This is a super-classic bit of 70s fusion, from Stanley Clarke's first self-titled solo record, with drumming by Tony Williams. I got this album used for 3 bucks around 1985, when I was buying everything I could afford with Williams's name on it. Our tune, Lopsy Lu, has a triplet groove with a strong 4 feel, the type of which people don't play much any more, but which is similar to some other things from the period, like Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground and Isn't She Lovely. There's a lot of improvising here, but Tony settles on these grooves for extended periods:
And:
And:
The beats are easy enough by themselves, but the tricky part is playing your face off on the whole rest of the tune, the way Tony does, without having the groove fall apart. A combination of things— I haven't thoroughly analyzed what they are— make it difficult to blow on this feel. Mainly, the dotted quarter note pulse is difficult to play off of, and you really get married to the triplets— you have to play them strongly, which gets to be a burden. It's easy to lapse into a duple subdivision when you're improvising, which to me is a groove-killer in this style. This feel and tempo can feel really unstable, and want to drift badly, but this track starts and ends pretty much exactly at dotted-quarter = 131.
I did do a complete transcription of the drumming on this tune; I may try to send it to Drum! or Modern Drummer, or maybe I'll post it here as a special feature when and if I do a fundraiser. It is a substantial piece of work.
If you've been reading the blog regularly, you probably know that partido alto is the name of a rhythm used in Brazilian music. It's also a style of samba, a funk samba groove, and the title of a famous tune by Chico Buarque, and also a fusion-era tune... which uses that funk samba groove. There is some overlap between those things— an actual Brazilian music expert might be able to explain the distinctions between them precisely. We're transcribing the fusion tune, as recorded by Airto in 1979, on his album Touching Me Touching You. I've written it out just up to the beginning of the solos:
The phrasing is ambiguous, and at first it may be difficult for some people to even find the 1— the “downbeat” of the groove lands on the & of 1, with the snare drum (do watch the rhythm video above for help with that). Each four measure phrase could begin at the start of each line, or it could begin on the third measure of each line— the melody does land strongly on the third measure, and the solos begin on the third measure. But the keyboards enter at the beginning of a line, and putting the phrase on the third bar puts a phrase break in the middle of the unison ensemble figure (@ bars 41-44, and several other places). And that puts the bulk of the melody in the second half of the phrase, which I just don't like. The way I've written it, it's a little bit of a fractal; the shape of the larger structure is similar to the shape of the (two-measure) groove. They each start weakly, and are strong in the middle; the groove has the solid down beat on the bass drum in the second measure, and the phrase has the melody of the tune landing on bar 3. Try feeling it either way, and see what works for you.
To master the basic groove, you could just play the second and fourth lines many times. Airto appears to be using five tom toms here— if you don't have them, it doesn't matter; just play the written rhythm on whatever drums you want. The break at measures 45, 53, and a few other places, feels a little weird; make sure you take a moment to actually count it out— you may be able to listen and guess at it and be close, but you want to know exactly what's going on. Airto is not guessing at it. The starting tempo is half note = 78, but by the end of the solos it has picked up to HN=88, and settles a bit to HN=85 when the tune comes back in.
Must play more music where I can just leave the hihats open all day. This is Al Foster's groove on the tune Billy Preston, on the Miles Davis album Get Up With It; kind of a sleeper album. I think a lot of people bought it for the cover photo, and never listened to it a second time. But it's great. Do check out Rated X, our other GOTD from this record.
Foster plays no fills, and the variations, mostly with the bass drum, should be easy to hear.
Here's a whole lot of kickass 70s stuff. The drumming here is by John Guerin, one of the great L.A. studio drummers of the era. He plays a large set here, with five concert toms, and, fairly or not— to everyone else— he kind of owns the giant 70s tom fill in my mind. The piece is Lalo Schifrin's Main Title from the Dirty Harry Soundtrack. Lalo himself is the king of burning 70s TV and movie soundtracks, and this is one of my favorites.
The tempo is pretty cooking, but the 16ths swing a little bit on much of this, which is rather difficult to pull off. There's a good amount of somewhat linear playing, with the right leading, and the left hand filling in, especially on the tom fills. Guerin has a little non-independent method for making those open hihats: he plays both feet in unison on the close notes— almost all of them.
Because I don't think your funk is 70s is enough, here's some more Mandrill, with one of the greatest-named drummers ever, Neftali Santiago. And just a great drummer, period. This is Too Late, from the album New Worlds, by Mandrill. It's 1978, Disco is happening, and in keeping with the times, funk drummers are simplifying and cleaning things up a bit. Santiago is pretty freewheeling on the band's earlier records, but here he matches the vamp all the way through. And he still sounds absolutely great.
The great funk hihat accenting debate— which I started, with myself, and no one else is participating in— continues with track; there is no regular accenting the hihat on the beat here. He plays it generally pretty strong and even, but I notice he'll ghost the downbeat every so often; and he'll accent occasionally, usually off the beat, along with the bass drum, or not.
There was a period in the 70s when funky music had a kind of unbridled quality you don't much hear any more— there was a lot of screaming, and everyone seemed to be fully embracing having a really good time. I was a kid then, but I got a definite impression of that feeling in the music. Today's song is a good example of that vibe: Tee Vee, by the New York funk band Mandrill, from their album Solid. The drummer, Neftali Santiago, is a complete badass— he's right up there with the Tiki Fulwood and Jerome Brailey for the quintessentiality of his funk. To coin a phrase. Until the orgy of James Brown sampling at the end of the 80's, this was funk, in my mind: slow tempos and fat backbeats. Aside from David Garibaldi, I don't know who was doing the more hyper thing people have been so in love with since the 90s— that style was a part of history, and had to be revived.
Here I've transcribed a representative sample of the type of variations to the groove occurring throughout the song, along with a few of the big fills:
The hihat is played open in all the examples, and all the way through the song. The snare hits are at a fairly even volume— maybe the 2 and 4 are a little stronger, and the 32nd notes a little softer, but do not ghost the other notes. I don't know what sticking you would use to play the fill at 2:51, after the opening paradiddle-diddle, but it's not real important— I do think I have it on all the right drums.
Here's a cowbell groove from the studio legend, tragically insane, Jim Gordon. It's Jump Into The Fire, from Harry Nilsson's album Nilsson Schmilsson, which for people not around in the 70's will be best known from the “last day” scene from the movie Goodfellas:
Kind of like hearing them on Bugs Bunny is my only connection to a lot 30's songs that are now jazz standards. There's no shame in it. Anyhow, the groove:
There is some layering of percussion parts going on, so it's possible he's not playing the cowbell live with the drumset track. Early on, the bell drops out during the drum fills, consistent with it being played with the drums, but later there seems to be a ride cymbal sounding (it's low in the mix, and the sound is possibly from another source) while the cowbell continues, and the bell seems to continue through the drum fills. Generally the 16th notes in the first measure are played stronger than the ones in the second measure, hence the parentheses on the latter notes. Gordon's feel is totally different than what you hear from drummers playing similar music today. He's absolutely solid, but with an edge— there's a quality that's absent from later players who are more perfectly metronomic and squared away.
This is by 70's session drummer Alvin Taylor, who's fairly little-known, but is on a lot of stuff. Here he's with Bill Withers, on the album Menagerie. The song, Lovely Night For Dancing, is kind of a high-70's, feel-good, throwaway number— Ain't No Sunshine it ain't— but I appreciate it on its own terms, and for the craft of it. Here's the groove Taylor holds for the whole tune almost without variation:
Like a lot of our recent GsOTD, there's not a lot of drummery interest here, but this is almost our whole job. Laying down time is exciting. It's exciting to listen to someone do it well.
I could've handled this one as a groove o' the day, probably, since the variations over the course of the piece are fairly minor, but I felt like writing out the whole thing, and didn't want to miss any of the fills. The tune is Anti Love Song, by the outrageous Betty Davis (née Mabry), with drumming by Greg Errico, best known for his work with Sly & The Family Stone. His playing here is just what funk is to me:
The 16th notes are swung slightly. There is some very faint ghosting on the snare drum and hihat at various points in the song, which I didn't write out— there's not enough audio information to be meaningful, and it's not especially important. We can assume that some of things he plays as the grooves get busier may be happening inaudibly earlier on. Also see my transcription of Nasty Gal for more Betty Davis, and more of this type of hardcore 70's funk.
That is, Airto's feet are doing baião, everything else about the tune is just early 70's funk jamitude. The accents on the floor tom are pretty subtle; he just plays the right hand a little stronger than the left.
Get Airto's Virgin Land at Amazon.com. You should really be able to get this one at your local used vinyl store, though. I don't link to iTunes, but you could try them, too.
I told you I mean to do a lot of these this year-- hopefully enough to do a dedicated book of them early in 2013. Today we've got Mike Clark playing with Herbie Hancock on the soundtrack from the Charles Bronson movie Death Wish. The 70's were a time of very distinctive funk grooves, and Clark-- a jazz guy who found himself caught up in Oakland's funk scene-- was one of the major players responsible for that.
That last bass drum on the 'a' of 4 is optional. You can hear that arranged stuff aside he sticks pretty close to this groove for the bulk of the track, before opening it up towards the end. This would actually be a good candidate for a complete transcription-- let me see what I can do about that...
See also our GOTD with Clark's famous groove from Herbie Hancock's Palm Grease, off of the album Thrust.
Here's another hugely famous piece of drumming-- one of the best-known of the 70's-- by Mike Clarke on the tune Palm Grease from the Herbie Hancock album Thrust:
Here's a live version of another fusion classic: Billy Cobham's "Anteres" - The Star, from a record I stole from my brother a long time ago, Alivemutherforya:
That's a rare use of the Tama Octobans you hear there. After the break is the original studio version of the same tune from Billy Cobham's Magic:
This is kind of a remarkable track by Andy Newmark, Anticipation by Carly Simon, one of the first and biggest hits he played on. It's an easy thing to dismiss— if you're over about 40 years old you've heard it on way too many gas station AM radios, and then, ad nauseum, on a Heinz ketchup commercial— but it's a serious piece of drumming, and music.
What's interesting about it- and what I'm noticing across the board as I get in and really study some of these 70's things— is the amount of shape and variety there is in the part. In fact “part” isn't the right word; it's a performance— it is obviously played very much in the moment, rather than crafted for the perfect choice of notes. [Update: that's contradicted by the interview below— he actually spent a lot of time thinking about the fills]. The drums track the dynamics of the tune very sensitively, not only in volume but in content— every single measure is different. Very different from the totally regular, completely worked-out thing expected now.
The transcription presented some problems— the frequency of his cymbal is very close to the guitar's range, so it's sometimes difficult to tell which is which, and again, there is so much shape to his playing that at the lower end of the dynamic range things get lost. During the very soft second verse I had to just render the time as slash marks, and write in the fills- what is audible is too sketchy to make a usable transcription.
Much of the riding is done on the crash cymbal (it sounds like a 16")- during those sections he tends to play 8th notes on the hi-hat with his foot; I've mostly left that out except where it's integral to the part. Accents are for shape, rather than absolute volume— accents are just louder than the surrounding notes. The 2 and 4 on the snare are always pretty strong.
2023 update: John DeChristopher interviewed Andy Newmark about recording this song:
New feature: I'll mention records that have meant a lot to me and write a little bit about them. Writing about musical experiences is not my thing, and I am not a jazz critic, so I'll keep my commentaries concise and idiosyncratic. Terse even.
Charles Brackeen - tenor and soprano sax
David Izenson - bass
Paul Motian - drums
This has been one of my all-time favorite records since I found the LP used (probably a promo) for two bucks at Portland's Crossroads Music in the late 90's. Features one of my favorite drum solos (on Dance), some of the friendliest Motian compositions recorded, the great David Izenson doing a lot of beautiful arco playing, and the interesting, elusive saxophonist Charles Brackeen. The blowing is raucous but also spacious. Rare overdubs nicely handled on Kalypso and Lullaby. Lush-sounding. Each piece and the entire album are beautifully balanced.
