SKF NOTE: Among my interviews with drummers, a few are the only known interviews – at least full length interviews – with a few drummers. Jim Gordon is one. Frankie Dunlop is another. And Fred Below is a third.
Fred Below is arguably the father of Chicago electric blues drumming. Mr. Below recorded with Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, the Aces, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, and other pivotal blues musicians. The interview took place on July 9, 1982. An edited version was published in Modern Drummer‘s September 9, 1983 issue as, “Fred Below: Magic Maker.”
I was at my MD desk in New Jersey using a suction cup mic on a telephone land line and an audio cassette to record this interview. Mr. Below was on a land line at his Chicago home.
Even the best interviews have dead air, small talk, and uninteresting talk. For that reason I’ve posted mostly excerpts from the Below interview. This is the first time I’m publishing the entire interview with all wrinkles intact.
I will publish the rest of the interview as time permits.
SKF NOTE: My friend of many years, Candice Baranello, mailed this photo of me taken right around the time I started freelance writing for Modern Drummer magazine.
SKF NOTE: Growing up, I was aware of Zutty Singleton among the drum pioneers, but records on which he played were either not on my music priority list, or they weren’t available. The New Orleans-Chicago early jazz drumming was a style I set out to study in the early to mid-1970s when I was living and playing drums in Davenport, IA. Prior to Davenport I spent most of my time and money listening to big band and modern jazz drumming, rock, and blues drumming.
Zutty is still great listening. And with the advent of YouTube and other internet platforms, there are many more opportunities to study Singleton than there were in the 1970s and earlier. This recording of Drum Face is a case in point.
Finally, here are my Zutty Single notes, slightly updated, for a history of jazz drummers I wrote for publication.
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Zutty Singleton was among the first to streamline the drumset. He used a bass drum, snare drum, two old-style shallow tom-toms, and usually three cymbals. Sometimes two. Music writer Martin Williams credits Singleton with developing the modern drum solo structure. In the mid-1900s drummers rarely took solos.
“Previously drum solos had been either brief breaks — usually a couple of beats, or a couple of bars — or they were random things, in which the player would strut out his tricks until he ran out of them, whereupon the horn men would resume,” said Williams.
“We just kept the rhythm going,” said Singleton. “But when we did [solo], the drummers had all kinds of different sound effects: a bucket gimmick that sounded like a lion’s roar, skillets, ratchets, bells, everything.”
A decade later, Zutty Singleton was leading a trio in Chicago. Clarinetist Jimmy Noone and pianist Jerome Carrington would solo all night. One night Jimmy Noone suggested Zutty take some solos. “Take a chorus,” he’d say.
“Zutty would do exactly that;” said Martin Williams, “he played a chorus to the piece they were doing, humming it over to himself, and not only finishing at the end of 12 or 16 or 32 bars, but also marking off the four- and eight-bars internal phrases of the piece as they came along.”
Source: Zutty, by Martin Williams, Down Beat 11/21/1963
SKF NOTE: Art Hodes wrote a Down Beat column in the mid-1960s which I enjoyed. He was a jazz pianist who knew musicians, including early jazz drummers, like Dave Tough, George Wettling, and Big Sid Catlett.
I valued Mr. Hodes’s first-hand accounts. He might devote an entire column to one musician. Or Hodes might just insert a gem like this one in a more varied column.
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Does the name Sid Catlett ring a bell? What he did with one foot and one bass drum is being accomplished by very few drummers who’re using two [of each].
Source: Sittin’ In, Art Hodes. Down Beat (February 13, 1964)
SKF NOTE: When I finished putting together John Von Ohlen’s Modern Drummer interview, before it was published, I sent him a copy to review. That was my standard practice. Drummers responded, usually, by signing off on the interview as written. Sometimes they clarified what they said during the interview, and sometimes they added to what they said.
This morning, I came across page 28 of Von Ohlen’s interview. His edits and added comments, written in thick pencil, are really good advice for drummers. The meat of John’s comments stray from the question I asked him, but I’m glad he wrote it that way. I have added a copy of interview page 28 to this post.
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Scott K Fish: For the person who wants to listen to some good big band records — what would you suggest?
John Von Ohlen: Well, anything by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis is fun and the best. Not only is Mel Lewis a master drummer, but he’s right in there, all the time, pitching for good music. And fighting for it, if need be.
Count Basie and Duke Ellington really set the roots for our way of playing big band jazz and the way we play figures. Basie’s band is awful good at that. Listen to whatever tantalizes you; whatever your ears go to. That means it’s right for you.
The next thing will present itself in time. Learning all this stuff is a slow process. Take plenty of time in your development. My pace is very, very slow. But I think it’s stronger than having it all thrown at you in a book learning way. Just let it come to you in the natural unfoldment [sic] of your playing. It’s a lot slower, but they say that sometimes the longer it takes, the better the fruition when it does come. Like diamonds. A diamond is the most perfect jewel, and it’s the jewel that takes the longest to make.
Don’t be afraid to take the slow way. Two steps forward and one [step] back.
At first you usually emulate the master drummers. They are usually older, but not always. You copy them. You imitate them because you haven’t found your own way yet.
Then one day you hear, for the first time, your own natural style. Everyone has a different face that they didn’t consciously create. It was given to them at birth. Consequently, every drummer has a different style that he or she couldn’t even begin to conjure up. It was just there naturally. Always had been. But now you are just beginning to be aware of it for the first time. That day is your day of liberation.
From then on, instead of focusing your energies on trying to sound like Steve Gadd, Buddy Rich, Mel Lewis, or Elvin Jones, you begin the real work of mastering your own style, your own way.
Scott K Fish 
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