Transcription: three Philly Joe intros

Must do shorter, faster posts. That last one took way too many hours. Here:

Get the pdf

Get Dance of the Infidels | get Hank by Hank Mobley
Get I'll Never Smile Again | get Interplay by Bill Evans
Get Philly Mignon | get Here to Stay by Freddie Hubbard


YouTube audio after the break:

Different values

I usually keep just one CD in my car for days or occasionally weeks at a time- recently for me it's been Don Cherry's Art Deco, an old favorite that had been languishing in the stacks for some time. Repeatedly listening to Billy Higgins' solo on When Will The Blues Leave, it's striking how alien the working value system is to so much of what's going on in drumming now. I imagine it would be hard for drummers immersed in the current amazingness cult to know what to do with something that really isn't even trying to blow them away.

I don't even know how to make a case for this. Stuff like "why Billy Higgins is great" is usually just something you figure out by listening. Your ears get a little tired of rimshots and barrages of 32nd notes, and there's Billy waiting to fill the void. Sometimes it takes a little independent credibility boost- like knowing that he's one of the most recorded drummers in history- to encourage you to try to get it. "Either all of those producers and bandleaders were idiots, or he's a great drummer in a way you don't understand yet."

After the break is a little thumbnail analysis of the solo, written for my own benefit as I was thinking about this- I can't promise you'll find it educational. I always thought the analytical tool of stating the obvious was kind of BS, and I feel like I'm BSing when I do it. So, skip it if you want and just enjoy Billy Higgins' drum solo on When Will The Blues Leave, from Don Cherry's Art Deco:

Podcast - Episode 4: Charlie Parker heads

Today's podcast is a selection of practice loops made from the heads of well-known Charlie Parker tunes:

Billie's Bounce
Yardbird Suite
Donna Lee
Cheryl
Quasimodo
Scrapple from the Apple
Au Privave
Crazeology (actually by Bud Powell)
Dewey Square

Each tune repeats a number of times to add up to about five minutes. Mostly they loop in the correct spot to maintain the form, except Cheryl and Quasimodo- each have pickups at the beginning which would overlap with the ending. What I've done there is add a couple of extra measures of rest at the end of each of those loops. The space at the end of other tunes is part of the form. This will all be clear if you use the lead sheets.

A good starting place if you're just learning them would be to play the rhythm of the melody on the snare drum (you'll need lead sheets for that- see below). Also you can just play time along with them, and start making punctuations as you hear them. But you can really play anything and everything along with these- I'm using them for snare drum practice, and played through Haskell Harr with them last night. The common Reed/Syncopation methods also work well- you'll be surprised at how well the Reed parts fit with the tunes.



Download the podcast | stream podcast at Podomatic

Most or all of these should be in the three volumes of the Real Book- which you should own- if you don't have them handy, you can look at the lead sheets on line at www.jazzpla.net. Links for that and for purchasing Charlie Parker mp3s after the break:

Go now

Yikes, another patch of light posting, as I've been busy with other projects. Until I can get something posted later in the day, get your rear over to Jon McCaslin's blog to watch and more importantly listen to a rare Kenny Clarke video. In case you're not familiar with him, Clarke is the guy who basically invented the modern usage of the cymbal, and modern drumming generally. Learn more about him from the Mel Lewis history of jazz drumming interviews (another h/t to Jon for linking to that originally), then get yourself copies of Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington and Miles Davis' Walkin', for starters.

Source tunes for Chapin

Thanks to my man Ed Pierce and the Sep. 1994 issue of Modern Drummer, here (well, after the break) are the source tunes for the long exercises in Jim Chapin's Advanced Techniques. As you'll see, a lot of them are pretty obscure, and probably haven't been played much since about Roy Eldridge's heyday in the late 30's-early 40's.

But no matter- playing the tune directly on the drums is fine (and necessary) but for me what's more useful as a player is the next step of seeing how anything at all interacts with any given tune. Playing through, say, the long exercises in Syncopation along with whatever tune I happen to be working on, it's a little weird how together they sound just by accident.  

Tune/exercise list after the break:

Kenny Clarke on the invention of the ride cymbal

...and modern drumming in general, excerpted from Ed Thigpen's Kenny Clarke interview in the Feb. 1984 Modern Drummer. I originally posted this last year on the Drummerworld.com forum.

From Thigpen's introduction:

It's understandably difficult for a young drummer to imagine that the various components of the drumset were ever utilized in a manner unlike the way they are today. In actuality, the approach was, at one time, considerably different, and Kenny Clarke had a whole lot to do with changing it all. His drumming led the way towards usage of the bass drum for accentuation as well as timekeeping; the establishment of a jazz-time rhythm for the ride cymbal, and freedom from a strictly metronomic role, forcing the bassist to share in the responsibility of timekeeping. Kenny Clarke can also be credited with freeing the left hand so it could interact with the soloist—the obvious reason why thousands of young student drummers still sweat over Jim Chapin's Advanced Techniques For The Modern Drummer...

To say that Kenny Clarke was "important,"or "influential, "or even "a key musical figure, "does not do his contribution justice. To state, unequivocally, that he was drumming's all-time Great Emancipator, a man to whom every jazz drummer who's ever lived owes a debt of gratitude, is perhaps a much more honest appraisal.