There’s a whole world of musicians just under the mainstream music surface that are finding success fusing elements of jazz, rock, hip hop, funk, and soul music into one great groove. One of the groups that have been doing this best is Soulive. After touring separately in different bands for years, brothers Neal and Alan […]…
Ringo Starr, popular drummer for the Beatles, has gotten quite a bit of flak over the years from other drummers about what appears to be his “simple” style. The truth is, he helped define the traditional “Money Beat” by recording it on so many great albums from the Beatles. And if you really start to […]…
Max Roach was one of the featured stars in the jazz drumming community. He was considered by many to be one of the pioneers of bebop, a style of jazz music consisting of blistering fast jazz music, where many jazz players could really define their chops on an international scale. Max had his own group […]…
Herlin Riley has brought everything to the table, drumming with famed jazz bandleaders like Wynton Marsalis and Ahmad Jamal. Herlin was born and raised drumming in New Orleans, playing drums in the church and picking up other hand percussion instruments like the tambourine, the woodblock, and the cowbell. Herlin’s also been fortunate to be encouraged […]…
Ralph Peterson is one of those jazz drummers that has established himself as one of the “next generation” players in the jazz community. Even though he’s now in his 50s, he came from a family filled with jazz musicians and was around to learn from some of the best jazz players in the older generation. […]…
As explained by Ralph Peterson, Philly Joe Jones was one of the master drummers of incorporating rudiments into his jazz drumming and tying them together lyrically like nobody else around. Ralph called it rudimentary lyricism, in an interview I’ve shared with you below. Philly Joe’s claim to fame was playing with some of the best […]…
Currently I’m gearing up for a summer full of more popular music with Yardsale the Band. We play hits from all the decades and one of the better songs to come out in the last year or two was Bruno Mars’ hit “Runaway Baby.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with the tune, but it’s […]…
In the early days of rock and roll music, drummers had a big part to play since they were defining the back beats that would take the drumming community by storm for generations to come. One man that was responsible for creating such an iconic drum beat was Earl Palmer. Palmer was an active session […]…
One of the best examples I can possibly think of applying the money beat is DJ Fontana, drummer for Elvis on all those early great hit songs. Fontana played with Elvis for a long time and was right alongside him during the birth of rock and roll music in Memphis, TN. And when you listen […]…