SKF NOTE: Jazz promoter JaiJai Jackson provides a real service to jazz musicians, including drummers, with her Jazz Network Worldwide and her Not Just Jazz Network.
Jackson comes from an esteemed musical family. Legendary jazz bassist Chubby Jackson is her father. Drummer Duffy Jackson is her brother.
My introduction to Ms. Jackson’s multi-faceted musical network was through her Linkedin page. She is always generous in opening her page to jazz promoters of various stripes, like me, where I can share some of my blog posts.
About a week ago, for the first time, I came across Jackson’s website, where she was featuring drummer Jimmy Ford and his trio. Ford has impressive musical credentials. He’s also a drum maker!
I enjoyed this video of Ford and his trio playing Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Dream.” Ford, his drums, and his trio sound great.
Interviewing Jim Gordon Scott K. Fish, Special to the Piscataquis Observer • March 31, 2020
Thirty-eight years ago, Monday, January 11, 1982, I was alone in a single room at a New Jersey boarding house. “Bitter Arctic Winds Blow In and Sting New York Area” read the NY Times headline that day.
This was my home for about 2 1/2 years while working full-time as managing editor of Modern Drummer magazine — a new magazine devoted to drumset players.
I loved the work — a once in a lifetime chance to capture for posterity, interviews with great drummers; the musicians who supplied the spark and beat to popular music of all types. Before MD, drummers had to vie for space in monthly music magazines with every other musician. Popular drummers made it into print, but in-depth interviews were rare, and lesser known drummers of musical historic significance were ignored.
My old-style landline phone surprised me when it rang that night. I wasn’t expecting a call. I really wasn’t expecting a call from drummer Jim Gordon.
Derek and the Dominos, Traffic, The Everly Brothers, Joe Cocker, George Harrison, Delaney and Bonnie, and a long list of recording studio hits for The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Steely Dan, Gordon Lightfoot, and many other artists and bands — that is Jim Gordon’s body of work.
Mental illness was taking a toll on Jim Gordon. This legendary drummer was at a low point. Most of his calls to work with bands or in studios had dried up.
Gordon’s good friend, Jim Keltner — another excellent drummer — had called me days earlier, asking, Would Modern Drummer be interested in interviewing Jim Gordon?
Keltner hardly finished his question when I said yes. Unequivocally.
Keltner told me, in general terms, Jim Gordon was having a tough time. Maybe, Keltner reasoned, an MD interview would boost Gordon’s morale.
With a yes from MD, Keltner next had to ask Gordon if he was interested. Maybe he would be, but maybe not. Keltner would let me know.
But Jan. 11, before hearing again from Jim Keltner, Jim Gordon called me at home. I answered Jim’s “how-to” questions about MD interviews, the interview process. I always gave drummers copies of their interviews, as they would appear in print, for approval, before publication.
Jim Gordon surprised me when he said okay to the interview — that very night. I was not as prepared as I would have been normally – not by a mile. Neither was I sure if I had the equipment in my room to record a phone interview.
But I also had a strong sense that if a Jim Gordon interview was going to happen, it was that night or never.
Using a cheap cassette recorder, two used 90-minute cassettes, and a Radio Shack suction cup mic attached to my phone — I recorded an interview with Jim Gordon. MD published the Gordon piece in January 1983. Five months later, Jim Gordon murdered his mother and was imprisoned in California, where he still resides.
Mine is the only Jim Gordon interview in existence. A few times, after his tragic shift, major networks asked to use the interview for exposes on Gordon. I refused. Except for some audio excerpts posted on my blog Jim Gordon’s interview has remained in my box of interview tapes.
Until now.
Starting last week, after 38 years, I am posting the audio of my full interview with Jim Gordon. The tragedy of 1983 should not diminish Gordon’s significant contribution to popular music and drumming.
One drummer on a web forum, after hearing Part A of the interview, said of Gordon, “He sounds just like any other normal person. Hard to comprehend how bad his mental illness was at the time and where it would lead him in less than a year and a half. If you have never known anyone who struggles with mental illness you may not understand. [B]ut if you have it is hard to have anything but sympathy for the man.”
SKF NOTE: Forty-two years up the road it is, perhaps, hard for some in the drumming world to truly understand the initial impact in the 1980s of the LinnDrum drum machine. Suddenly one compact machine could keep perfect metronomic time. It didn’t drink. It didn’t arrive late to gigs. It didn’t smoke, and it produced remarkably good drum sounds.
During one conversation, Max Weinberg told me he could imagine a future where kids who wanted to play drums, would choose the LinnDrum over acoustic drums. “Why go through all the work of learning how to play a double-stroke roll when you can get that sound with the push of a button?” asked Max.
A scary, plausible thought.
This 1982 Bill Bruford interview excerpt is from a longer conversation, very soon after King Crimson released its “Beat,”album, edited/published as a Modern Drummer feature interview.
This is Bruford speculating on why the LinnDrum was invented. And Bruford shares some ways in which he found creative uses in the studio and onstage for the LinnDrum.
Tony Williams“So What” – Tony Williams – Newport in NY Jam Session 1972
SKF NOTE: Here’s some worth-a-listen Tony Williams playing “So What” at a 1972 Newport in New York Jam Session. Except for used copies, I don’t think these albums are for sale anymore.
I’ve owned all four vinyl volumes since they first came out. Many great musicians throughout. The drummers on the different jam sessions, for example, are Alan Dawson, Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Tony.
Here’s the lineup for this jam session:
Bass – Larry Ridley Drums – Tony Williams Guitar – Chuck Wayne Piano – Herbie Hancock Tenor Saxophone – Dexter Gordon, Flip Phillips , James Moody , Zoot Sims Trombone – Kai Winding Trumpet – Harry Edison Whistle – Rahsaan Roland Kirk
SKF NOTE: Andrae Crouch, The Winans, Freddie Hubbard, Koinonia — Bill Maxwell’s work as drummer and producer is among the best. Bill first came to my attention through my ears in 1981. No pre-judging on my part.
“Introducing The Winans” arrived as a new album release on my Modern Drummer desk in 1981. I listened to “Introducing….” on a marginal stereo system in my rooming house residence — and the music grabbed me immediately. Everything about that album was first class: the group, the songs, the arranging, the musicianship, and the production.
The drummer and producer was a name new to me: Bill Maxwell. As of this posting, Maxwell has produced eight Grammy winning recordings.
Long story short, after listening and loving a few more albums with Bill Maxwell producing and/or drumming, Bill stopped by Modern Drummer on August 17, 1982 for a feature interview, published in the August 1983 issue. This is Part 1 of Bill’s interview.
We talk about his early studies in music, both piano and drums, until he started playing six nights a week in night clubs at age 14. Other than a newspaper route, Maxwell said he has never had a day gig.
You’ll hear how Maxwell practiced on drums to “Art Blakey records, Elvis Presley records, Brenda Lee records A weird assortment. Freddie King instrumentals. But I just liked playing with them,” said Maxwell.
He shares how he moved in and out of drug use, and how he adjusted to playing drums straight.
Bill Maxwell was quite personable and enjoyable to interview.
Finally, at one point in this interview I reference a quote by writer J.D. Salinger, which I give to Maxwell to read on a piece of paper. So listeners will have the same information, here is the Salinger quote and source:
“It seems to me indisputably true that a good many people, the wide world over, of varying ages, cultures, natural endowments, respond with a special impetus, a zing, even, in some cases, to artists and poets who as well as having a reputation for producing great or fine art have something garishly Wrong with them as persons: a spectacular flaw in character or citizenship, a construably romantic affliction or addiction – extreme self-centeredness, marital infidelity, stone-deafness, stone-blindness, a terrible thirst, a mortally bad cough, a soft spot for prostitutes, a partiality for grand-scale adultery or incest, a certified or uncertified weakness for opium or sodomy, and so on, God have mercy on the lonely bastards.”
― J.D. Salinger, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction”
Scott K Fish 
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