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Nobody could shuffle like Gary Blair . RIP .
Whitey Glan is still active on the Toronto scene. That was him behind those cock-eyed double bass drums on the B. Midler movie, " The Rose " .
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Who is your favorite "obscure" drummer
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Nobody could shuffle like Gary Blair . RIP .
Whitey Glan is still active on the Toronto scene. That was him behind those cock-eyed double bass drums on the B. Midler movie, " The Rose " .
Chunkaway
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Jon Wurster (Superchunk, The Mountain Goats)
Mike Muberger (The Posies, Fastbacks)
Brian Young (Fountains of Wayne)
Mike Muberger (The Posies, Fastbacks)
Brian Young (Fountains of Wayne)
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alejandvdh
Active Member
Alan Doss
Well-Known Member
Two that come to mind......
Adam Wade - Shudder To Think
Neil Sims - Catherine Wheel
Adam Wade - Shudder To Think
Neil Sims - Catherine Wheel
chappy
Very well Known Member
My favorite "unknown" drummer is Dale Baker formerly of Sixpence None the Richer. Love his work on "This Beautiful Mess". Tasteful chops for days.
Chappy
Chappy
Mrtboner
Very well Known Member
The guy from Swervedriver is a beast. Too lazy to look up his name
Patrick
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"Nobody could shuffle like Gary Blair . RIP . "
Truth, nobody could shuffle like Gary Blair. He killed with one hand while drinking a beer and lighting a cig. He was terrific and a good guy to know.
Patrick
Truth, nobody could shuffle like Gary Blair. He killed with one hand while drinking a beer and lighting a cig. He was terrific and a good guy to know.
Patrick
Butch1970
Well-Known Member
Yyy
Kenney Dale Johnson, Chris Isaak's drummer.
Mike Belitsky of the Sadies. (Canadian!)
Bobby Trimble, of Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys.
Bill Bateman of the Blasters.
Mike Belitsky of the Sadies. (Canadian!)
Bobby Trimble, of Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys.
Bill Bateman of the Blasters.
First mention on DFO! Good call...
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I don't know if they would be like to be called " obscure ", but Jim Christie and George Rains are my go to reference players when I want to fine tune a shuffle.
Tom Ardolino!
PsychRed
DFO Veteran
George Rains... great drummer!
Really nice guy, too. Talked with him before a gig (Sadies were backing John Doe) and he took me up on stage to check out his blue Luddies. I didn't really like blue drums before then, but have since acquired my own, and it's my main gigging kit. It is a great color for the stage. Thanks, Mike!
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I've been a fan of his ever since the intro to " Anybody Goin to San Antone " off of the Doug Sahm and Friends album in the early 70's. His grooves with Jimi Vaughn are exquisite . Nice fat pocket. In my imagination he's playing a brass ludwig most of the time . A lefty too.
Ohh theres a few of `em..Maybe not ALL that obscure, but the likes of Henry Spinneti, the late Graham Jarvis, Simon Fox from Be Bop Deluxe,Micky Waller, Tony Newman, etc,etc... i recently discovered claude ranger and after listening to a few recordings, i can say that everything that is said about him is true. he was the canadian elvin jones, but he may actually have been better creatively, as well as playing against the groove. he was an absolute genius and i am looking for good footage of him. i have contacted a couple of jazz festivals but no one has gotten back to me and as you know Ranger vanished into thin air about 12 years ago and nobody has seen him since. from all accounts, he was very much a high functioning savant. it is truly a shame that this guy is obscure outside of canada, and that such talent is undocumented. i am doing research on him and hope to dig up as much as i can.
5 Style
DFO Star
Seems that Kip and I drink from the same water trough. All these folks that he's been mentioning are folks that I'm hip to and many of them are my favorites as well.
Han Bennick: is a freak of nature... has played on a lot of European free jazz stuff, but also has played some more composed sounding stuff as well. Definitely has an "off the grid" solo style and the way that he comps is unusual for a really modern type jazz drummer in that it seems like his rots are as much with swing rhythms as bebop.
Tony Oxley: isn't someone that I'm all that familiar with but he's sure great on the album "Extrapolation" which was John McLauglin's first album as a leader. He seems to have a really textural/explosive Tony Williams kinda groove on that album. Even folks into Mclauglin haven't heard that one and it's one of my favorites... though in quite a bit different a vibe than most of his other stuff.
Jim Black is a really interesting drummer, no doubt... He's on a lot of recent recordings but is probably still a bit obscure in that they tend to be the kind of recordings that lots of us unfortunately don't get a chance to hear. He's plays jazz but only in the loosest sense of the word... He's got a lot of Arabic influences going on and plays very dry sounding cymbals as if he's playing tom tom beats on 'em (at least that's my take).
A few folks mentioned, like George Hurley, Jack Dejonette and Paul Motian don't seem all that obscure to my mind. Seemed like in the early 90s a ton of bands in my area (including a couple that I was in) were influenced by the minutemen and Firehose (and the drumming of Hurley). That guy to me is sort of the Mitch Mitchell of punk... He's drives the band hard, but dynamically and has some sort of jazz chops/accents going without ever really playing anything that's really "jazz." Jack Dejonette and Paul Motion both have made tons of records with their own bands and have been in tons and tons more as sidemen. I think it'd be safe to say that jazz music would have evolved a bit differently without these two's contributions. Unfortunately, it seems like beyond Buddy, Max and Krupa just about everything "jazz" is obscure...
I'll add a few of my own.
Though I've mentioned him before, this guy Otis "Candy" Finch is worth mentioning again. I just know him from organist Big John Patton's album "Let 'em Roll" but that is really a super-groovy album and that's in no small part to this guy's drumming. Super crisp and very pattern-groove/based. I really don't think that I've heard groovier jazz drumming than this guy's stuff and I have to wonder why he isn't a bigger name. I need to seek out more recordings that he's on.
Ed Blackwell played with some well known folks but certainly isn't a household name... Most famous for playing w/ Ornette Coleman though the group that he was in with other Ornette sidemen, Old and New Dreams is excellent stuff and he gets to stretch out a bit more than he did with Ornette's bands. Probably one of the most "African" sounding jazz drummers that I know of, played a lot of swinging versions of New Orleans parade type rhythms and had a kind of loping "on the three" feel (as opposed to the 2 & 4) that is cool and that you don't hear much. A really tight player and not all that "outside" compared to some of his contemporaries. I can only guess that he didn't play with more people 'coz his style, though very coherent and groovy was odd enough that a lot of folks maybe felt that they couldn't use it.
Ralph Peterson: A really fiery drummer with probably a bit of Elvin jones to his sound and maybe a bit of Art Blakey as well, but definitely very much his own thing. A band leader and composer of some really groovy, really nicely melodic tunes. I saw his band in NYC in the 90s and they were GREAT! Had the clarinetist, Don Byron in the group at that time, who's since gone onto (relatively) greater fame. Wonder what happened to this guy, 'coz I haven't been aware of anything that he's done lately.
John Hollenbeck; A drummer/composer of some really nifty music that's "jazz" but is influenced by all kinds of stuff. Very textural, very ambitious music. He's a great drummer as well, but one of those folks that's more about composition/arranging than showing off on his own instrument. If one of his groups comes to your town, check it out... very good stuff.
Lots of other folks that I could list... a lot of my favorites are pretty obscure. I tend to like players who've carved their own path and are doing something really original on the instrument... and that often meas that they've forsaken the limelight somewhat in order to do all of that.
Han Bennick: is a freak of nature... has played on a lot of European free jazz stuff, but also has played some more composed sounding stuff as well. Definitely has an "off the grid" solo style and the way that he comps is unusual for a really modern type jazz drummer in that it seems like his rots are as much with swing rhythms as bebop.
Tony Oxley: isn't someone that I'm all that familiar with but he's sure great on the album "Extrapolation" which was John McLauglin's first album as a leader. He seems to have a really textural/explosive Tony Williams kinda groove on that album. Even folks into Mclauglin haven't heard that one and it's one of my favorites... though in quite a bit different a vibe than most of his other stuff.
Jim Black is a really interesting drummer, no doubt... He's on a lot of recent recordings but is probably still a bit obscure in that they tend to be the kind of recordings that lots of us unfortunately don't get a chance to hear. He's plays jazz but only in the loosest sense of the word... He's got a lot of Arabic influences going on and plays very dry sounding cymbals as if he's playing tom tom beats on 'em (at least that's my take).
A few folks mentioned, like George Hurley, Jack Dejonette and Paul Motian don't seem all that obscure to my mind. Seemed like in the early 90s a ton of bands in my area (including a couple that I was in) were influenced by the minutemen and Firehose (and the drumming of Hurley). That guy to me is sort of the Mitch Mitchell of punk... He's drives the band hard, but dynamically and has some sort of jazz chops/accents going without ever really playing anything that's really "jazz." Jack Dejonette and Paul Motion both have made tons of records with their own bands and have been in tons and tons more as sidemen. I think it'd be safe to say that jazz music would have evolved a bit differently without these two's contributions. Unfortunately, it seems like beyond Buddy, Max and Krupa just about everything "jazz" is obscure...
I'll add a few of my own.
Though I've mentioned him before, this guy Otis "Candy" Finch is worth mentioning again. I just know him from organist Big John Patton's album "Let 'em Roll" but that is really a super-groovy album and that's in no small part to this guy's drumming. Super crisp and very pattern-groove/based. I really don't think that I've heard groovier jazz drumming than this guy's stuff and I have to wonder why he isn't a bigger name. I need to seek out more recordings that he's on.
Ed Blackwell played with some well known folks but certainly isn't a household name... Most famous for playing w/ Ornette Coleman though the group that he was in with other Ornette sidemen, Old and New Dreams is excellent stuff and he gets to stretch out a bit more than he did with Ornette's bands. Probably one of the most "African" sounding jazz drummers that I know of, played a lot of swinging versions of New Orleans parade type rhythms and had a kind of loping "on the three" feel (as opposed to the 2 & 4) that is cool and that you don't hear much. A really tight player and not all that "outside" compared to some of his contemporaries. I can only guess that he didn't play with more people 'coz his style, though very coherent and groovy was odd enough that a lot of folks maybe felt that they couldn't use it.
Ralph Peterson: A really fiery drummer with probably a bit of Elvin jones to his sound and maybe a bit of Art Blakey as well, but definitely very much his own thing. A band leader and composer of some really groovy, really nicely melodic tunes. I saw his band in NYC in the 90s and they were GREAT! Had the clarinetist, Don Byron in the group at that time, who's since gone onto (relatively) greater fame. Wonder what happened to this guy, 'coz I haven't been aware of anything that he's done lately.
John Hollenbeck; A drummer/composer of some really nifty music that's "jazz" but is influenced by all kinds of stuff. Very textural, very ambitious music. He's a great drummer as well, but one of those folks that's more about composition/arranging than showing off on his own instrument. If one of his groups comes to your town, check it out... very good stuff.
Lots of other folks that I could list... a lot of my favorites are pretty obscure. I tend to like players who've carved their own path and are doing something really original on the instrument... and that often meas that they've forsaken the limelight somewhat in order to do all of that.
