SKF NOTE: Thank you to the “erwigfilms” YouTube channel for preserving, and making publicly available, this extended Louie Bellson drum solo.
“erwigfilms” writes, “Bellson Blues part 1 Bellson Louie 1967 Jazz at the Philharmonic, London 1967.
“In a concert like this a good drum feature is always a succesful part of the evening. What better than Louie Bellson. After a drum intro there are some mighty sax solos by Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter before we go into Louie’s feature.
SKF NOTE – This 1984 Japanese translation of one of my Neil Peart Modern Drummer stories has been with me since 1984.
I vaguely remember MD publisher Ron Spagnardi telling me he had received this reprint request. Just as I sort of recall photocopying this piece when it arrived by mail at the MD office.
Thanks in advance to anyone fluent in Japanese who can paint a more complete picture of this piece. Knowing even the title and the subheading would be a kick.
As new information arrives I will add it to this blog post.
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SKF NOTE – Thank you DrumForum.org member s1212z for this first translation of Neil Peart’s 1984 MD article.
s1212z Very well Known Member Joined Oct 2, 2022 United States, Boston MA
From my interpretation, the heading reads something like this:
They will never break away from the trio format, Rush continues as an energetic operation. At the cornerstone is drummer Neil Peart. Always talking in a calm tone, but surpassing the boundaries of being a musician. Neil’s parts try to go beyond the limits. That will all be explained in this interview.
Playing to the masses is not something a musician does, that is what a marketing entertainment director does.
Then the interviewer mentions something about he is the Mark Twain of rock, such as the writing of “Tom Sawyer” or album “Signals”, often writing in (perspective) of like Huckleberry Finn…or something like that. But sounds like you were the interviewer (?), so you probably know best from the original transcript!
I’m far from perfectly fluent and still a learner, so grain of salt on some of these translations 🙂
SKF NOTE – November 15, 2021, in my blog post, “With Regrets to Donald Bailey,” I praised the wonderfully creative drummer Donald Bailey, Sr, and I told the story of how, back in the early 1980s, I dismissed a suggestion to interview Bailey for Modern Drummer magazine.
Decades later, I was more familiar with Bailey’s playing and discography. Best known for his work with Jimmy Smith, Bailey also had many first-class albums with Hampton Hawes, Jimmy Rowles, Harold Land, Esther Phillips, Lou Donaldson, and others.
But Donald Bailey Sr was dead. And I regretted my earlier decision to pass on even asking if he would consent to be interviewed.
October 1, 2023 I received a reader response to my “With Regrets to Donald Bailey” post:
“Hey Scott I would love to talk to you about my Father. Just came across your blog today.”
The sender was Donald Bailey, Sr’s son, Donald Bailey, Jr, who is also a drummer.
I jumped at the chance to make amends for my 1980s lack of judgement with two conversations with Donald Bailey Jr. One in late May of this year, followed by a conversation in mid-July of this year.
This interview is a combination of our two conversations. Bailey Jr shares several insights into his father’s playing – both as a drummer and as a chromatic harmonica player. We covered the same ground I would have covered with his father.
Enjoy.
Donald Bailey Jr took these photos of Donald Bailey Sr’s famous ride cymbal in May 2024.
SKF NOTE: Ryan Holiday’s picks for July reading arrived a couple of days ago in my email. Holiday owns and operates The Painted Porch bookstore, he’s a writer, and he’s also a blogger.
It is gladdening to see Neil Peart’s book, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, on this July list of reading recommendations. I will write Holiday to thank him. And I am sharing with my blog readers what he said about Peart and Ghost Rider.
First, here’s an overview of the Painted Porch bookstore:
The Painted Porch is a small town bookstore, literally right in the heart of Main Street, Texas. Owned and operated by Ryan Holiday (author of The Obstacle Is the Way, The Daily Stoic, etc.), The Painted Porch carries a small collection of only our absolute favorite books. We don’t care what’s new or trendy, only what’s amazing. If it’s on our shelves, it’s because we read it and think that you should too. Period.
And here’s what Holiday said about Peart’s Ghost Rider:
There are some books that you simply cannot fully appreciate until you have kids. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is one of those books. Ghost Rider, which I read on Kindle in May 2010 (crazy, I just checked the dates–I bought it again exactly 14 years and 2 days apart), is another. Neil Peart, probably the greatest drummer of all time (of the band Rush), lost his 19-year-old daughter and then his wife 10 months apart. A car accident and cancer shattered his life… so he hit the road on a motorcycle, trying to preserve his “small baby soul.” As David McCollough detailed in his book Mornings on Horseback, when Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother in the same house on the same day, he did something very similar. “Black care,” he wrote, “rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.” Ghost Rider, although a very different style than Bryson’s In A Sunburned Country, is another great among the travel/road trip memoirs. It hit me very differently now that I have a family of my own, and because I now know that after Peart picked up the pieces of his life, he would be struck down by cancer in 2020. What a life and what a talent, though. I saw Rush on their 30th-anniversary tour in high school. I was very lucky to witness his greatness in person.
Scott K Fish 
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