Friday Mix Tape: Jazzercise, Part III

It’s Uncle Neddy to the rescue with a bag full of downloadable presents…

Here’s a guest minimix for the Hidden Track crowd. It’s time to give the drummers some, as they say. This is a good cross-section as any to get a feel for the many varied drumming styles that fall under the heading of “jazz.” Some old, some new; some live, some studio; some loud & crazy, some quiet & nuanced. Of course, there are some that I was pained to leave out, but so it goes. Being that I hate drum solos, I’ve allowed them to bring some other musicians along on these tracks — please ignore them and just listen to the drums.

In lieu of a track listing, I’ll just give you the beatmeister for each track, and it’ll be up to you to download and figure out the rest. It’s like that.

01 Joey Baron & Kenny Wolleson (w/ an assist from Cyro Baptista): Downtown NYC badasses. If you’ve heard of ’em, you know what I’m talking about, and if not, listen to this. You know those drummers that are like…double drummers? As far as rhythm sections go, it don’t get no better than this.

02 Stanton Moore: Couldn’t leave this guy out, could I? If there’s a beat that’s come out of New Orleans, Stanton’s played it as good as anyone else before him.

03 Elvin Jones: I was lucky enough to have caught Elvin play when I was in college. The cat growled while he played. Fitting. Jones wasn’t really your typical jazz drummer; he let everyone else hold down the beat while he went off. He may have invented going off, actually.

04 Max Roach: If you want to know where [insert name of your favorite bopper] got his chops from, this is as good a place as any to start.

05 Billy Cobham: Where jazz meets rock, that’s where you’ll find Billy C. Actually, if you take one jazz drummer and one rock drummer and let them play at the same time, you’ve got one Billy Cobham. Sit down, his shit might make you dizzy (although I picked an easy one for you here).

06 Dave King: Meet the new guard of stupefying jazz drumming. King is likely to be found wearing a Cookie Monster T-shirt and playing with Fisher-Price toys…I’d say that’s all you need to know about that guy.