Joe Morello on Buddy Rich: Pt 4

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Revisiting the transcript of my early 1980’s interview with Joe Morello today. Five or six times Joe Morello said some things about Buddy Rich which were new to me. I also found Joe’s remarks instructive and/or funny. I posted the remarks separately. This is the last one. Links to the first three are at the end of this post.

Joe sat through our entire interview with a pair of drumsticks, sitting near a coffee table on which he had a practice pad. In upcoming posts, Morello demonstrates points he was making about Buddy Rich’s playing. Joe did so playing on his practice pad.

Joe_Morello-420x0Joe Morello: Buddy always seems to come up in the conversation…. But, when he was with Dorsey…, Buddy…would go to 52nd Street [in New York City] and Sid Catlett was playing there. He’d ask Buddy to sit in, and Buddy would get up and go [JM plays some fast licks].

Old Sidney would get up there and – he was so heavy – he’d just do a little drum thing, leave a lot of holes and things, and it use to frustrate the s**t out of Rich. He use to wig out. He’d be playing across the street doing all his gyrations, y’know.

….Buddy was just a young guy, maybe 27, and making a little name. He was always trying to get Krupa’s reputation.

Joe Morello on Buddy Rich Part 1
Joe Morello on Buddy Rich Part 2
Joe Morello on Buddy Rich Part 3  

–end–

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Nine Months Hearing Your Mom’s Heartbeat: You Have Rhythm

Posted on December 12, 2014 by Scott K Fish

IN PROFILE
Japanese drumming workshop encourages rhythm, expression
Taiko drumming a route to free expression
By Caitlin Andrews – Posted Dec. 11, 2014 @ 1:23 pm

AR-141219790.jpg&MaxW=650

Elaine Fong, of Brookline, Mass., stands calmly at her byou-daiko – one of the many types of taiko drums – beating out a basic rhythm. Around her, 13 members of her Taiko Drum Workshop…are keeping time….

There’s a steady wall of noise….

For Fong, the…discovery of taiko, a style of Japanese drumming, during a festival was the start of a lifelong fascination.

“[I]n the 1980s, I was…near a stage, where there was some music and dance. …I heard a boom from the stage.”

…Fong…saw…10 or 12 drums, beat mostly by Asian women, played together to create a massive sound. It was something she had never seen in her life.

“It unblocked something in me, inspired me,” she adds. “It was like they were giving voice to who they were. It just spoke to me.”

…Fong went to an open audition for Soh Taiko, the group she had witnessed at the festival.

Since then, taiko has been a way of life for Fong. She created her own group, Odaiko New England, or ONE, as she likes to refer to it, in 1994….

Fong says one of the attractive aspects of drumming for her is the chance for expression – especially for women.

“It’s interesting – there are around 150 to 200 taiko groups, and most members are women.”

Fong feels women often have a difficult time expressing themselves…. Taiko…can be used as an outlet.

“I have a philosophy: I look at people who say they have no rhythm, and reply, ‘You spent the first nine months of life in the womb, hearing your mom’s heartbeat, so you actually have a lot of rhythm. There’s a key that unlocks the door; humbly, I would like to give you as many keys as possible.”

Full Story 

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New Music from Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Philly Joe Jones

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: I thank Mr. Richard Brody for bringing to my attention two CD’s and one bit of news unknown to me: We may yet hear more of Elvin Jones with the classic John Coltrane Quartet, there is unreleased Tony Williams with Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet, and unreleased Philly Joe Jones with the Red Garland Trio. Merry Christmas, indeed!

The New Yorker – DECEMBER 9, 2014
The Best Jazz Reissues of 2014
BY RICHARD BRODY

The archives are still full of inaccessible treasures. Ben Ratliff, in his book on John Coltrane, reports that eighty-six CDs’ worth of live recordings of Coltrane from the early nineteen-sixties are locked up in Verve’s vaults.

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Another Davis issue, of a May 21, 1966, concert from the Oriental Theatre in Portland, Oregon… features the mid-sixties quintet (with bassist Richard Davis, in place of Carter). The music is acoustic and very free. Williams had played with the saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Sam Rivers, and he pushed the band toward an oceanic, pulse-free swirl that came to the fore when the young bandmates Shorter and Hancock soloed. Though Williams snapped into rhythm for Davis, it was one of wide-ranging, impressionistic broadness, with shimmering cymbal-smacks and tom-tom rumble pushing the beat into uncharted territory.

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Miles Davis’s first stable working band, a [1955] quintet..,, featured John Coltrane.., …Philly Joe Jones, and…Red Garland, whose distinctive style, with bouncy chords chimed out by his interlocked hands, lent the earnest and even brooding band a sideline of warmhearted relief. A new release, coming January 20th, “Swingin’ on the Korner” (Elemental Music), features Garland and his trio from December, 1977, at San Francisco’s legendary Keystone Korner…. Garland is in astonishing mettle here…. What’s more, he’s accompanied by Jones and the bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and their chemistry is passionate. Jones…matches Garland in inspiration and enthusiasm….

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Hal Blaine: Inside the “Eve of Destruction”

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Scott K Fish

ANATOMY OF A SONG
How We Got to the ‘Eve of Destruction’
‘Eve of Destruction,’ which topped the charts in 1965, was slammed by critics and banned by some radio stations. Here’s how the song came to life
By STEVE DOUGHERTY  Updated Dec. 9, 2014 12:06 p.m. ET

Hal Blaine

Hal Blaine in recording studio

[Barry] McGuire: We had booked a four-hour session. It was just Phil [P.F. Sloan] on guitar and harmonica, Larry Knechtel playing bass and Hal Blaine on drums.

Hal Blaine: …I call myself a method drummer. I wouldn’t play a song unless I heard it first. A song is a story, and if you don’t know what it’s about, how the hell are you going to play it?

As soon as I heard Phil’s song, …I went into the military mode. The song starts with the drum, the misterioso sound. Brrrrumm. That was supposed to be sort of a dirge, of men going off to war.

One of the tricks I used to do in the studios: To get a military sound, I would turn my snare drum over and just play on the snare side. For anything militaire, I would turn the drum over and have the engineer put the mic close to the drum. I would actually play that bottom head very quietly. The engineer would pick it up very big, and…they can make it sound like a whole group of drummers as opposed to just one.

On the record you can almost hear a parade of drummers and soldiers with rifles or pitchforks, you name it. To me it was very visual, and that’s the way I work, cinematically.

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Shiela E: Stiletto Heels and Drumming Don’t Mix

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Scott K Fish

Sheila E. drums up music & memoir
By George Varga11 A.M.DEC. 9, 2014

Just how physically challenging was it for Sheila E. to drum…wearing 6-inch stileto heels during Prince’s “Sign O’ The Times” tour in the late 1980s and on her own “Sex Cymbal” tour in 1991?

[H]er hands tingled, her body ached and…she collapsed and was partially paralyzed for two weeks.

“In addition to skewing my spine, pelvis and hips, I’d actually shortened my calf muscles,” she writes in…“The Beat of My Own Drum,” her new Atria Books memoir.

Because I was self-taught, I just arranged the drums the way it felt good to me and was making sure it looked good. There were a lot of things I should not have done.

“Drumming requires the same warm-up and training as when you’re an athlete, and that same sense purpose and passion for wanting to finish what you do and to try and be winner and do the best you can.”

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