One Dozen All-Time Killer Drum Parts (Pt. 1)

It's not simply a matter of flashy chops or blinding speed; just as important is laying down that irresistible groove

A few months ago (on February 3rd, 9th and 21st), I wrote three “Among the Musical”s about my three all-time favorite guitar solos. I’ve been inspired to do something similar with drummers, that is, to post a handful of clips—12 this time—of some of my favorite drummers’ finest moments. I’ve had to winnow the list down radically; I’ve got a mental list of great drumming parts that’s a mile long. I’m posting the first half-dozen now. Part 2 will arrive in a few days.

We are not talking about solos here, though a few of these choices contain magnificent solos. This piece is not about shining in the spotlight; it’s primarily about the a drummer’s ability to make an otherwise ordinary song memorable, or make an already memorable song impossible to forget.¹ Drummers who can do this are special human beings.

Nor do flashy chops alone cut it in my book. Great drumming is not simply, or not at all, a matter of making the listener’s jaw drop. Velocity counts for only so much (though there are plenty of 32nd-notes tossed off in these clips). Just as important, or more important, is laying down an irresistible groove, a piece of playing that makes a listener feel good inside.

I am not an obsessive list-maker. I do not share Rolling Stone editors’ compulsion to numerically rank musicians, songs, or albums. That magazine’s periodic 100 Best, or However-Many Best lists have always irritated me. Like inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone’s co-founder, also co-founded) has become, these lists are more popularity contests than measures of talent or impact. Not that I claim anything like obtjectivity, far from it. My desire is to introduce you to, or induce you to happily re-listen to, a few pieces of music-making that have given me goosebumps—“chicken skin music,” as guitarist Ry Cooder (#8 on Rolling Stone’s most recent 100 Greatest Guitarists list) calls such songs, songs to which I return again and again over the years. There are, moreover, big gaps in my knowledge of drummers. Please feel free to suggest other members of this subjective pantheon. I’ll add that the dates of my choices, from the late ‘60s to a single choice from the aughts, indicate my unawareness of a ton of current music.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of superb drum parts, have been recorded. I expect any number of readers to strenuously disagree with my selections. I’m sticking largely to rock and fusion, omitting all but two or three straight-ahead jazz drummers. Although I listened to a lot of jazz as a kid, I’ve forgotten more than I remember; nor do I listen to much jazz these days. I readily concede the injustice of omitting Buddy Rich, Art Blakey, Max Roach, or more recent greats.

The gaps in my knowledge of rock and fusion are as substantial as they are in jazz. Re fusion: I know very little Vinnie Colaiuta, which is sure to offend his many fans, or Lenny White, Al Foster, or Terry Bozzio. I have no taste for Dave Weckl, and I know less Billy Cobham than I should (although I loved his playing on the first, 1970, album by the Brecker Brothers’ short-lived jazz/rock band Dreams). As for rock, I was never a Led Zeppelin fan, hence my omission of John Bonham, always hailed as one of rock’s GOATs. I’m critical of a number of rock heroes. I consider Ginger Baker overrated if sometimes fabulous (his playing with Cream on Wheels of Fire’s “Crossroads,” for instance. Further, Baker pulled off an interesting innovation on Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” coming down hard on the one, not the two and four; that took some insiration and smarts. Mitch Mitchell was brilliant but sloppy. I’m leaving out a number of fine drummers: the funk/rock innovator David Garibaldi, for instance, or James Brown’s funkmasters Clyde Stubblefield and John “Jabo” Starks. But as I’ve said, I’m no encyclopedia. ²

So. I’ve got a dozen choices. Here are six of them. Needless to say, there is no order of preference. We’re off!

1) Manu Katché, “Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” (Robbie Robertson, 1987)

When Robbie Robertson, the Band’s onetime guitarist and chief (eventually only) songwriter, put together his eponymous first solo album, Robertson chose Manu Katché, a Parisian of West African (Ivorian) descent, to drum on five of Robbie Robertson’s nine songs. Still active today at 65, Katché spent much of the ‘80s and ‘90s with Sting and especially with Peter Gabriel. The song I’ve chosen is “Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” loosely about a 16-year-old Robbie’s pilgrimage from his native Toronto to the Deep South, in search of the origins of rock & roll.

Katché’s playing amply substantiates my point that even if a drum part consists of just a few notes, it can be just as satisfying as a high-volume, high speed hailstorm. Let’s let Monsieur Katché subtly beckon us south.

2) Bernard Purdie, “Rock Steady” (Aretha Franklin, 1971)

Some inessential background stats: Bernard “Pretty” Purdie’s monster drumming on Aretha’s twelfth Top 10 hit (“Rock Steady” peaked at #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100). More background: The basic rhythmic unit in rock & roll and rhythm & blues, as in most, if not all, popular music, is the quarter-note, four of them per measure. The all-important backbeat comes on the two and the four, the second and fourth beat in every measure. In virtually all rock and r&b (and jazz, blues, gospel, and every other Black-based American music), the backbeat is where the music lives, its pulse. At concert clap-alongs, the unhip invariably clap on the one and three, irritating the hip no end.

Often the basic unit is doubled into eighth-notes, an insistent eight per bar. In this way of counting, the backbeat is on the three and the seven: dot-dot-DOT-dot-dot-dot-DOT-dot.

“Rock Steady” was Aretha’s first wholehearted venture into a then-only-recently mainstream genre: funk, which had been relegated to the R&B charts until James Brown crossed over with his huge mid-’60s hits “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)”. And the Godfather brought the funk.

An essential element in funk is syncopation: breaking up a song’s even flow, either by landing especially hard on the 1,2,3 or 4 or by accenting a note that lies between the primary notes; say, an eighth-note behind one of them. Take Aretha's "Respect," with its opening two-bar line What you want, baby I got it! In the first bar, "What" lands an eighth-note behind the 2, and so does "baby" in the second bar. Two swift kicks in the pants, ie. an invitation to get down.

Funk flattened songs out harmonically, trading chordal richness for rhythmic complexity. A funk song may have literally one chord. “Rock Steady” has two, Aretha’s “Chain of Fools” one. Cruising along on that one chord, funk subdivides the eighth-note pulse into 16th notes (James Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” for instance, with Clyde Stubblefield on drums). Immediately, musicians had more beats to syncopate, hence more opportunities to kick dancers in the butt.

For much of the early ‘70s, Aretha’s rhythm section consisted of three of r&b's, or pop’s, period, best players of the time: Cornell Dupree (whom I have always considered pop music’s greatest-ever rhythm guitarist); Chuck Rainey on bass, and the great, essentially funk, drummer Bernard Purdie, one of the most-recorded drummers of all time, still active today at 85. “A lot of people try to play like Bernard," Rainey told me, ""but it doesn't come off. Bernard is very suggestive, the way he plays his accents," ie. the way he syncopates.

Very, very few drummers could do what Purdie does on "Rock Steady." Dupree and Rainey are essential contributors, but Purdie is in the catbird’s seat, a good place for the bumptious, jovially self-aggrandizing drummer. His triumphant moment, one of the finest in all of funk’, comes towards the end of the song. I’m talking about Purdie’s celebrated nine-second solo, 2:28 to 2:37. Breaking it down into 16th notes, it consists of 3¾ identical measures and a controlled cataclysm in which Purdie smacks the high-hat, hard, on the 11th, 13th, and 15th notes, opening it and shutting the high-hat on each hit: three searing squelches. And "Rock Steady" wafts away on the female backup singers’ whispered ghettospeak what it is what it is, the ethereal afterword to “Pretty” Purdie’s great statement.

3) Jim Gordon, “You’re So Vain” (Carly Simon, 1972)

Jim Gordon’s playing on “You’re So Vain” is not merely a killer drum part; it’s a drum part by a killer. Gordon’s tremendous musical reputation was torn to shreds when he murdered his mother in 1983. An undiagnosed schizophrenic, Gordon had been hearing voices for years, finally including his mother’s, commanding Gordon to kill her. I rarely listen to Gordon, and he played with everyone, without his dreadful act crossing my mind, as well as his own years of suffering, detailed in Joel Selvin’s recently published Gordon biography Drums and Demons.

Before his psychosis took over, Gordon was one of the finest rock drummers in America, playing thousands of sessions in the 1960s and ‘70s and joining Eric Clapton in Derek and the Dominos’ great Layla.

Gordon’s playing on Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” has itself been eclipsed by the energy spent by the public on identifying the scoundrel whom Simon is addressing. Gordon’s playing on the song is not flashy; its greatness takes at least a few listens to fully register. He doesn’t enter until the fifth bar, playing only his bass drum until bar 17, building by bar 21 to a pounding, full-kit beat as Simon sings, “they’d be your partner, they’d be your partner and….” With a tremendous crash-cymbal wallop in the 23rd measure, Gordon all but takes control of the song, his drums, especially those pounding floor-tom-toms on bar 24, the dominant voice. If you listen closely, you can hear Gorddon’s clean but rich ride-cymbal eighth-notes, inauspicious but perfect. Yes, Mick Jagger puts in an appearance as backup vocalist, but it’s the starfuckers, not the music lovers, whom Mick’s presence excites.

“You’re So Vain” was recorded at some point in 1972, released that November, and hit #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, Simon’s only #1 hit (Gordon played on at least four). By 1973, Gordon was showing clear signs of insanity, exacerbated by heavy drinking and drugging. By 1974, voices, including his brother’s, an aunt’s, and his mother’s, were crowding his mind. His schizophrenia was not diagnosed until his mother was dead and Gordon was brought to trial and convicted of second-degree murder, which carried a sentence of 15 years to life. Gordon was a lifer, dying in prison in 2023, aged 78.

4) George Grantham, “Grand Junction” (Poco, 1969)

Largely overlooked by rock historians, George Grantham was one of the best, if not the best, drummers in the subgenre country-rock. He played with band Poco from shortly after its founding in 1968 to 1978, and periodically rejoined it over the years. Poco rose from the ashes of the great, shortlived band Buffalo Springfield (hence the title of Poco’s first album, Pickin’ Up the Pieces). When Buffalo Springfield fell apart in ‘68, abandoned by its two stars, Neil Young and Stephen Stills, two lesser but talented members, Richie Furay and Jim Messina, teamed up with the pedal-steel virtuoso Rusty Young, the bassist Randy Meisner, and Grantham to make two terrific albums, Pickin’ Up the Pieces (1969) and Poco (1970), two good ones, From the Inside and the live album Deliverin’ (both 1971), and the 1972 clunker (apart from the title song) A Good Feelin’ to Know, after which I stopped paying attention to them. In 1978, they had a big commercial success, Legend, their only gold album, which spawned two hits, “Crazy Love,” which I remember, and “Heart of the Night,” which I do not. All told, Poco spewed out 24 other albums (not including 31 compilations).

But I wore out Pickin’ Up the Pieces and the eponymous second album, largely because of Grantham’s drumming. He was an especially good syncopator (see paragraph 4 of my treatment of Aretha’s “Rock Steady”): listen to how he comes down hard on one or another eighth note (“Grand Junction”’s basic rhythmic unit). Even when Grantham played fast, and Poco specialized in up-tempo playing, he was never sloppy. He is one of rock’s all-time cleanest drummers. Another of his gifts bears mention. When I was a kid drummer of 15 or 16, it frustrated me to no end that I was unable to play three consecutive eighth notes on my bass drum. (It’s not easy; it requires especially good ankle, calf, and thigh muscles.) I almost quit drumming, so clumsy an oaf did I feel. Even at “Grand Junction”’s lickety-split clip, Grantham, damn him, nails the three-eighth-note lick at will. A fine, unjustly overlooked drummer.³

5) Sheila E., “Housequake,” “The Glamorous Life,” “Santana Medley” (2005 NAACP Image Award, presented to Prince)

The NAACP’s annual Image Awards, which salute noteworthy achievements by people of color, have been given out since 1967. Prince won four. At the 36th Awards show, in 2005, he invited his musical colleague of 30 years and onetime romantic partner, the fabulous percussionist Sheila E., to join him onstage. In fact, he asked her to close the show. She was happy to oblige. It’s a killer performance, ending with a nod to Santana, with whom Sheila’s uncle Coke played in the early ‘70s. Ms. E., in fact, comes from one of the most prominent of Latino American musical families. Aside from Uncle Coke, there’s Sheila’s percussionist father, Pete Escovedo, her brother, the much-admired Americana singer/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, and a number of others. I’m just going to step back and let Sheila’s playing speak for itself. The guitar player isn’t bad, either.

6) Elvin Jones, “Gingerbread Boy” (The Elvin Jones Trio, 1968)

I consider Elvin Jones and Tony Williams the two greatest drummers, in any genre, of all time. It was tough whittling down either drummer’s countless stunning performances to one choice each.

Elvin Jones ignited a revolution in drumming. In his half-dozen years with John Coltrane, he increasingly disregarded decades of drummers’ reliance on the backbeat; he created a maelstrom of sound, freeing drummers to bear down on any note they chose. He also pretty much introduced the rubato, or tempo-less, drum solo, in which it’s impossible to find the one. Elvin’s solos are wave upon wave of powerful, immensely complex playing. As a late-’50s critic dubbed the 32nd-note runs that had begun to characterize John Coltrane’s solos, Elvin’s were “sheets of sound, playing that takes a rock fan some getting used to. I’ve chosen the Elvin Jones Trio’s version of saxophonist Jimmy Heath’s composition “Ginderbread Boy.” The piece is from the 1968 album “Puttin’ It Together,” Elvin’s first after leaving Coltrane. He took Coltrane’s bassist, Jimmy Garrison, with him. In other words, The New Elvin Jones Trio, as Elvin’s band was known, contained half of Coltrane’s classic quartet. I could easily have chosen one of the four pieces that make up Coltrane’s iconic A Love Supreme, but too many people are already familiar with Elvin’s playing on that album.⁴

Elvin played hard. The great rock session drummer Jim Keltner, who started out as a jazz player, worshipped Elvin, and caught him every time the Coltrane Quartet came through Los Angeles. On one occasion, Keltner arrived early, picking a table as close to the stage as possible so that he could watch the great man at work. Keltner noticed that there was a second bass-drum pedal off to the side of Elvin’s drum kit. Keltner wondered what it was it doing there, and asked the club manager. It was there, the manager said, because there was a good chance that Elvin, who was playing increasingly hard, would break his bass-drum pedal.

Although Puttin’ It Together’s “Gingerbread Boy” does not include a long drum solo, Elvin was famous for them (or notorious, if long drum solos weren’t your cup of tea). He was never conscious of a solo’s length, he told the New Yorker’s Whitney Balliett in 1968 (a self-contradictory remark, since Elvin had just told Balliett that he counted choruses during a solo, which would have made him at least approximately aware of its length). “[I]’ve been told [that they] have run up to half an hour,” Elvin said. Starting a chorus, “sometimes I’m able to decide in advance what the pattern of a whole chorus will be. More often, five or six patterns will flash simultaneously across my mind, which gives me a choice, especially if I get hung up, and I’ve had some granddaddies of hangups. If you don’t panic, you can switch to another pattern.

“I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts a painting…. When you develop a certain pattern, you stay with it until it’s finished. It’s just like you start in the evening to walk to Central Park and back. Well, there are a lot of directions you can take—one set of streets going up, then in a certain entrance and out another entrance and back on a different set of streets. You come back and maybe take a hot bath and have dinner and read and go to bed. You haven’t been somewhere to lose yourself, but to go and come back and finish your walk.” That evening, at a short-lived club named Pookie’s Pub, Jones played “what passed beyond a mere solo” to Balliett. “He was playing with earsplitting loudness, and what he was doing had become an enormous rolling ball of abstract sound, divorced from music, from reality, from flesh and bone…. Suddenly he was finished. [Saxophonist Joe] Farrell played the theme and Jones slid into a long, downhill coda that was a variation on the close of his solo, paused, and came down with a crash on his cymbals and bass drum.

“There was a shouting silence. Jones was back from the Park.”

1. Steve Gadd, one of the great drummers of the last 50 years, first came to my attention for his playing on Leo Sayer’s insipid 1976 song “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”.

2. According to one source, Baker’s innovation, putting the emphasis on the 1, or downbeat, in “Sunshine of Your Love,” was the idea of the session’s engineer, the ever-creative Tom Dowd.

3. Re Grantham’s skill for syncopating, listen to “You Better Think Twice” from Poco’s second album, in which, as he does on the first album’s “Grand Junction,” in which Grantham repeatedly comes down hard on a normally unstressed note, pulling you every which way but loose. (Incidentally, I remember listening to that second Poco album during my one LSD trip, in 1971, my freshman year in college. As the record played, the walls of my dorm room billowed in and out as if they were breathing, rapidly during fast songs, slowly during slow.

4. A Love Supreme was certified platinum (sales of one million or more) in 2021, fifty-six years after its release. It’s one of a small group of jazz million-sellers, which includes Miles Davis’s 1959 Kind of Blue (four million copies sold), Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, also 1959, which hasn’t aged very well to these years, as Fifties an artifact as “The Honeymooners”, and, if you call her a jazz musician, Norah Jones’s 2002 Come Away With Me, at 27 million copies one of the bestselling albums of all time.