SKF NOTE: Sometimes feedback at Modern Drummer was negative. But in my experience, such feedback was a good way to learn and, when necessary, to correct the record.
This is a brief, partial exchange I had with Sam “Mr. Rhythm” Ulano who was not happy with a review of one of his method books in a Modern Drummer column. The column writer, Sam said, “makes me look like a jerk.”
Sometimes when calling noted drummers or drum industry people, I taped the calls, if I knew for sure, or if I thought it was likely, I would be using our conversation in Modern Drummer. Taping allowed me to focus on the caller. I would still take notes, but the tapes really ensured accuracy.
After about a minute into my call with Sam I stopped the tape. This conversation is one of a series of my short conversations — almost like a cassette used in old telephone answering machines — with drummers and drum industry people.
SKF NOTE: This 1968 Gretsch drum ad with Mel Lewis — and other great drummers in the series — need to be kept in the public eye, IMO. As I’ve said before, pre-internet, these ads gave young drummers one our few chances to see and study our favorite drummers’ drumset set-ups. That was especially true of aspiring drummers in rural areas where well known drummers visited rarely, if at all.
This excerpt is interesting because in it, Mr. Palmer quotes Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon in describing the evolution of Chicago blues drumming from it’s original, random format, where today’s 12-bar blues was just as likely to be an 11-bar blues or an 11.5 bar blues, to the influence of the 2-and-4 backbeat on blues and rock.
Also, Willie Dixon here echoes a point Max Roach made during one of our interviews. That is, rhythm determines music styles. Max said an A-Major chord is the same whether it’s played in jazz, classical, or any other style of music.
In Robert Palmer’s book Willie Dixon says, “The beat actually changes the whole entire style.”
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“Stop-time wasn’t Muddy [Water]’s only rhythmic innovation during the mid-fifties.
“‘I had to find me a drummer that would drive,’ he says. ‘My drummer [Elgin Evans] was straight right down — bop bop bop bop. I had to part from him ’cause he just couldn’t hit the backbeat. The blues do have a backbeat to it, you know, today.’
“Muddy found a solid backbeat drummer in 1954 in Francis Clay, who stayed with him until the early sixties. Again, putting a backbeat (heavy emphasis on the second and fourth of every four beats) behind the blues didn’t originate with Muddy, but once he made the move, other musicians followed, and the sound rapidly filtered into the emerging rock and roll idiom.
“‘You know,’ Willie Dixon reflects, ‘when you go to changin’ the beats in music, you change the whole style. The difference in blues or rock and roll or jazz is the beat. The beat actually changes the whole entire style.'”
SKF NOTE: This is from the transcript of one of my Neil Peart interviews. The back story is here. In answer to a question, Neil described his typical day when not touring with Rush. His typical day showed a man with many interests, so I asked Neil if he always had a variety of interests.
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Neil Peart: My interests became like an hour glass. As a kid my interests were wide. As a teenager my single focus was drums. A few years later my interests spread out the other way. I became interested in reading, for instance. I never read as a teenager. Just drums, drums, drums.
Scott K Fish: Were you a lousy student in school?
NP: After drums, yeah. Before, I was a great student. I was a voracious reader as a young kid. Then drums just took over when I was 13. I was well into my 20s before my life opened up with other interests.
SKF: Were those years, 13 into your 20s, years of heavy drum practice?
NP: Oh yeah. Mentally and physically.
At school I played on the desk. I got home from school and went on to the drums. I’d be thinking about drum beats lying in bed.
It wasn’t discipline, because I was so willing. It was more like an addiction. I think discipline is temperamental. I have the kind of discipline that brings the will that make you want to do it. There’s a difference. You’re not saying you should practice your drums. You’re saying, “Oh, great. Time to practice.”
It was a real desire. I don’t remember ever feeling forced to practice.
My parents were great. They started me at it so they had to put up with it. I could usually play for two or three hours a day between school and supper — and longer on weekends.
The neighbors were really understanding too. We lived where the houses were close together.
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