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)
SKF NOTE: Previously unreleased Buddy Rich? Always welcome.
“My dad chose setlists for the two nights that I hadn’t heard before. He…shied away from the tried and true and went to places musically that were very different. [T]hankfully, his last recordings were caught on tape for all of us to enjoy forever. It has taken thirty-three years to finally get these recordings out. An absolute labour of love that I never gave up on. At times it was quite a struggle, but in the end, it was all about the music.’ Source: Cathy Rich
A great teacher shares some life
Scott K. Fish, Special to the Piscataquis Observer • November 22, 2019
Freddie Gruber was a great drum teacher. If you have a great teacher in your life, no matter the subject taught, then Freddie Gruber won’t be a total stranger.
I was thinking yesterday of meeting Freddie Gruber in 1982. Excerpts of my interview with Freddie are posted on YouTube and my blog. The years 1980 to 1983 were fun and instructive. Through my job with Modern Drummer magazine, the staff and readers were creating new, in-depth material with familiar drummers.
We were also discovering drummers with great careers who had stayed under the music publicity radar. Some played exclusively in recording studios or in orchestra pits for theater performances. For years, most music buyers showed no interest in knowing specific musicians playing on albums. The soundtrack of “West Side Story,” for example, had composer Leonard Bernstein’s name, but not the individual musicians playing that incredible music.
In the early 1980s, the MD editors and writers were starting to find and interview those kinds of unsung musicians.
Drum teachers were another under the radar group. Often these were local teachers, highly regarded, but little known outside their hometown areas.
Freddie Gruber was a drum teacher in the Los Angeles, CA area. Born in 1927 in New York City, Freddie studied with some of the great classical percussion teachers, befriended many of the up-and-coming jazz players, and developed a reputation as an innovative drummer. Barry Ulanov, one of the finest jazz writers wrote about Freddie in a 1940s column called, The Shape of Jazz Drums to Come.
Too many superb musicians in 1940s-1950s succumbed to drugs. Freddie was caught in that trap, but he didn’t die.
Starting life over, Freddie began teaching, slowly. At first he was answering drummers’ questions between sets in nightclubs. As his reputation grew, his teaching practice grew.
I met Freddie through drummer Jim Keltner. When Freddie visited New York City in 1982 we met in person. He was staying in Buddy Rich’s apartment, and he agreed to an interview. Having him actually sitting down for a taping session was not easy. He kicked the can up the road a few times, saying yes to a time/place, then running out the clock at that time/place without an interview.
Our last chance was in Buddy Rich’s apartment. Freddie and I were at the kitchen table. Before the interview, Freddie talked non-stop, saying all these pearls of wisdom, asking me NOT to turn on my tape recorder.
FINALLY, Freddie gave me permission to fire up the recorder.
Trying to understand Freddie Gruber’s teaching method, I asked, “Suppose I’ve just walked into your studio for my first drum lesson. What happens next?”
Freddie points to a pair of drumsticks on the table and asks me to play something, anything. I tap off a few measures of drumming on the Formica. Freddie asks me to play something again, and I do.
My first drum lesson with Freddie Gruber is over. Freddie analyzes my playing with amazing accuracy. For example, he says, “You don’t have much big band drumming experience, only small groups.” “How can you tell?” I ask. “By the way you hold your arms close to your body,” Freddie says.
And miracle of miracles, Freddie corrects how I was drumming with my left hand, clearing up a challenge dogging me for years and years. In the blink of an eye Freddie showed me a simple, natural way of playing and holding the stick with my left hand. Not much different from the way I had been playing. But, Freddie’s adjustment made all the difference in the world. It was one of those plateaus musicians reach now and then after a long dry spell.
A great teacher, a one-of-a-kind man. I am grateful Freddie Gruber and I had the chance to share some life together.
SKF NOTE: When playing copy songs in bands, I was never big on note-for-note copying of the original drummer’s parts. Sometimes I duplicated drum parts, but most often I captured the flavor of original drum parts while creating my own drum parts. Lacking technique sometimes prompted my decision to do my own thing. Mostly I had no interest in spending time learning to copy drummers on records. Chances are the original drummers came up with their own drum parts — why shouldn’t I do the same?
YouTube is thick with videos of Karaoke drummers playing along note-for-note — including breaks and solos — with some famous record, i.e. Philly Joe Jones’s Billy Boy. I suppose there is some merit as a learning tool in dissecting and memorizing well-known drum parts. But that’s like learning the alphabet, then to spell, then to write, and spending most of your time retyping and reciting famous books: “Hey, look here. I wrote Catcher in the Rye.”
Actually, no. J.D. Salinger wrote Catcher in the Rye. You just memorized and retyped Salinger’s bestseller.
The principal in learning to copy famous drum parts and solos is the same. You didn’t create For Big Sid or Toad. You just memorized drum solos created by Max Roach and Ginger Baker.
As I said, dissecting master drummers has merit. It’s the same for writers studying the works of great writers. Of lumberjacks studying the work of master woodcutters. The principle applies to any profession.
At some point, however, drummers need to find our own voices. That’s hard.
There is a YouTube video of a drummer telling his interviewer about playing one night at The Five Spot when Tony Williams was in the audience. (I’ve forgotten the drummer’s name, but I’ll find it and add it to this post when I do.)
The drummer said during a break he was talking with some people, being somewhat apologetic about his drumming concept — which was still a work in progress. Tony Williams was in that group. He told the drummer – paraphrasing – not to be apologetic, but to consider instead that no one else had yet approached the drums the way he — the Five Spot drummer — was approaching the instrument.
I love that. Is there any doubt Tony Williams was simply passing along a consideration he had about his own way of drumming?
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