Ending a truly bleak, shameful year— and four years— in United States history, with an ambitious transcribing project. A little act of penance, devotion, purging, re-centering. I’m hoping to clean myself a little with this. […]
Category: Elvin Jones
Very occasional quote of the day: kindness
“When I was a young drummer, I never got that many compliments and I never got that much criticism. The men I played with liked me enough not to repudiate my shortcomings. They wouldn’t do […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones – Survival Blues
Hey, we haven’t done any Elvin Jones in a while. This is the beginning of Survival Blues, from McCoy Tyner’s album Extensions. I started where McCoy begins the vamp, and did as much as I […]
Page o’ coordination: Olé – 01
A Portland jazz educator asked me about what Elvin Jones was doing on the tune Olé, by John Coltrane, so I wrote this up. He plays a few different major patterns, and this might be […]
From the zone: cycling patterns
Since I am completely blocked for writing anything other than profane tweets right now, here are a couple of things from the practice room of our friend in Berlin, Michael Griener. It’s a very elegant […]
Daily best music in the world: Elvin plays brushes
You would think with all of this extra quarantine time I would just be writing up a storm, but I’m actually kind of blocked this week. So here’s Tommy Flanagan’s Overseas—a nice record with Elvin […]
Very occasional quotes of the day: more from Elvin
More quotes from Elvin Jones, compiled by Norman Grossman, passed along to Jon McCaslin by Adam Nussbaum, posted on Four On The Floor. Go and read them all, here are a couple of very important […]
Very occasional quotes of the day: from Elvin
Jon McCaslin at Four On The Floor has posted a collection of quotes from Elvin Jones, collected by Adam Nussbaum. Here are two of my favorites; there are many more at FOTF: “Thad told me […]
Snare drummers vs. drum set players
This came up in the Neil Peart piece: the idea of snare drummers as opposed to drum set players. People who play the drums as a single four limb instrument vs. people who are essentially […]
Practice loop: Tunji
Here’s a practice loop made from a long sample from Tunji, by John Coltrane. It’s from the album Coltrane, which is one of my favorite records in the world— everyone should own it. Also see […]
A minor rant: Elvin’s 18
In Elvin Jones’s 1982 Modern Drummer interview, Rick Mattingly asked him about his use of an 18″ bass drum: RM: I’ve heard various explanations of why jazz drummers started using 18″ bass drums. Some people […]
Michael Shrieve interviews Elvin Jones
Very busy this week, so just another little link share of something very cool: part 1 of Michael Shrieve’s interview with Elvin Jones. You’ll probably want to follow Shrieve on Facebook, too— he’s always posting […]