I’m just taunting myself now— I’ve got this book of intros sitting around, almost completed, and I keep finding new things that should probably go in it, but I don’t have the nerve to open it up and add them it because it will mean reworking the whole thing. That’s probably what’s going to have to happen.
Whatever. Here’s a little intro by Mel Lewis, on the tune One for Pat, from Got ‘Cha, Lewis’s first record as leader, released in 1956. I never saw or heard the record before, I just saw it listed in Chris Smith’s book on Lewis, The View From The Back Of The Band— it’s out in paperback now, so there’s no excuse for not buying it.
The tempo is around quarter note = 250, and it’s a funny little thing— as Paul Motian said about Max Roach, “not-so-correct”:
The main attraction is the rubadub passage from the middle of the second measure to the middle of the last measure. Just move your right hand to the tom tom in the third measure; left hand stays on teh snare drum. The hihat is played open all the way through.