Mike Clark on Elvin, Tony

I stumbled across these interviews with Mike Clark, talking about all the stuff players care about about Elvin Jones and Tony Williams:

Part 1 on Elvin:



Here's part 2:



The interviews on Tony Williams are after the break:

DBMITW: Headhunters

Here's something special for the new year: Herbie Hancock's Headhunters— the Thrust lineup, with Mike Clark— playing live in Europe in 1974:



There's another one which has embedding disabled, so you'll have to click through to listen to it.

Groove o' the day: Death Wish -- Mike Clark

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.

YouTube audio after the break, as usual:

Groove o' the day: Palm Grease

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:

YouTube audio after the break: