Buddy Rich: Navigating Strange Drumsets

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Following up a clip posted where guitarist Les Paul is telling a club audience of the time Buddy Rich told Les he, Buddy, was going to get a guitar, become a folksinger, and give up drums. Here’s another clip, from Brett Rosenberg, Buddy Rich on In Melbourne Tonight, where Buddy performs mostly as a standup singer.

The segment closes when stage hands roll out onstage a drumset. Buddy sits down, counts off an uptempo riff blues, and away he goes. Buddy’s ability to sit down, burn, and navigate strange drumsets always impressed me, especially his adapting to strange snare drums.

This Melbourne Tonight clip is a case in point. The drums, I think, are Premier. To cut down on travel costs in those days, drummers sometimes traveled with their cymbals and maybe their own snare. Drummers also toured and made arrangements to use drums and cymbals along the way. (Here’s a post about Jimmy Madison rescuing a touring Joe Morello from a substandard snare drum.)

Buddy seems slightly uncomfortable with this snare drum tuning. (Buddy would say “tensioning.”) He’s also missing his two crash cymbals — which works to the advantage of drummers watching this performance. Both the overhead and side cameras provide fascinating closeups of Buddy’s hands, arms, and body motion.

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Ed Thigpen Plays ‘Chicago’ Live 1961

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Many thanks to Wladi Plus for posting this clip of one of the great jazz trios, and certainly, the greatest of many great Oscar Peterson Trios. This 1961 clip is a lesson in how well Peterson, Ray Brown (bass), and Ed Thigpen (drums) played music as a team. It was Ray Brown, I think, who once said in an interview that this trio was unique for its song arrangements. The three men didn’t simply rely on play the head, blow on the tune, repeat the head, out. They worked at arranging songs.

The cameramen give us a good (but too short) up close view of Ed Thigpen — whose silver sparkle Ludwig drums remain a classic sound. No wasted motion, no hypertension, from any of these players.

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Eddie Locke: Consummate Tasteful Drumming

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: This week I bought the MP3 version of Coleman Hawkins Today and Now album I first bought in the early 1970s as a vinyl LP cut-out for about 79-cents. Working at the time as a store salesman in Sam Goody’s record department, a couple of times, Rose, my co-worker in charge of music played on the store PA system, played Today and Now. Always, that music caught the ear of a customer or two who then asked Rose, “What’s that music you’re playing?” And we sold a few Today and Now albums.

I’ve thought about re-buying this album a long time, always buying albums I hadn’t heard instead.

How many times did I listen to – even play along with – drummer Eddie Locke on this record? Along with Connie Kay on Paul Desmond’s Easy Living, and J.C. Heard on John Wright‘s Nice ‘N’ Tasty, and a few others — Locke on this album is the consummate tasteful drummer. No flash, no whiz-bang. But it’s hard to find a spot on this album where a busier Locke wouldn’t be overplaying.

This group — Tommy Flanagan on piano, Major Holley on bass, Eddie Locke on drums — was Coleman Hawkins‘s working quartet, and you can hear that on this album. There’s serious playing throughout, mixed with humor, reflection, and always swinging. The Love Song from ‘Apache’ may be my favorite track from this album, which is not to suggest the other tracks are less than excellent.

 

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Beyond Traditional Grip

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Scott K Fish
rich_morello_db

SKF NOTE: I grew up believing traditional grip was the gold standard of drumset players. There was a best way, if not the right way, for drummers to hold drumsticks: traditional grip.

Traditional grip functioned like a fine-tuned machine. Not every drumset player had the skill or discipline to master traditional grip. The right combination of finger, hand, wrist, and arm movement; of drumstick weight, and the best distance between drumstick and drumhead, are all part of the mastery. Having control of the drumstick bounce at all volume levels, from very loud to a whisper — this too needs mastering.

In my life the living drumset masters of traditional grip were Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson, and Joe Morello [RBM]. Yes, there were traditional grip drumset players with almost, but not quite, the mastery of RBM. But these three drummers had taken traditional grip where no man had gone before.

There was always an aura of mystery around traditional grip, as if mastering the grip involved secrets passed on to a select few pupils from a few elder drum masters. Billy Gladstone’s technique was spoken of and revered by RBM. But ask any one of those drummers to describe Gladstone’s technique, to tell you what they learned from Gladstone? Their answers were always vague.

It’s odd now to realize all my life I have been judging drumset players’ technique against RBM.

For example, the first time I heard Art Blakey drumming was on record. It was many years before I had a chance to see Blakey play live. He was with his Jazz Messengers at The Five Spot in NYC playing a white four-piece Pearl drumset. Art played great. I studied his drumming the whole night: his press roll, how he sat at the drumset, his volume in relation to the rest of the band, his hi-hat playing, how his drums were tuned — everything. And somewhere in there I was thinking, “Art plays so great. Imagine if his mastery of traditional grip was at the BRM level?”

I don’t think that way anymore. Most important is what drummers are communicating, what they are saying on their instruments. If their sound reaches us on some level, if we can identify with a drummer’s sound — who cares how close their mastery of traditional grip is to Rich, Morello, or Bellson? If a drummer’s saying something, who cares if he’s using traditional grip at all?

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Mel Lewis: Pearl Drums, Al Duffy, Tours & Clinics 1982

Posted on March 13, 2018 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: This is an updater from Mel Lewis in 1982, probably for Modern Drummer magazine. It’s great hearing Mel’s voice again. Historically, there are some interesting moments here.

Mel has just endorsed Pearl Drums. He gives the company high marks, and he credits Al Duffy at Pearl as the deal cinch-er for Mel.

Also, Mel mentions he just finished a tour with Benny Goodman, has upcoming dates with the Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard, Arizona, Australia, and other places. The tape ends mid-sentence with Mel talking about working again with Lionel [Hampton?].

As I’ve said before, I’m finding this and other excerpts on one cassette I used many times to tape brief conversations with drummers and drum industry people. Sometimes — like this time — one conversation was recorded over with another conversation.

If you listen carefully you will hear, near the end of this tape, we end and restart our conversation. After we stopped the tape, I think Mel remembered a couple of dates he had forgotten to mention, so we fired up the ol’ recorder and added that info to the mix.

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