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Drum Influences

7/2/2012

1 Comment

 
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I’ve been thinking recently about all the great drummers who had an influence and their signature drum parts. One was the great Vernell Fournier who played with Pianist Ahmad Jamal’s Live at the Pershing and all the trouble his groove on Poinciana gave me as I tried to learn it. As A matter of fact it took me three weeks to learn. Vernell was from New Orleans and what he played was a New Orleans street feel adapted to the drum kit.

This was a feel I had never heard before and I was glad I learned it. Whenever I get to play it. I fondly remember that record and Vernell.  

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Another great player who gave me fits when I was learning to play was the wonderful Don Lamond. Don was best known for his work with Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd, he was also heard on hundreds of records recorded in New York when it was a hot bed of music. He was not only known for his beautiful cymbal sound, but for fills that could leave the band holding it’s breath to see if he would come out on one. It was adventurous big band drumming at it’s best.

Don’s work on Bobby Darin’s Beyond The Sea is memorable. The fills he played broke up sextuplets between the bass drum and the rest of the kit. This was unheard of on a 60’s pop record and it kicked the hell out of the band and Darin.

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Another scary groove for me was Mitch Mitchell’s work on Manic Depression. It was one of the first times I ever heard a Jazzy 6/8 on a rock record.

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Ringo Starr is probably on every drummer's list as an influence. One particular area of his playing that is often overlooked is his ability to move in and out of different meters seamlessly. Check out “While my Guitar Gently Weeps” and of course “ Here Comes The Sun. I was in my late teens with some musical background when both these tunes hit the scene and I still had difficulty getting them to feel right. It is also interesting that George Harrison wrote both those songs.

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Last but not least is the groove played by Zombies drummer Hugh Grundy on “She’s Not There. The edgy syncopated beat on the verse was the perfect accompaniment to the song and it’s memorable bass line.

1 Comment
Pat Calabrese
7/5/2012 01:56:00 pm

Good wide variety of stylistic influences and song selections there. I remember being very young and hearing Kenny Aronoff playing on John Cougar's "Jack and Diane". It wasn't a terribly complicated part, but it woke me up because - Hey! There's a drum solo right in the middle of the song! And it felt great; it was musical and held a danceable rhythm, and I realized a drum solo wasn't just about playing like Animal, it had to mean something too. Kenny is of course one of the best and most recorded pop/rock drummers of the past 30 years. For good reason.
I remember getting into Yes and Bill Bruford and recall how I would nearly break my hand trying to follow his syncopations. "Long Distance Runaround" in particular drove me nuts. It took me a long time of sitting with the song and counting and analyzing it over and over, before I realized that Bill was hitting the snare on every 5th eighth note, while the song went by in 4/4. And then I felt stupid because once I unlocked that, it became so simple! That's Bruford for you!
I remember just starting learning about and listening to jazz and hearing Tony Williams on Miles Davis' "Seven Steps To Heaven". Tony was, and still is, intimdating to me. Those little breaks and that 16 bar solo on "Seven Steps" all came out so musically and so quick, it was too much for me to digest at the time. These ideas seemingly just fell out of him like golden eggs. And he was only seventeen then! I would never get to that point at seventeen - what the hell am I doing??? Later on, listening to his fusion band Lifetime, he could come up with these powerful rhythms and fills that were informed of jazz, but delivered with the brashness of rock. He easily straddled that line between the worlds of jazz and rock that so many others, myself included, have been trying to follow.

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