Transcription: Mickey Roker comping

Mickey Roker's accompaniment of Dizzy Gillespie's solo— the first three choruses anyway— on Birk's Works, from Gillespie's album Big 4. Roker has a deep groove I associate with musicians who have played a lot of R&B. It's a very substantive sound, without necessarily being loud.

He plays the bass drum through most of this— “feathering” it, if you want to call it that. This is someone who learned to play the bass drum in music where it was meant to be heard. That's a different thing than the modern jazz ed thing of learning it as a vestigial technique in the first place.

The hihat is consistent, but he doesn't play it strongly. I associate him with a strong quarter note pulse, but he also plays a lot of anticipations— see the accents with cymbal tied through the following downbeat.

Get the pdf

Ben Sidran speaks to Don Cherry

In keeping with our current theme, here, via AllAboutJazz.com, is a podcast of Ben Sidran talking to Don Cherry on NPR in the mid-80's. I'm listening to it now- you should be too.

There are free podcasts of other Sidran interviews with Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, and others at SoulAndJazz.com.