SKF NOTE: You’re a drummer working steady with a piano trio six nights a week in a club. The piano player is the leader, the main attraction. The trio has a steady repertoire the pianist updates sometimes.
You like playing the trio’s songs. They’re all either fun, challenging, or simply enjoyable to play as support for the pianist or bassist.
But there’s always one song you hate. It’s boring. You’ve played it so often you have nothing creative to give it anymore. (Drummer Ben Riley, who spent three years with Thelonious Monk, told one interview he hates playing, I think, “Blue Monk.”)
You have nights on the bandstand praying the bandleader won’t call the hated song. When a night ends without the hated song, a weight rises off your shoulders.
The real professional drummers suck it up; they block their reservations and “go on with the show.”
There’s no faking it, no phoning it in. Audiences can tell when musicians onstage are unfocused. Certainly fellow musicians can tell.
Playing boring songs well is one part of being a pro drummer.
SKF NOTE: Listening for only the second time to the Bill Evans Trio “Another Time: The Hilversum Concert” with Eddie Gomez (bass), Jack DeJohnette (drums). Evans is one of my “must have” musicians. No, I don’t own all of his albums, but I own quite a few and always enjoy and learn with each listen.
“A Simple Matter of Conviction” was among my first Bill Evans album purchases. With Eddie Gomez (bass) and Shelly Manne (drums) — I love this date, and Shelly’s interaction with Bill is, for my ears, perfect.
Charlie Watts described his first Bill Evans Trio experience as one of listening to nobody keeping time, yet all the musicians knowing exactly where they are in the songs, and everyone’s swinging like gangbusters. Charlie was listening to Evans with Scott LaFaro (bass) and Paul Motian (drums), but all Evans’s subsequent trios have followed that same concept.
Once I heard Shelly Manne with Evans I starting imagining Jack DeJohnette in the trio drum chair. And just like magic, I discovered Verve records in 1968 had released Bill Evans “At the Montreaux Jazz Festival” with DeJohnette and Gomez.
I need to listen to that album with year 2020 years. That it is a Grammy Award winner, I was not a major fan of this album. The fault, I suspect, is mine. So many times had I listened to my imaginary Evans/DeJohnette match up, I was unable to listen with open ears to the real thing.
“Another Time: The Hilversum Concert” is much closer to the match up I had in mind. Both “Hilversum” and “Montreaux” were recorded in 1968. One reviewer said DeJohnette on “Montreaux” is propulsive and exploratory. To these ears, Jack on “Montreaux” plays too loud and busy. But again, my first and last listen to “Montreaux” was decades ago. I will listen again.
“Hilversum” is wonderful. Jack plays great. He’s still exploratory and propulsive, but with a delicate touch. It’s more the trio is communicating with what I tell my 6.5 year old grandson is an inside voice. As I remember it, “Montreaux” sounds more like the musicians are yelling at each other from across a playground. Perhaps they were.
I just bought Bill Evans’s “Some Other Time: The Lost Session From The Black Forest” also with Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette in 1968. This one’s a recording studio session. It should be instructive to listen and compare to “Hilversum” and “Montreaux.”
Whatever the outcome, Bill Evans albums are highly recommended listening for all drummers. Whether the drummer is Paul Motian, Shelly Manne, Larry Bunker, Joe LaBarbera, Jack DeJohnette, Philly Joe Jones, or others — the trio interaction is always top shelf.
John Lee was a New Jersey photographer well established with country music performers. John later moved to Nashville. In 1980 or 1981, John first played me “Old No.1.”
That was my first time hearing Guy Clark and I was an instant fan. This bio gave me more insight into Guy Clark the man and musician. There’s always a chance a bio or autobio will disappoint, will knock the book subject down a peg or two — in the reader’s estimation.
That didn’t happen. Understanding more of what motivated Clark’s songwriting, how he wrote songs — fascinating.
Put it this way, after reading Tamara Saviano’s book I wanted to listen to more, not less, of Guy Clark’s songs.
SKF NOTE: Yesterday I bought Wes Montgomery’s “One Night in Indy” MP3 album. The personnel on the Resonance label album are: Wes Montgomery – bandleader, guitar, Eddie Higgins – piano, Walter Perkins – drum.
It was the date’s “unknown musician” on double bass that got me thinking — again — about all the fantastic “unknown drummers” on radio and various public sound systems who’ve improved my life.
Don’t we all have moments where a drummer grabs our attention — and we have no idea who it is?
History is full of notable drummers on records destined to forever remain anonymous. Once I had grandiose plans to right that wrong to the best of my ability. I would track down personnel on as many records as possible — especially old R&B records. But it seems a project too huge, too expensive, for one person.
Fans on the internet, I suppose, are filling adding to the history books on forums and blogs and such. Maybe that’s the solution.
But I wanted to to tip my hat and say thank you to all the unknown drummers for their never ending grooves, fills, shuffles, swing, backbeats, and their magical drum/cymbal sounds.
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