Drummers That Sing

Phil Collins is one of the few drummers who has stood out as a solid singer as well. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Throughout the last few decades of music, there have been a few standout drummers that are just as comfortable with the mic. In fact a few of the drummers I’m going to share with you today typically sang lead in their groups while sitting behind the drums. Singing while playing the drums calls for an entirely new level of talent and experience, mastered by few and enjoyed by many. I came across an article from musicradar.com showcasing several of the more popular singing drummers in music history. It’s a cool list of drummers that even surprised me a little bit as I hadn’t heard of them before. But I am familiar with most and I’m sure you will be too. I’ll provide the link to the original full article and showcase a few here on the Play Drums By Ear blog. I hope you enjoy checking them out as much as I did!

Musicradar.com produced this great article that features several of the more popular singing drummers to hit the music scene. Check out the full article at http://www.musicradar.com/news/drums/the-12-greatest-singing-drummers-ever-486045/12.

The look and sound of Don Henley seated behind the drums while singing timeless Eagles classics is one of those things in life that’s utterly perfect – so much so that, at the start of his solo career, when he stepped to the mic with a guitar around his neck, it came as a total shock.

Now that he’s an Eagle again, Henley is playing the drums – effortlessly, cleanly, with a Ringo Starr-influenced less-is-more groove – and applying his distinctive tenor to a veritable greatest hits show. Witchy Woman, Desperado, Best Of My Love, Life In The Fast Lane, The Long Run, One Of These Nights and a little something called Hotel California – all sung by Henley.

It’s almost a fake-out, this thing Henley does. He works hard, but it looks like no sweat. That’s the beauty of his style: by keeping his drumming simple and putting in fills only when absolutely necessary (signature hooks, by the way), he finds the space for his voice to soar.

Imagine backing up Bob Dylan in 1965 when the world-famous folk troubadour made history by going electric. That’s pretty good for most people.

Now imagine helping to redefine rock ‘n’ roll with an album called Music From Big Pink, a disc bursting with so much heartfelt playing that it caused Eric Clapton to break up Derek And The Dominoes and want to join the group that recorded it. Not too shabby.

Behind all of this was a Levon Helm. With The Band (formerly The Hawks), his drumming – a rootsy, rustic shuffle that combined southern country, blues and rockabilly – fit like outfit’s intuitive musicianship like a well-worn glove.

But it was Helm’s singing – his deeply soulful, almost pained delivery is practically impossible to mimic – that made songs such as The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down lasting works of art.

We can forgive him for the whole Miami vice thing. We can forgive him for a couple of gloopy ballads, as well. We can even forgive him for being so freakin’ ubiquitous during the ’80s.

Fact of the matter is, Phil Collins was firing on all cylinders during those years, enjoying a multidimensional career that saw him ruling the charts with Genesis and as a solo artist while producing, drumming for and singing with everybody under the sun.

The Phil Collins drum sound during the early ’80s virtually defined the era. The cymbals-free wallop throughout Peter Gabriel’s third solo album and the gated reverb explosion heard on In The Air Tonight were highly influential and widely copied. (And thanks to movies like The Hangover, the power of Phil’s fills continues to find new audiences.)

Blessed with the kind of vocal chops that allowed him to handle prog-rock masterpieces like Supper’s Ready, Collins’ expressive, husky voice wrapped around an avalanche of pop hits like nobody’s business. Throughout the years, his musical reach has been virtually limitless, encompassing art rock, pop, blues and even film soundtracks.