Bill Stewart

I've been listening to a lot of John Scofield this week, and realized I basically never talk about Bill Stewart here. It's weird, he's on anyone's short list of top living jazz drummers, particularly of those who became known in the past 35 years. As a massively influential drummer, he became well known right between Joey Baron and Brian Blade. 

I first heard him on Scofield's 1991 record Meant To Be, and it was one of those epochal moments, like the first time I heard Dave Weckl— like this undeniably is the new thing. I associated what I was hearing with Roy Haynes, who was getting revived about that time via Pat Metheny's record Question & Answer, and it seemed cool that Stewart seemed to be influenced by him. 

In particular there was one spot where he just played some quarter notes— Big Fun, the track below, at the end of the head— from which I took a big lesson, about using the full range of what you could play, having creative access to all of it. Any time something like that jumps out at you, it's a big deal. 

He definitely seemed like a completely fresh animal, a new generation of player— highly musical, a highly skilled improvisor, clearly with broad tastes, a very sharp musical intellect, and creative with all four limbs. He seemed to be on a new level with all of that, while not being merely amazing.  

He has been massively influential in terms of sound— I'm thinking about his sound on three fairly early recordings, that were very influential on me, at least: Scofield / Meant To Be, Pat Metheny & John Scofield / I Can See Your House From Here, and Joe Lovano / Landmarks. It's a very cute sound, with a cranked snare drum, and high, round-sounding toms and bass drum. It's very clean, pretty, and musical— maybe Jack Dejohnette's sound was the closest recent influence to it. It's so ubuquitous now that it seems inevitable, but the other big people before Stewart were Joey Baron and Jeff Watts, both of whom used bigger bass drums, and had punchy or medium tunings with their toms, respectively. 

His cymbal didn't jump out at me so much, but it's clearly an exemplary sound— a smaller, more transparent K sound than Brian Blade's, the other big recent influence in that area. Youtubers have turned his sound and technique into a meme— of course it came simply through him dealing with a slightly too-light cymbal, a familiar situation: 

And listen: I'm not being disparaging calling his sound cute, it's a particular vibe to me, like Jan Garbarek here:
 

He has a distinctive touch on the snare drum as well— expressed here in a New Orleans-type street beat groove, which was hip “new” thing about that time. Since then it has become an expected regular type of groove in jazz, largely* off the strength of what Stewart was doing with Scofield. 

* - I can't not mention Jeff Watts here, who had the famous recording of Caravan with Wynton Marsalis, and also Terri Lynn Carrington, who played the groove on a previous Scofield record. 

Finally, here's a great interview with him, by Pablo Held— I hadn't listened to it before writing this, and I'm happy to see a couple of my observations confirmed.  

There's a great part about improving time at about 43 minutes in: 

So, I don't know why I don't talk about him much— partly I've been more immersed in older players since I've been writing this site. He's clearly a durable artist, he's doing the real stuff— I'll listen to some players, and they may be great, but their concerns clearly seem different from mine, and I can't sustain a lot of interest. Stewart is not in that category, I'll be listening to him a lot more in coming weeks.