Groove o' the day: Billy Higgins Latin

Addendum to yesterday's Billy Higgins transcription— here's the Latin groove he plays on the A sections of the head on Moose the Mooche, from Joshua Redman's album Wish. 

More or less— it takes a couple of measures to settle on it, and he moves his hands around a little bit. This appears to be the core groove:
 

You can see it's a kind of simplified Mozambique— Idris Muhammad used the same bell rhythm on a Melvin Sparks record. Billy Higgins does the same hip move between the high and low toms that I picked up from Portland drummer Ron Steen years ago, that has been a basic feature of this rhythm the way I play it ever since. 

Transcription: Billy Higgins trading

Some uptempo trading 8s and 4s on Moose the Mooche, from an old favorite album, Wish by Joshua Redman, with Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins on drums. I used to play along with this track a lot. 

Tempo is a little over 300 bpm, and trading begins at 2:17: 

Virtually all the activity here is with the hands— there is a little feathering the bass drum in half notes in the last 4. Maybe there's more than that, I didn't check. Distinction between accents/non-accents is not extreme, though notes marked as ghosted are definitely ghosted. Obviously there are paradiddle-type stickings happening on the tom tom activity. 

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Listening: Coltrane — Crescent

This conversation between Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and composer/bandleader Darcy James Argue, about the John Coltrane albums Crescent, and A Love Supreme, happened on Twitter:

Crescent was the first Coltrane album I ever bought, and actually listened to (the first actual one was Om— a very challenging record, if you've never heard it), but it has always been a little bit of a dark horse for me— compared to other Coltrane recordings, the visceral emotionality I was seeking is very restrained here. It's very deep music, and it was probably too grown-up for me, honestly. Redman summarizes it perfectly in the comment above, and those are all qualities it has taken me a long time to learn to appreciate.

It is one of the very greatest things in 20th century music, and if you haven't listened to Crescent all the way through in a while, or ever, here it is:

Favorite albums: Billy Higgins

I guess I could've called this Higgins and Haden. These are four records from what is for me the classic phase of Higgins' career in terms of his sound- he's got that heavy-ish rivet cymbal and floppy snare drum sound, and is nice and present in the mix. The advances in recording technology since the classic Blue Note and Ornette records of the 50's and 60's really agree with him, and his delicate touch really communicates. There's also a sense of a new level of mastery in his playing- it feels as natural as breathing.

Pat Metheny - Rejoicing
With Higgins and Charlie Haden. Word is that Metheny wasn't thrilled with this record- he thought the band played better on other occasions. We'll have to take his word for it. It's hard to pick a favorite track from the first side; I think the wash of brushes on Lonely Woman is the star of the show, though. 

Don Cherry - Art Deco
Cherry and Higgins plus Charlie Haden and James Clay. One of the most relaxed and unpretentious drum performances ever- I wish more people would emulate that. Tunes include Cherry's Art Deco, Bemsha Swing, When Will The Blues Leave, Body & Soul, and The Blessing.

Joshua Redman - Wish
The Rejoicing band together again. I guess people don't dig Redman at this early stage of his career, but that doesn't matter- it's a great ensemble performance. Moose the Mooche is the standout, along with some nice originals I don't know the titles of. 

Don Cherry - Brown Rice
This is an older record than the others, and very much from the 70's- quite clearly- I mean to tell you there is no ambiguity whatever on that question- none. Like doing macramé at a Bahai temple while tripping on LSD, I imagine.

Audio after the break: