Jazz music doesn’t go back much beyond 110 years and for some people it started with Louis Armstrong about 90 years ago. In that brief time the pulse of jazz has been articulated in the big bass drums of marching bands, the left hand of an accomplished stride pianist, a powerhouse thumping of 4 strings of an upright bass or the blend of the bass with electric.
The strongest role of time keeper has been held more often than not, by the great drummers starting back with guys like Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton, who grew up in New Orleans.
These two early jazz drummers were tremendously rhythmic. Dodds brought an evenness of touch to his playing to compensate for problems that had not been worked out by sound engineers trying to capture big bands sound. Zutty brought more attention to the snare drum.
The early drummers stuck to keeping the pulse, they kept working off the downbeat of the 1st beat; they held the band together and often played under them as support. These early drummers held back the band from letting loose and diminishing the groove. They truly made the music swing.
During those early days, someone that grabbed the attention of the jazz world and is still a household name among jazz aficionados is Gene Krupa. Gene learned from the earliest of drummers and took their subtleties and embellished on them.
At the later part of Benny Goodman’s career he was asked who was his favorite drummer and he barely gave any of his drummers much mention. The only one that received Benny’s total respect, despite often clashing with him personally was Gene Krupa.
Krupa was a gentleman and when he lost a cutting contest, he wasn’t afraid to admit it. He just took it as a lesson to benefit from. The one night he tipped his hat to another terrific drummer was when the Goodman Band, which Krupa was a part of, went up against another band whose drummer was the leader. Benny had been holding court and declared the King of Swing by many tabloids and opinion polls. So, it was with a lot of pride on the line that Benny took on someone else who also was known to all the regular patrons of the Savoy Ballroom as “The King of Swing”.
A Drummer Was Once The King Of Swing
If you were to think of what drummer could possibly be the King of Swing, your mind may round up the usual suspects and right away you could be yelling out “It must be Buddy Rich!” or “Art Blakey”, Elvin Jones, Alphonse Mouzon and Billy Cobham were not on the scene yet, so who could it be?
If you had heard a recording of Chick Webb, you might expect that judging by the brilliant quick fills, the flurries the powerful bass drum and those cymbals crashing, the man stepping out from behind the drums at the Savoy would be a big muscular guy and not someone that stood under 5 feet tall, possessed little use of his legs and had a painful and deformed back.
But, Chick Webb’s virtuosity was a huge influence on Krupa as well as Buddy Rich, who said about Webb that he was “the daddy of them all”.
Webb out of necessity had his Gretsch drum set customized and his drums were put on racks, which was very innovative at the time and observed as a major enhancement.
For those that are searching for someone to study for their technique and their understated shear artistry, it would be hard to find anyone better than Count Basie’s drummer Papa Jo Jones. He wasn’t flashy like some of his contemporaries, but his use of the hi-hat and amazing subtle attack was revolutionary.
As Bebop music began to be popular, rhythms were changing and someone that made that happen was Kenny Clarke that accented beats within a measure. His approach was adopted by both Max Roach and Art Blakey as well as Elvin Jones, John Coltrane’s fiery drummer.
As music developed in the style of cool jazz, some outstanding drummers came out of that school as well and they were Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnnette and Elvin Jones was part of this group too.
Drumming today often takes on lots more in the way of coloring the music as well as taking on long solos. There are great players that love their predecessors and play with the same style that made swing popular. Some women have even become keepers of the flame so to speak. Two such terrific players are Cindy Blackman and Terri Lyne Carrington.
Musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Mel Torme learned to play drums to get close to the feel and excitement of the pulse of music. Their understanding of the drums role in music made their contributions even greater. If we wish to learn music, we need to open our ears to the rhythms of the drum.
Tags: drum solos, flurries, quick fills, time keeping
A Bebop player that had tons of technique and could sing every note he was playing, dismissed Larry Carlton’s playing as being just a combination of rock and blues. He said “Any real Jazz Player would make mince meat out of Larry.” That Larry Carlton can read any session sheet’s arrangement, play jazz as well as rock, blues as well as country and has never been limited to any one style, never occurred to this bebop player. That Larry Carlton can bend a note with tremendous intensity and say more with one note than most people can say throughout their whole solo went unnoticed by this particular player.
Being able to hear only some things in music and not others can be something we are all guilty of, but that will only happen if we close our ears and close our minds. When we don’t open our ears to what is musical, then we are cheating ourselves of a great deal of music; and our own playing is left deficient.
Everyone can have a favorite style of music. Often the music we love is music we were listening to in our teenage years. But, a real musician has huge ears; they hear what makes music, well musical! If a guitarist or any solo artist were accompanying a singer and played so loud that the singer has to compete to be heard, then it doesn’t matter if the soloist plays all the right notes and plays amazing melodic lines, if they drown out the singer, it’s as if that musician can’t hear a door slam!
Being a musician and being musical means making everyone else sound great. It means being what’s called being in the pocket. If you want to know what being in the pocket means, just listen to Joe Sample and the Crusaders. When you are listening to a band whose groove makes your feet tap and you can’t pull yourself away if you tried, well the band you are listening to is “in the pocket.”
When someone has really learned how to be musical, you can be sure that they will not only exhibit a total feel for the groove, but they will make music come alive with their dynamics. Having a command of dynamics is one way to draw people into the song, to excite them to cause tension and finally to make everything resolve the way it should.
Another facet of true artistry that goes hand-in-hand with dynamics is phrasing. If we were talking about music as a language, then it would be easy to recognize that just as what you say is important, how you say it can be as important, if not even more important.
Phrasing in music is that secret ingredient that makes what we have special. It’s the difference between just saying words and sharing an amazing story. When we have beautiful phrasing we are playing more than notes. We have opened our ears, our minds and our soul; we are musicians and we are musical!
Tags: dynamics, in the pocket, phrasing
This site’s intent is to bring you an appreciation of fine musicians and how they have influenced music in the past and are doing so now. The site is also about how we learn music, how we can speed up the process, how we can improve on what we already know too.
Every new artist is a reflection of those before them as well as a development out of their own unique experiences. Although every post on here has been about an individual, it would be amiss if we didn’t at times tell you about something we feel is worthwhile reading and learning, so here it is – this month we would like to point to one book that is so hard to put down, it is simply called “The Music Lesson.” This book was written by Victor L. Wooten, a bass player virtuoso. But, note, this book isn’t addressed to bass players, it is addressed to everyone. Notice I didn’t say to every musician, but really anyone, as long as they want to reach within themselves and find the musician inside.
The title for this book could have been called “The Unwilling Student,” because Victor wrote it as a series of discussions that he had with a musical genius that he met in life, that appeared in his life for several days and left his mark on Victor’s playing. He left this mark even though Victor thought this person was very strange and unusual and seemed at first to be making statements that contradicted everything he ever learned from his teachers along, with anything that had made him a pretty good bassist already.
“The Music Lesson” is the kind of book that reads like a novel and so even someone that really didn’t consider themselves a musician could enjoy it. And of course for those that do think of themselves as musicians that want to get better, then it will be an even greater treat, because it doesn’t teach you bland rudimentary theory, in fact it claims not to teach you anything, but rather lets you absorb examples that are stated and see how absolutely right on they are. You will be able to read an interesting story and have it change your concept of what makes music musical.
If you’d like to appreciate music for being more than just notes, then you will find yourself absorbed in “The Music Lesson”. In this book music is described as being made up of many elements. Each element is explained, so that you see how it can fit in your playing and why it deserves to be a part of every true musician’s makeup.
Victor Wooten proves that he is not just a great player that plays with Bela and The Flecktones, but he’s someone that has a great deal to say about music and can help everyone possessing an inquisitive spirit grasp. You may start out being a skeptic or an unwilling student yourself, but not for long!
The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music
Tags: Elements of Music, The Music Lesson, Unwilling Student, Victor Wooten