Well we’ve finally got around to the guy who, whether we like it or not (and I certainly do) is hands down the most famous drummer ever! Ringo. I make no excuses for introducing him like this without his surname because the measure of his fame is such that it renders any family name completely
Levon Helm was born on May 26th, 1940 in Arkansas. I’m sorry to say I never met Levon, but I came close when I was playing with Garth Hudson and Don McLean. Levon was scheduled to come to a gig at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach in mid-1981 but unfortunately he didn’t make it
I’ve known Robert Hartley Elliott since the beginning of the sixties and I vividly remember the first time I met him. I was playing on the same bill with him at what they used to call a ‘Summer Sunday Concert’ in Morecambe, Lancashire. Bobby was playing with Shane Fenton (eventually aka Alvin Stardust) and I
I still haven’t met DJ Fontana, but I did speak to him on the telephone when he was doing something in a TV studio in Elstree a few years ago. He was born on March 15th 1931 in Shreveport, Louisiana. We know that the ‘D’ stood for Dominic but depending on where you look the
We’re moving quite a bit closer to the present day with the subject of this month’s ‘Groovers and Shakers’. Buddy Miles was very much a child of the sixties inasmuch as that was when he came to people’s notice, including mine. It’s no secret he’s listed up there at the top of my favourite drummers
We know Billy Gussak was born in 1920 but exactly when and where seems to be something of a mystery. He was a ‘Swing’ drummer during the thirties who had an exceedingly proper gig with the CBS Staff band. He played under a conductor called Leith Stevens (who was responsible for the music soundtracks for
If you think about it, there has been a rich tradition of drummers as entertainers and comedians. In the UK, Norman Wisdom, Michael Bentine and Peter Sellers were all serious comedians (pun intended) who could also play the drums. The Americans had Mel Brooks, Sammy Davis jnr, Jerry Lewis, Mickey Rooney and even Johnny Carson.
Freddie Below was born in Chicago on September 19th, 1926 and is credited with inventing the art of blues drumming as we know it, and for slipping the all-important offbeat into it at the appropriate place. But of course he didn’t begin as a blues drummer; he took up drums while he was in a
Ronnie Tutt was born on March 12th, 1938 in Dallas Texas. His mother started him with tap-dancing lessons at three years old after he started singing along to the family’s radio and record player, and he kept up these lessons for eight years. During this time he became interested in the playing side of
Roger Hawkins, born on October 15th, 1945 in Mishawaka, Indiana, is the drummer who played on a great many of the songs that I (and many other drummers of my ilk) love to play live. When someone in the band I’m playing with at a gig calls out: “Respect”, “Chain Of Fools”, “I’ll Take You
