Grady Tate was born in Hayti, North Carolina on January 14th, 1932 and took up singing at four years old and drumming just a year later! Throughout the sixties and seventies when I used to listen to LP’s on the Verve label almost non-stop, he was up there with my favourite drummers mostly because he

  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.

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

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

James Beck ‘Jim’ Gordon was born on July 14th, 1945, grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley and was educated at the same High School as Jeff Porcaro: Ulysses S, Grant. That said, since by my reckoning Jim is nine years older than Jeff, I doubt they could possibly have been there at the same