Transcription: Philly Joe Jones - Let's Cool One

Here's Philly Joe Jones's drum solo on Let's Cool One, from the Clark Terry album In Orbit. Just the rhythm section plays the tune here: Thelonious Monk, Sam Jones, and Philly Joe. It's a rather old fashioned way of soloing, with a lot of rudimental activity played on the snare drum, while the feet keep time, with the bass drum used mostly at phrase endings, and sparing use of the tom toms, and no cymbals at all.

So, it's mostly about the hands, and is pretty technically dense at times. Jones mostly plays the hihat on 2 and 4 and feathers quarter notes on the bass drum throughout— except where I've written something else for the bass drum. I usually don't indicate stickings in my transcriptions, but I've given some here, where it's clear what he's doing. A couple of items are sort of showy, featured drum solo type of things: the fp rolls starting at bar 9, and the running triplets with the left hand while the right hand plays the tom toms, in bars 19-20. Bar 13-14 will require some special attention if you want to learn how to play it.

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