SKF NOTE: An instructive four minute interview segment with musician Jimmy Heath where he talks about the wonders of Billy Higgins, but also, some funny observations about Heath’s playing with Elvin Jones. “[Elvin] didn’t give you a one [beat] all the time, [If you’re] waiting for a one [beat] — you’re in trouble.”
Good lessons, Jazz Video Guy. Thank you.
SKF NOTE: Will learning to play a melodic instrument make you a better drummer? On balance, yes.
The most common melodic instruments drummers play are piano (keyboards) and guitar. I also know drummers who played trumpet or trombone.
Learning to sing, and familiarity with song forms (32-bar standards, 12- and 16-bar blues, etc.), is comparable to playing a second instrument.
Drummers with no interest or familiarity with melody always play stiff — at least to my ears.
I hear drum beats as melodies. I learn drum beats by their total sound, usually in two- or four-bar phrases. When it’s a beat I want to copy, I copy the sound. When I get stuck, when I’m having trouble reproducing a sound, then I use musical notation to uncover the beat.
Maybe what the drummers’ are playing is built from the song’s melody, or from the bassist’s part. Maybe the drummer locks in to the rhythm guitarist or strong lead guitar riffs.
The melodies can be as simple as a nursery rhyme, or more complex. But, whether it’s John Bonham or Elvin Jones, the best drummers play melodic.
SKF NOTE: Songs are time machines. In an instant (a heart beat?) a song can carry us back to faces and places, experiencing emotions, just as we did fifty years ago.
I was reminded of music’s mysterious power this weekend after buying and downloading guitarist Grant Green‘s album, “Mellow Madness: The Original Jam Master Volume 3.” The album title is deceptive. If you know nothing about Grant Green as an essential jazz guitarist you might think The Original Jam Master music has to do with hip-hop or rap.
It doesn’t.
The song that grabbed me is Cease The Bombing, which took me back to one gig at a Long Island, NY bar in the Hamptons. I was a year or two out of high school, playing drums and singing in one of many bands with my friend, Neil Ralph. The band had a bassist, pianist, Neil on guitar, a trumpet player, and a saxophonist.
Mostly in our bands we played blues tunes. Neil brought to this band Cease The Bombing. I don’t know why I liked the song so much. We played it true to the original. I’m not sure I ever heard Grant Green’s original album cut. Maybe. But I think I first heard Neil play the song at a band rehearsal where I developed a drumming framework.
Neither did I know the original drummer is Idris Muhammad. Had I heard this track back then, maybe I would have played the songs with sticks. But I used soft mallets on my wide open drums, with no muffling. And Cease became a drum feature, my interpretive solo with soft mallets.
Those post-high school years weren’t always easy for aspiring musicians trying to earn a living playing music. But I miss the camaraderie of those bands.
Maybe, overall, that’s the melancholy feeling reborn when I listen again to Grant Green’s Cease The Bombing.
SKF NOTE: Well, what do you know! The classic John Coltrane Quartet recorded an album in 1963, “two years before A Love Supreme, and then stashed it away,” writes the New York Times. The family of Coltrane’s first wife, Juanita Naima Coltrane, found John’s personal copy of the recording session. It’s scheduled for release June 29, 2018 on the Verve label as, Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album as a single album and as a deluxe version with a second album of session outtakes.
Verve has pre-released on of the album tracks, 11383, with Coltrane on soprano sax, along with McCoy Tyner (piano), Jimmy Garrison (bass), and Elvin Jones (drums).
This is such great news. Manna from heaven.
SKF NOTE: The first time a kid with the desire to learn picks up a pair of drumsticks and starts playing the most basic rhythm, he or she has the opportunity to learn from all other drummers present and past. In truth, the kid has the opportunity to learn from, to shape his drumming from, all other musicians present and past.
This is especially true of drummers playing improvisational music. I was going to say “drummers playing jazz,” but plenty of musical styles, including blues, rock, and country, make room for improvising.
In turn, the new kid has an opportunity to create drumming/music from which musicians present and past can find inspiration too.
All it takes to begin is curiosity.
Like most kids, I suppose, my first musical interests mirrored the times. But the first drummer to really grab my attention, when I was age 6, was Gene Krupa. The second drummer to do so was Ringo Starr with the Beatles when I was age 12. These two drummers inspired generations of drummers.
Which musicians inspired Gene Krupa and Ringo? My love of music, drumming, and history prompted me to ask the question. I had no idea I would spend my life looking the answer.
Last week I came across this old movie of Baby Dodds. Mr. Dodds was a major influence on Krupa, the best drummers in Krupa’s generation, and beyond. Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones talk of their sitting in nightclubs studying Dodds’s drumming. And then, how many drummers — to this day — are influenced by Philly Joe and Max?
Yes, it’s disappointing these Baby Dodds film clips were filmed without sound, and the sound of Dodds’s drums here is overdubbed. Still, it’s exciting to see Baby Dodds on film, moving, allowing us to study a little bit of his technique.
I sometimes worry that drummers are losing their curiosity, just when the digital age enables us to mine for musical treasures deep and wide. Odds are excellent we’ll strike gold much of the time.
Life Beyond the Cymbals
A Blog about Music and Popular Culture
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Life Beyond the Cymbals
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Life Beyond the Cymbals
A Drummer's Look at Drums and Drumming
Scott K Fish 
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