Troupe – Miles Believed in Spirits

SKF NOTE: After Gil died, sometimes when I visited Miles, he would tell me of a conversation he had just had with Gil earlier that day. He couldn’t believe Gil was dead. He wouldn’t accept it, believed only Gil’s flesh had left.

At first, I was shocked because Gil had died, in the physical sense. But for Miles he had not died, not in the spiritual sense.

I began to realize then that Miles believed in spirits, in a spiritual presence after the flesh was gone. So, as far as he was concerned, Gil was speaking to him.

Every day Miles also told me of visits from Coltrane, Monk, Philly Joe, Charie Parker, and especially his mother and father. He would sit there, serenely talking about what they had told him and what he had said to them, without batting an eye. For him, they really had been there, carrying on conversations.

He was always smiling when he told me of these exchanges across the divide, his face completely relaxed, at ease. After a while, I used to wonder if he talked to anybody else about these otherworldly conversations, and to this day, I still don’t know whether he did.

But Miles was like that. He was in touch with things most of us weren’t. He saw and understood things differently, and he seemed to feel and know things spiritually, almost to the point of having extrasensory perception.

Source – Quincy Troupe, Miles and Me, University of California Press

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Jerry Granelli – You Were On My Mind

SKF NOTE: Recently I listened again to the 1965 hit, “You Were On My Mind,” by the group We Five.

I’ve always liked the song. This was the first time I listened to it while focusing on the drummer’s contribution to the hit song.

“You Were On My Mind” starts with a simple, clean, swinging tap dance sounding beat on unmuffled sounding drums. It reminds me of New Orleans drumming.
The beat continues, with some flourishes, throughout the song.

It took me a few minutes of searching the web until I found out it’s Jerry Granelli on drums. A musical, inventive, inquisitive drummer I first heard in the 1970s on the Denny Zeitlin Trio’s “Live at the Trident” album.

But I’m somewhat red-faced in saying, aside from Granelli’s well-known work with pianist Vince Guaraldi on the Charlie Brown Christmas album, I haven’t listened much to Jerry Granelli.

That situation is changing. Granelli has an extensive discography under his own name, and a long list of appearances on other musicians’ albums. Click here.

I look forward to the listening journey.

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Levon’s Mysterious Left-Hand Callous

SKF NOTE: When I shared my 1977 story about meeting Levon Helm in New York City for a Modern Drummer interview that never happened, I forgot to mention Levon’s puzzling left-hand callous. In the photo here of my left-hand I’ve positioned a USB adapter where Levon’s callous was.

He told me it was from his drumstick. I couldn’t – and still can’t – imagine holding a drumstick, traditional grip, so that it would cause a callous to develop that far back from where the stick rests between the index finger and thumb.

No one at the restaurant table had a drumstick Levon could use to demonstrate. So the topic ended.

But, as drummers often do, I’ve often thought about Levon’s callous, searching for an explanation that may never appear.

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It Was Your Passion for Drums

SKF NOTE: Briefly, many years ago, I gave individual private home drum lessons to a handful of students.

Using Facebook Messenger as a portal, one of those students, Shari, recently sent me an unexpected, touching message.

I remember Shari. Over the years I’ve thought of her many times. She was a quick study and an enthusiastic kid.

Shari’s note reminds me of a good life lesson. Throughout our lives, we make an impression on some of the people with whom we spend time. Chances are we don’t know at the time what type of impression we’re making. If we’re lucky, we’ll find out at some point that we made a positive impression.

Here’s Shari’s note. I’ve left out some of her identifiers.

Shari made my day. She also sent me this photo. I have no recollection of where or when this photo was taken. More so, I can’t believe I went out in public with those pants!

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Hi Scott,

You were my drum teacher when I was 12 years old.

My mom had to break the news to me that you were touring with [musician] Honest Tom Pomposello and could not be my drum teacher anymore. I got a new teacher.., an old timer. He taught all the kids at school…

Nice guy, but he was no Scott fish who taught me my first rudiment, my very first drum beat, as we rock to Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice.”

It was your passion for the drums that put a fire inside me. 45 years later I still have the fire.

So I say to my mentor and teacher: ”Keep playing.”

Shari

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Honey Lantree – Drum Pioneer

SKF NOTE: My girlfriend’s musical tastes are predominantly “lost in the Sixties.” At home and in the car radio is most often tuned to a Sixties music satellite radio station.

I often admire the ingenuity, the individuality, of Sixties rock and pop drummers. For example, the drumming on the Honeycombs’s song “Have I the Right” – which came up on the satellite radio station two or three times recently – really helps make that single.

Who was the Honeycombs’s drummer? I didn’t know.

A quick internet search turned up Honey Lantree. Unfortunately, Mrs. Lantree is no longer with us. But, she left a memorable musical legacy. And, as these two obituaries reveal, Honey Lantree’s entry into the rock world is inspiring.

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The Guardian
Pop and rock
Honey Lantree obituary
Drummer with 1960s chart-topping group the Honeycombs
Spencer Leigh
Fri 28 Dec 2018 13.42 EST

Honey Lantree, who has died aged 75, was that rare thing in a 1960s beat group – a woman. As the drummer of the Honeycombs, who had a No 1 UK hit with Have I the Right in 1964, she disliked being dismissed as “a gimmick”, nor did she buy into the idea of being a pioneer. She just happened to be good on the drums, and that’s the way it was.

The height of Honey’s fame came in the mid-60s when, immediately after the success of Have I the Right, she became the focal point of interest in the band and a magnet for magazines, which chose mainly to write about her clothes, her hair and her looks.

When the Honeycombs split in 1967, Honey disappeared from the music scene to raise a family, but in later life returned to playing live with a reincarnated version of the group from the 80s onwards.

She was born Anne Lantree…. After attending Sidney Burnell school in Highams Park in Essex, Anne began to focus on a career as a hairdresser…. However, the owner of the salon, Martin Murray, also led an amateur group called the Sheratons. Its members would sometimes leave their instruments at his house and one day, in 1963, Anne picked up the drumsticks and found that she had a natural talent. “My jaw dropped,” said Murray, “she was in perfect time and was soon playing like a pro.”

The Guardian Obituary

The New York Times Obituary

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