This week, Award-Winning Filmmaker Ben Makinen, asked me a series of good questions about Buddy Rich. I thought our exchange would make a good blog post.

Ben Makinen: Given all of the drummers you have known and interviewed would you be able to summarize their opinion of [Buddy] Rich? Is there a general consensus on his place in jazz history as a great jazz musician … or was he seen mainly as a great technical drummer?

Scott K Fish: During a Down Beat magazine drummers roundtable, Shelly Manne said usually he was in awe whenever he saw Buddy Rich plat drums. However, soon after Buddy’s performance, said Shelly, he couldn’t remember anything Buddy played.

Shelly’s is the most severe criticism of Buddy Rich by a great drummer I can recall.

Rich was said to sometimes play too loud, too busy. His drums lacked a warm sound. I’ve read or heard those complaints about Rich.

But, as recently as May of this year, when I asked NRBQ drummer, Tom Staley, about drummers other than Joe Morello who influenced him, Staley said, “Of course, Buddy. What can you say? He was just in a place by himself. You can’t really compare him to the others. He was just amazing.”

Staley’s summation of Rich as a drummer is, by far, akin to how I’ve read or heard other pro drummers describe Rich’s drumming.

During a 1979 interview, Joe Morello, who is often compared with Rich, did a complete job of describing Rich from a great drummer’s point of view. Everything Morello said about Rich is available on my blog starting here:

But here’s the meat of Morello describing Buddy Rich:

“Buddy’s a good friend of mine. Buddy and I have always gotten along very well. And we used to fool around together with the sticks…. He’s got very good technique. It’s not as fast as you would think it is. He looks faster and he sounds faster than he is because he’s clean. Everything he does is very clean.

“There’s (sic) faster drummers, that’s for sure. If you want to just look at it from that. From strictly technically there are much faster drummers….

“But Buddy puts it together so beautifully. He builds this picture real nice, y’know. [Buddy] just does his thing. That’s all. He’s got great ears. He listens. He hears real well.”