Murrey Mizzell ‘Buddy’ Harman was born in Nashville on December 23rd 1928 when Music City must have been a completely different, much smaller and far more rural place. His parents were both musicians and his mother was actually a drummer. He assumed the first name Buddy as an homage to his favourite drummer –
John Russell ‘Jack’ Parnell was born into a showbiz family in London’s Paddington on August 6th, 1923. His mother was an accomplished classical pianist who accompanied his father, Russ Carr, who was a ventriloquist - as indeed was Jack’s grandfather Fed Russell. One of his uncles was Val Parnell who ran all the theatres for
James Marcus Van Eaton was born in Memphis on December 23h, 1937 and about 20 years later was responsible for playing drums on a record which exploded onto the music world more than any other song had done up until then. The song in question was “Whole Lotta Shaking Going On” by Jerry Lee Lewis.
Jo Jones was born on the 7th of October, 1911 in Chicago and I was fortunate (and surprised) to meet him while helping out in his friend Frank Ippolito’s ‘Professional Percussion’ in New York sometime in 1970! He is generally held to be the most important drummer of his time, mainly because he caused the
‘Ed’ Cassidy was born in 1923 and appears in this series on two counts. The first is by virtue of being ‘rock’ music’s oldest drummer, and the second is by being the first person in the sixties to have an exceedingly large drum kit. I’m not sure if anyone’s going to catch him up on
We had planned many weeks ago that Remo would be our ''Groovers And Shakers'' subject for May 15th 2016. His passing on 25th April was a shock to us all, but in tribute to Remo's massively influential life we knew we had to go ahead as planned. Remo had made us very welcome at the
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
