This month's subject shouldn't be too difficult to write-up since I’ve known him, and the rest of the guys he played in the band with, rather well for coming up to sixty years. Mick was in the Kinks, and as it happens, so was I. I won't go into why Mick left because reams have
Roy Burns: November 30, 1935 - May 5, 2018 Roy Burns came from Emporia, which is in Kansas and around a hundred miles from Kansas City. Roy was one of the very few players who built a career which encompassed just about every aspect of drumming and the business of music. He was not only
I used to bump into Max Weinberg every now and again when we were touring around in my Kinks days and doing the odd gig with Bruce Springsteen. I'm pretty sure I remember playing with him in a street festival in Belgium when I was in a band called GB Blues Company, but he wasn't
Charles Connor was born in New Orleans on January 14, 1935 and is best known as a member of Little Richard's band The Upsetters. And, we’re reliably informed that ‘Little’ Richard Penniman’s shout of "a-wop bop-a loo-bop, a-lop bam-boom" at the beginning of his recording of "Tutti Frutti" is said to be a reference to
I didn’t actually know Ed Shaugnessy although we always nodded to one another backstage at Johnny Carson’s ‘The Tonight show’ when I was in Burbank plugging one record or another. I certainly did the Carson Show with The Kinks, and with Don McLean, but I’m afraid my memory fails me after 50 years as to
Without a shadow of a doubt this is the first (and probably the last) time a subject for ‘Groovers and Shakers’ has been investigated as being famous for something he didn't do! It's not easy to fit Pete Best into the format of Groovers and Shakers because ostensibly, from a playing standpoint at least, he
Photo by Philipp Rathmer Dame Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie was born on July 19th, 1965 and brought up in Aberdeenshire in a village called Methlick where Lord Byron once had a castle and his daughter, one Ada Lovelace (who had a big hand in inventing the computer with Charles Babbage) was brought up.
Lowell ‘Sly’ Fillmore Dunbar was born on 10 May 1952 in Kingston, Jamaica and unless I’m missing something remains the world’s quintessential reggae drummer, His name is invariably linked with bass player Robbie Shakespeare, best known as one half of the prolific Jamaican rhythm section and reggae production duo Sly and Robbie - aka ‘The
In a previous life I was fortunate enough to be friendly with Herb Brochstein who among other things founded the Pro-Mark drumstick empire. Like a great many American drummers of his generation he was something of an Anglophile and at any overseas trade show I’d head for his stand to renew my acquaintance. We’d sit
Michael Shrieve was born in San Francisco on the sixth of July, 1949. He’s an American drummer, percussionist, and composer with Irish, German and French ancestry. Like Gene Krupa he wanted to be a priest but he took a somewhat different path. Of course my generation know him rather well as the drummer of the
