Continuing the talk about the use of the bass drum in jazz, particularly with regard to keeping time, aka “feathering”, here is an extended exchange from Down Beat Magazine’s March 1964 issue, between Elvin Jones, Shelly Manne, Cozy Cole, Art Blakey, Joe Morello, Tony Williams, Nick Ceroli, Mel Lee, and Donald Dean.
Elvin Jones and Tony Williams are whose answers I’m most interested in here, the modern perspective. Tony was 18, and pretty boldly contrarian, considering his age* and the company— he had been playing with Miles Davis’s band for less than a year, and had only played on part of one album with him, and was on only two other records apart from that— and is uncompromising about other musicians’ rhythm deficits. Elvin’s answers are more circumspect, and probably more reflective of practical reality for sidemen, especially at that time. I also liked Shelly Manne’s and Art Blakey’s comments.
* – It seems notable that Tony is deep in the field of players listed
on the cover, down among the much lesser-known players.
Note, again, that this is not the kind of binary, one dimensional conversation we’re used to on this— they discuss it in terms of what they think is good/effective timekeeping aesthetically, and of the style of the ensemble, and of what is needed to drive the time, and of what musical statement the player wants to make— Tony is the only one talking about that, seemingly.
There’s an interesting moment where everyone agrees, regardless of the talk about bottom, that groove be can fully communicated on any instrument— “on a magazine with just a pair of brushes.”
Down Beat: Today there may be an overdependence on the bassist for keeping the time. Has the switch from the bass drum to the hi-hat for time-keeping deprived young drummers of essential training? Dizzy Gillespie has been quoted as saying the most drummers— not just the young ones— don’t know how to play the bass drum.
Donald Dean: I think what’s missing in a lot of potentially good drummers today is the bass drum. I know myself that I really want to know more about it. You get more bottom; you get more balance to the drums themselves. The bass drum should be played more. More in time-keeping. It’s the touch. It’s the way that you can play it so the the bass drum can be felt and not really heard.
Nick Ceroli: Has everybody heard Jake Hanna play with Woody Herman? Now, he played the bass drum beautifully, I thought. He played it thorughout the who-o-ole thing, and he just walked the bass drum the same way a bass player walks. But at the same time you had to actually listen for it because it wasn’t really dominating. Once it becomes dominating, youre back in 1938. But the way he played it was the I’d like to play it.
Elvin Jones: No matter how it was in the old days, things have changed, and methods have changed. It’s really an individual problem, individual bands. It depends on the style the musical organization wants to play. Sometimes a heavy 4/4 beat sounds very good to me. And at other times, it just won’t do.
Joe Morello: I’ve played it both ways; I’ve played in bands where I’ve used the bass drum on all four, and I’ve played in bands where I just use it for accents and so on. But I’m inclined to go along with Diz, in that a lot of kids don’t put as much importance on the bass drum as they should. Take the old Basie band with Jo Jones. The blend of the piano, bass, guitar, and drums… every beat, teh bass drum was right there. It never became overbearing.
Shelly Manne: I don’t think the time-keeping element has tured to the hi-hat. I think it’s in your right hand. The hi-hat just adds an added impulse to the time, to the beat. I think the main time-keeping element now is your right hand, not the hi-hat. That’s why time is so important. Because if you have the time feeling, the swinging feeling, you can become as free as you want as long as that basic element is there. If you have that strong a time feeling, you can generate that time feeling without actually pointing the time out.
But I agree that when you are playing time, the bass drum should be played. I don’t believe it should be boomed out. The cymbal is still the main coloration. But the bass drum— away from accents— if it’s not there, there’s something missing. There’s a piece of the bottom missing.
Morello: A lot of the young drummers have nothing but top— a top sound. You don’t hear any bottom in it. The bass drum give the band a lot of bottom. For instance, our bassist [wiht the Brubeck quartet], Gene Wright, if I don’t play that bass drum in four, he’ll look over and sort of nudge me. There’ve always been arguments between bass players and drummers, like who’s going to lay down the time. But Gene wants to hear that bass drum. It should just blend together perfectly. He feels the bass drum is the basic pulse, and he can put the harmonic structure on it. Kids should—
Jones: Learn how to play the bass drum! Everything that’s included in a drum set is there for a purpose and should be learned. Whether you use it consistently or not, you should know how to use it.
Art Blakey: It isn’t a question that they don’t know it; it’s a question of they don’t do it. If they’d do it, they would know. Playing every night is the only way they can develop… not socko style. I don’t think the bass drum should be up above the bass fiddle.
Morello: I think what Diz was referring to was that a lot of the kids got hooked on this top-cymbal-hihat-left-hand when that was the thing, like the hi-hat was the anchor on the 2 and 4. The pulse, of course, always on 2 and 4, but we don’t ahve to play the hi-hat on just 2 and 4; we can play it on 1 and 3, if we want.
Manne: To accentuate the hihat too much on 2 and 4 takes away a certain quality to your playing. Because 1 and 3 are still the most strongly felt beats whether they’re played or not.
Cozy Cole: I think the bass drum is the main instrument in the drums. Why should a drummer be in there if he can’t keep time? Like Art said, it should be socko, but it should be two beats when you feel it, four beats if you feel it.
Tony Williams: What if you dn’t feel it at all?
Cole: Now here is the thing. There are so many leaders that are going along with somebody else, his idea, and they’ll get a drummer in there, maybe, that can play a bass drum. And he may say to the drummer, “Man, that’s old school” and not want him to play any bass drum at all. But, believe me, anytime you play a bass drum tastefully without overriding the band, and wit a nice sound and have that beat there, it is one of the greatest assets to a drummer.
Williams: What I am trying to say— well, the way that I have been playing is that the beat is there, but I have been playing it with the cymbal, because it still swings.
Mel Lewis [to Williams]: Are you playing your bass drum though?
Williams: No, not at all.
Lewis: That’s unusual because I thought that Miles always likes to have a little bass drum.
Blakey: What he’s doing is in the group where he’s working at. Now, what ever group you’re in, you have to let the punishment fit the crime.
Williams: When I hear the hi-hat being played on 2 and 4, though every solo, through every chorus, through the whole tune, this seems to me to be— I can’t play like that. Chit, chit, chit, chit— all the way through the tune. My time is on the cymbal and in my head, because when I play the bass drum, I play it where it means something. I just put it in. When a person plays this way, they don’t play the bass drum, they don’t play the hi-hat— well, they say they’re playing completely free— that word is a drag too. What makes it different is that they don’t have any bottom.
Lewis: That’s what your bass drum is for.
Blakey: One point of clarity. You cannot depend upon the bass fiddle, and you can’t say the beat is there— maybe the bass fiddle player is not too mature himself— so you do certain things. See everything you got there— the sock cymbal is one instrument, ride cymbal’s another instrument, your bass drum’s another instrument, your snare’s another instrument, the tom-tom— all complete, different instruments. You cannot leave eveyrthing to him [the bassist]. Sometime you have to come in and say [Blakey states a strong regular, rapid beat verbally], and after the band gets it going, you go “blam” and go into your other bit. And if they get out of line, you bring them back in, because that’s what you’re there for. You are the master of this whole thing.
Lewis: The drummer is the leader.
Williams: When I say the bottom is missing, when I speak of the bottom, I don’t speak of the bottom as being the bass drum. I speak of the bottom as just a certain feeling we get— a sound. You get it right off the cymbal.
Cole: Off the cymbal, off the snare drum.
Blakey: You could get it on a magazine and just a pair of brushes. You can get it if you’ve got the beat. Like Denzil Best, the greatest I know for that. Take that cymbal and run you crazy.
Cole: George Shearing had a very nice band, and you would call that a modern band. Denzil held that band together because he had that feeling— he had a good beat.
Lewis: Here’s an important point about bass drums, about using it. I’ve heard a lot of groups where the drummer isn’t playing the bass drum; he’s just depending on the cymbals, and he’s not playing too much hi-hat, and you’ve got a bass player— he’s going to start moving now, he’s going to start drumming. So he starts to get up on top, and the tempo starts to skate a little bit. And I hear the drummer going right along with him. All of a sudden the tempo just leaps ahead. There’s the time to start playing your bass drum a little bit. Hold it back, hold it where it was. Especially if the tempo’s grooving— why change it? That’s where you I think you need all your facilities. That’s what Art was talking about before. Showing them where it is.
Blakey: Whatever groove is stomped off, I think that you should end it— you’ve not a metronome— but you should end it as close to the original tempo as possible, and you should be swinging.
Williams: Since I’ve been playing, a lot of musicians have told me things like “play your hi-hat on 2 and 4, and play the time,” but what they don’t seem to realize is that I am playing the time, because as soon as the leader says “one… two… one, two, three, four,” that’s it. There’s the time right there. So as far as me playing this [Williams bangs floor to simulate steady bass drum rhythm], I can’t play it, because the time is there. Everyone knows where the time is— the meter is there.
Blakey: Everyone is not a drummer.
Lewis: And the all don’t know where it is.
Blakey: Wait a minute. Saxophone players, trumpet players are virtuosos. They’re supposed to be soloists. But do you realize how many musicians don’t know anything about rhythm? If they did, they’d be playing like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. All of them. They would be playing at least a reasonable facsimile. But look at them.
Williams: Well, those are the people that shouldn’t be playing.
Blakey: No, you can’t say that. Okay, we have 3,000 musicians down in the union. We could say, okay, 2,500 of them should be in the bank or some other kind of job, because they know nothing about rhythms. They know nothing about the feel of time, unless you get up under them, all night long. Every group I’ve ever had, the only thing I could do was keep my foot in their behind, all night long.
h/t to Drum Forum user @avedisschwinn for sharing this interview.
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This is one of the most fascinating pieces I ve read in a long time.
Well, the last time I play the bass drum for most of the night, was at a gig with bassist, who got lost after 1 or 2 choruses in every song and turned down his amp. This is problem Tony probably never faced.