Mel Lewis stuff!

A flurry of drumming activity of actual interest on Bluesky this morning. So far much of the drumming content there has been pretty mundane, but they've added ~ ten million new users in the last month, and things are developing rapidly. 

Anyway: here's a new repository of the Mel Lewis history of drumming tapes, edited, cleaned up, and generously shared by Flip Phillips. Previously the digital files were divided up by show, under the heading of the name of the drummer they were discussing. Phillips has broken those up, with individual files for the recordings played, and subjects of conversation. It's super helpful.

It's a work in progress, so you'll probably want to check in there for updates in coming months. 

Also Gary Kennedy has shared a link to some Mel Lewis interviews I hadn't seen before, with Les Tomkins, several times between 1971-88. That site has a whole ton of interesting interviews, actually. 

And Jon McCaslin has written a new post on Mel Lewis you're going to want to read. 

Follow everyone on Bluesky: 
‪@flipphillips.com‬
@fouronthefloorblog.bsky.social‬
@jazzsnob99.bsky.social
@cruiseshipdrummer.bsky.social

Transcription: Art Blakey - The Egyptian

Here's a drum intro... hey, this could go in my Book of Intros, which HAHAHAHA is still languishing a few hours of work away from completion... a drum intro, played by Art Blakey on The Egyptian, from the Jazz Messengers album Indestructible. I was checking this out for the cymbal sound; he's using a rather famous 20" K. Zildjian ride that he also plays on The Big Beat. But what he's playing is a little Art Blakey microcosm— it includes several little stylistic things he does quite often.

Some of these things don't resolve exactly the way they look in the transcription. In bars 13-14, what Blakey plays is actually somewhere between these two things. There's also a second cymbal note at the end, right before the following downbeat, which I didn't even try to include.

Something similar happens in bars 19-20— six notes seemingly evenly-spaced notes, like in the first example, except he starts it on the & of 4, like in the second example:

I actually think he plays it the second way, and that my ears were just fooled into hearing the fill as six evenly spaced notes— he does play the extra space as in the second way.

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Transcription: the Birthday break

For once there's not much to say-- here's one of my favorite drum breaks in the world, played by Ringo Starr on Birthday, by the Beatles:

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YouTube audio after the break: