SKF NOTE: Here are two more drummer photos I’m putting in the public square. Derek Blevins with Jon Butcher Axis is on the left in that band’s photo. I confess I’ve never heard much of the JBA.
The Bus Boys’ first album was a hoot. I still like their song, American Worker. Drummer Steve Felix is also standing on the far left in the Bus Boys’ publicity shot.
SKF NOTE: A Q&A between drummers Art Taylor and Kenny Clarke.
Art Taylor: How important do you feel technique is for playing the drums?
Kenny Clarke: I think any musician needs just enough technique to express himself; I don’t think he should go beyond that. It becomes meaningless if it goes beyond his feelings. It’s always good to have a little technique to spare, but I don’t think you should become wrapped up in technical things as far as music is concerned, because music comes from the heart! It has nothing to do with technique at all as we know it.
Source: Art Taylor, Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews (1977)
SKF NOTE: As a kid, I always loved The Kinks’s music. Their rockers as well as their ballads. And I owned several Kinks albums, from their first LP to either Arthur or Muswell Hillbillies. Then my limited funds were spent more and more on jazz and blues albums.
But a few years ago I heard Ray Davies’s solo album, Working Man’s Cafe, on the radio, liked the songs very much, and starting buying and listening again to his solo albums, and reading his autobiography, Americana: The Kinks, the Riff, the Road: The Story.
Here’s a publicity shot of The Kinks (1982) for their Give The People What They Want album. The three original band members in this photo are, L-to-R, Dave Davies, Ray Davies, and drummer Mick Avory. Keyboardist Ian Gibbons is next, followed by bassist Jim Rodford.
SKF NOTE: Scanning from my stack of old publicity photos, pictures of drummers. I will add these photos as often as I can. Also, if I get more background info on any of these photos I will add that info to my original post.
I was fortunate to see this band in concert when I interviewed drummer Derek Hess for Modern Drummer magazine. Here’s that back story.
SKF NOTE: Drummer Art Taylor’s Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews, which I bought when first published in 1977, remains an interesting read and source book. As time goes by, whenever I open “Notes and Tones,” I find something new, interesting, and instructive. This snippet from Mr. Taylor’s interview with Dizzy Gillespie is a case in point. Mr. Gillespie shares his wise perspective on creating a unified band.
Dizzy Gillespie: “One time a funny thing happened to me. I said to Teddy Stewart, the drummer, ‘You’re supposed to inspire the soloist.’ He said, ‘Have you ever thought that the soloist is supposed to inspire me?’ I didn’t say nothing else. It’s true, we’re all supposed to inspire each other to great heights.
“If you have a group, the group is like a painting, a masterpiece. Each one of the instruments represents a specific color, and the diversity of the colors makes it beautiful. You’ve got five pieces, and none of them sounds alike, but they must have unity.
“So you take red, orange, blue, green or purple: Each color in its diversity is supposed to be beautiful. Each one has a role, and when one of the colors overlaps onto another, you have chaos. Therefore, each one should be thinking in terms of the whole, in terms of the beautification of the diversity of the instruments.
“Paintings don’t clash, like a purple going over into another color. They stay what they are, but it’s the whole picture that makes for the togetherness. Unity.”
Source: Art Taylor, Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews (1977)
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