As a youth growing up in New Orleans' storied Faubourg Tremé, home to many of the City‘s jazz performers, Powell was surrounded by music.

His paternal grandmother Veronica Batiste, played piano for silent movies and in the church. His godmother Thelma Martin and Aunt Celia Bush, who raised him, encouraged him to play music and bought his first drum sets.  

By age 6, Shannon Powell was playing drums regularly for his church, The First Garden Christ Church.  It was a natural transition from the raw spiritualism and rhythms of his church to the driving grooves of traditional New Orleans Jazz.  

Soon after, he began visiting and performing at the historic Preservation Hall alongside local legends such as Cié Frasier and Freddie Coleman.

Powell remembers jazz processions passing his family's home on St. Phillip Street.  Drawn to the drummers of the brass bands, he absorbed their syncopated beat and distinctive New Orleans rhythms.  Says Powell, "Unlike New York Drummers, who play on top, New Orleans Drummers play four on the floor, four beats no matter what we play,"

"For a New Orleans drummer, your Heartbeat is the Bass drum."

It was in the Tremé neighborhood that Powell first met the Legendary Danny Barker, a veteran of Cab Calloway's Orchestra who had returned home to New Orleans in the mid 1960's and taught traditional jazz to neighborhood youths. While Shannon was still in elementary school, Barker chose him for the legendary Fairview Baptist Brass Band.

Within a few years, Powell became a regular member of Barker's band and played professionally with Danny Barker & his Original Jazz Hounds.  Together with Mr. Barker's wife, singer "Blue Lu" Barker, the Jazz Hounds toured widely and were featured at the first New orleans Jazz Fest in its current Fairgrounds location.

As a teenager, Powell drummed in the acclaimed concert band at Joseph S. Clark High School, graduating in 1982.  He also studied at the Black Academy of Arts, headed by pianist Willie Metcalf Jr. and Played in Metcalf's band along with fellow academy students Wynton and Branford Marsalis.  Soon after, with bandleader and tenor saxophonist David Lastie and his band, the original Taste of New Orleans, he further honed his skills and broadened his stylistic palette.

From 1987 to 1992, Powell toured extensively with fellow New Orleanian Harry Connick, Jr..  His drumwork can be heard on Connick’s albums "We Are in Love,” "Lofty's Roach Souffle," and "Blue Light Red Light,” which went platinum.

More recently, Powell has worked with Wynton Marsalis & the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Diana Krall, Earl King, Dr. John, Marcus Roberts, and John Scofield.

Considered a living legend in New Orleans music,  Powell has performed and recorded with a long list of other noteworthy artists including...including Ellis and Jason Marsalis, Leroy Jones, Nicholas Payton, and Donald Harrison Jr.