While the interview is fresh, I want to give my recommendations for Joel Rothman book purchases. God knows I haven’t seen his entire catalog, but these are very strong books:
Basic Drumming – An everything classic. See my review for more information.
Mini Monster Book of Rock Drumming – Embrace the goofy cover. The best overview of rock/pop/funk/backbeat-oriented drumming I’ve seen. Review coming soon. You may also be interested Rothman’s newest book, which I have not seen, Son of the Mini Monster for Rock Drumming: “…concentrates on developing simple to complex-sounding bass drum patterns against a variety of rock cymbal beats in various time signatures.”
Drumming And All That Jazz – An excellent overview of primarily triplet-based jazz concepts.
Basic Drum Technique and Beyond – Contains a lot of material further developing things found in Stick Control. Particularly interesting are the parts dealing with stickings of mixed rhythms, and the dynamics section.
Rock with Hand-Foot Drum Breaks
Swingin’ in 3/4 Time – One of his earlier books, this first came out when the jazz waltz was still a fairly exotic style- Elvin Jones had just joined John Coltrane’s band, and was expressing (I think to Charlie Persip?) what a difficult time he was having playing in 3/4. This is still a solid introduction to playing in three, and an excellent companion to Joe Morello’s later New Directions in Rhythm. [Note: Mr. Rothman informs me that this book has been out of print for some time, and most of the content has been included in Drumming And All That Jazz above; there do seem to be a few copies of Swingin’ in… available through Steve Weiss Music. I think it’s worth the purchase price just for the cover.]
The Compleat Jazz Drummer