Just getting a closer look at something Billy Higgins plays on the tune Three Bags full, from Herbie Hancock’s 1962 album Takin’ Off. On the alternate take especially he does an interesting triplet thing. Almost like his idea of an Elvin thing— reading Billy Hart’s autobiography, you realize how closely people were checking each other out at the time. The records that are important to us now were also important to them as they were happening. Of course they’d be around seeing each other play frequently.
Or it could just be straight out of Max Roach. There’s a famousish quote from Elvin Jones: “Don’t ask me what I’m doing, if I could explain it we’d all be Max Roach.”
Here I’ve transcribed the first 12 bars of Dexter Gordon’s solo, starting at 1:55 in the track, we get to see the basic thing Higgins is doing, then several bars of the triplet thing. He also does it right at the of the head, after a few measures of intro. The tune is in 6/4, phrased 3+3. Tempo is bpm.
Hitting every fourth note on the cymbal there— a four beat long pattern, and a normal modern thing. Alternating sticking, accenting the right hand notes on the snare drum. Except on the fourth beat of pattern (were all three notes of that beat are on the snare drum), accents the right and the following left. See measure 9 for a clean look at that. And he’s generally keeping the waltz rhythm on the hihat, and probably the bass drum, through that.
A detail of note: on the roll at the end of the transcription, he releases the roll before the 1, on the & of 6. So that’s a way to do that.
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