Transcription: Frankie Dunlop — Jackie-ing

Here's Frankie Dunlop's opening solo chorus from Jackie-ing, on Thelonious Monk's Live In Stockholm 1961— a really great record. As I mentioned, I'm transcribing a whole lot of drum intros this week, so far mostly focusing on 40's drummers— the original bop guys, and swing players who updated their style for the bop era. Clearly all of them did a ton of work with swing bands, and the way they play their intros largely reflects that— in the vocabulary, and in seeming kind of workman-like.

Coming to Dunlop after that, we're suddenly in Technicolor. He's playing the whole instrument, where the earlier players tended to mostly play the snare drum and hihats, and a little bit of bass drum. His playing is fully melodic, and, though simple, fully modern— a little abstract, with no apparent baggage of having slogged through many thousands of hours of playing dance bands (though he certainly did his share of that). He sounds like an artist.

Jackie-ing is a 32 bar tune, but here he plays 36; I thought that might be due to repeating the last four bars on the head out, but Monk always takes it right out, ending on the last note of the melody. Since I have another recording with a 42 bar drum intro, the extra four bars appears to be accidental. Usually the reason for that is that is a combination of the band being lazy about following the form while the drums are playing, and are just waiting for a cue, along with the drummer getting wrapped up in playing the solo, and forgetting to set up the end of the form until it's too late. I guess that can even happen with Monk's band.

Swing the 8th notes, of course. Use the stickings of your choice on the 16ths and triplets— very likely there are some paradiddles, double paradiddles, and paradiddle-diddles in there.

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Audio after the break:


Darn, the audio isn't available free on YouTube— you'll just have to pay the $4.99 to buy the album. Don't chump out— get the record. It belongs in every jazz drummer's (and aspiring jazz drummer's) collection.