James Edward Gadson was born in Kansas City, Missouri on June 17th, 1939. His father Harold was a jazz drummer, originally from Texarcana, who played in local Big Bands with the likes of Jay McShann and Charlie Parker, when Joe Turner would be singing too. Because of the way his own career had turned
Vincent ‘Vinnie’ Colaiuta was born on February 5th, 1956. He was originally from Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and as you’d probably guess from his Christian name and surname was brought up a Catholic. Having started out beating on pots and pans he was given his first (non serious) paper-headed toy drumset when he was seven years old.
Leon Chancler was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on July 1st, 1952 and eventually added the African name ‘Ndugu’ in between the two he’d been given at birth. It’s a Swahili word meaning ‘Earth Brother’ which suited him very well. I first met him when we were both Remo endorsers and, like most drummers, we were
When Hal Blaine was ripping it up on the West Coast, three thousand miles from New York as the Boeing 707 flies, it was physically and geographically difficult for him to make recordings on the East Coast. Plus of course, he’d lose a small fortune in missed session fees while he was getting there and
David ‘Dave‘ Clark was very much part of my North London Music scene in the sixties, to the extent that eventually he lived just a mile or so from me in Southgate N21, in a house called ‘The Drum’. He was born on December 15th, 1942, although if you search you may find that other
Cindy Blackman was born November 18th, 1959 in Yellow Springs, Ohio which is 48 miles from the State Capital, Columbus. Her mother and grandmother were classical musicians with her mother a violinist, and her grandmother a pianist who would take the young Cindy to classical concerts. To add to the eclectic mixture her uncle
Colin Trevor ‘Cozy’ Powell was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England on December 29th, 1947. He was adopted and never met his birth parents. When he was 12 he started playing drums in his school’s orchestra. This was not long before he became a teenager and he claims he was thrown out for being too noisy!
We've got to the magic '50' mark as far as Groovers and Shakers articles are concerned, and to celebrate, we thought it was time to look at a drummer who is very close to us at mikedolbear.com – Bob Henrit himself At the rate Bob's writing these, he'll be 77 when he writes his 100th
We first put up this tribute at the start of 2017, but we thought it was fitting as the site went live on his birthday to revisit it, and again have a look at the life of Buddy Rich. “Bernard ‘Buddy’ Rich, was born on September 30th, 1917 so we’re just a bit early with
David James Mattacks was born in the London suburb of Burnt Oak on the 13th March, 1948 which unfortunately makes him considerably younger than me. Nevertheless I needed a calculator to work out how long we’ve known one another, and it turns out to be 53 years! The Mattacks family moved around a lot although
