“When I was playing the Vanguard with Freddie Hubbard, I went back to the kitchen and Philly Joe was there. He said, ‘You’re playing good. You gotta kick Freddie’s ass, make his lips burn.’ All […]
Category: jazz
Embellished filler with RH lead triplets – 01
I’m pretty sure I’ve written something like this before, but navigating my voluminous archives is no easier for me than it is for you. This is a sketch of some ideas in an upcoming[??? -tb] […]
Elvinized Mozambique
An item I was working out with a student— making an Elvin Jones-like Latin groove/texture out of a Mozambique rhythm, for medium tempos, with swing 8th notes. It’s an entry, just the first, most obvious […]
Building a hybrid Reed interpretation
A short item— that’s all I have time for lately: some hybrid Syncopation-based systems are brewing, where we do one basic thing, and alter it one step further, creating some connections between ideas, and opening things up, […]
Daily best music in the world: four by Steve Gadd
Taking a moment to dispel a totally absurd impression of Steve Gadd that has somehow formed in recent years: that he is some kind of conservative “groove” player, which… …no. He’s extremely influential on the […]
Groove o’ the day: Elvin waltz by Kenny Washington
Here’s Kenny Washington playing an Elvin Jones-type of waltz groove on Simple Waltz, on Clark Terry’s 1991 record Live at the Village Gate. It’s kind of an obscure item now, I bought the record then […]
Max Roach / Stan Levey duo transcription: Milano Blues
Here’s a composed drum duo played by Max Roach and Stan Levey, on their album Drummin’ The Blues. They trade off on some parts, and play in unison on others. I believe the whole thing […]
Practical comping lesson with Rothman
Joel Rothman’s books don’t get a ton of attention in the jazz drums-learning world, but they’re good. I like the comping materials in his book Basic Drumming (duplicated in his book Drumming And All That […]
Philly Joe set ups
Here’s a tune involving a lot of isolated kicks on the & of 2, where we get to hear a lot of different ways Philly Joe Jones sets them up— Blue Roz the Milt Jackson […]
Feathering by not feathering
Here’s kind of a funny video by Alvin Atkinson that was shared by a forum user asking about about feathering the bass drum in jazz— the technique for playing jazz time that includes running quarter […]