummers Johnny Vidacovich, Joe Dyson, Herlin Riley, Teddy “Tif” Lamson, and others. The lineage of influential New Orleans drummers is as long as the history of the drum set itself. Many of them are well known (to us drummers,) but many aren’t as well known, yet: Dee Dee Chandler, Earl Palmer, Eugene “Bones” Jones, Cornelius “Tenoo” Coleman, Idris Muhammad, John Boudreaux, Ricky Sebastian, Walter Lastie, Louis Barbarin, Herman Ernest, Stanton Moore, Russell Batiste, Terrence Higgins, Gerald French, Brian Richburg, Alvin Ford, Joey Peebles… and those are a few of the drummers Adonis and I didn’t get to talk about. In this interview, New Orleans native, Grammy Award winning drummer, producer, composer, educator, and cultural diplomat Adonis Rose and I talk about many of the drumming greats […]

May 2026 Issue