Joe Morello

Joseph Albert Morello was born in Springfield, Mass. on July 17th 1928 and first came to the world’s attention in 1959 with Dave Brubeck on the album ‘Time Out’. However, he’d certainly paid his drumming dues long before he was thrust into the drumming spotlight at the end of the fifties and had already become a ‘drummer’s drummer’. I already mentioned Joe in the Smoky Dacus piece because, unlikely though it seems, he too had played in a Western Swing band with Hank Garland in the ‘Arkansas Cotton Pickers’ in 1947.

Joe was visually impaired from birth and started his musical career at six years old as a violin prodigy. Three years later he played Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. When he was 12 he played with them again before giving the instrument up for good having come to the realisation that (having met him) he would never have the touch or tone of his hero Jascha Heifetz. This was when he took up percussion seriously but still with the idea of playing in an orchestra.

In his home town Joseph found Joe Sefcik, a local pit-drummer who having begun to give him lessons, soon got him started doing casual gigs: weddings, socials, even military stuff. Eventually Sefcik advised he should move to a better teacher and George Lawrence Stone in Boston took over and always referred to him as his star pupil. GLS not only taught him to read drum music (which can’t have been easy with Joe’s drastically reduced eye sight), he also helped him become rudimental drumming champion of New England! Joe Morello still planned a career in orchestral percussion but, perhaps more importantly George Stone managed to coerce him to the dark side – jazz – although not necessarily the jazz he eventually became famous for.

It’s a far cry from the intentionally danceable Dixieland feels of the ‘Cotton Pickers’ to the ultra-cool modern jazz of Dave Brubeck – which you’d attempt to dance to in company at your peril. But it’s something of a side-step to get to the energetic dance music of a chap called Whitey Bernard with whose orchestra Joe Morello played. It’s not too easy to find out about this guy because he was also known as Frank Sumowski but since his band were called the Polkateers it’s safe to assume he was a polka specialist and that part of the United States had a great many of those bands in the days before rock ‘n’ roll burst on the scene. There’s a distinct possibility Whitey/Frank may have played the accordion. This of course goes to show Joe Morello was a proper jobbing drummer. Not long after this he upped sticks (pun intended) and on the advice of his neighbours Phil Woods and Sal Salvador, moved to New York City.

Like most musicians suddenly becoming a small fish in a big pond, he struggled for a while but eventually came to the notice of the likes of guitarists Johnny Smith, Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney; as well as Stan Kenton, Jay McShann, Art Pepper and Marian McPartland whereupon he started getting calls for proper gigs. McPartland actually thought he looked more like a student of nuclear physics than a drummer but his gig with her trio lasted for a couple of years at a club called the Hickory House. Here big name drummers would come firstly to see Joe play, before swapping licks and talking drums during the breaks. His technique from his rudimental and orchestral roots was evidently so strong that according to Jim Chapin he could play back to them anything they showed him – twice as fast.

But an over-abundance of technique certainly this wasn’t his thing. Ed Soph once said: “He always played for the music. You’d never know he had all those chops unless you heard him play a solo.”

He was influenced by Max Roach and didn’t utilise his prodigious speed in his own playing. Joe himself said: “Technique is a means to an end. But to use it alone just to see how fast you can play so you can machine-gun everyone to death – that doesn’t make any sense.” Around this time he was taking lessons from Billy Gladstone who was the pre-eminent drummer/percussionist at Radio City Music Hall and generally acknowledged as being one of the most technically fast drummers of all time.

Like most drummers Joe turned down various opportunities he possibly shouldn’t have – including gigs with Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. He decided both of them were old-hat and preferred instead to replace Joe Dodge with Dave Brubeck. Paul Desmond insisted Brubeck came with him to see Joe at the Hickory House and in 1955 he was offered the gig on a two month’s trial. He didn’t take it immediately because he held out to have a better role in the quartet: one where he would not only be a featured player, but also able to play various polyrhythms and modulate from one to another. Brubeck eventually agreed and this of course led to ‘Take 5’ the rhythm of which came about when Paul Desmond and Joe were noodling back- stage. This evidently coincided with something Goddard Leiberson, the then head of CBS was interested in: odd time signatures over a jazz background. Paul Desmond was instructed by Brubeck to write something around their lilting 5/4 pulse. The tune was actually written as a drum solo and the associated album, cleverly called ‘Time Out’, was unnecessarily underwritten by Lieberson because it went on to sell a million copies.

On receiving news of Joe’s death Brubeck said of him: “he was a pioneer in odd time signatures, his drum solo on ‘Take 5’ is still being heard around the world.”

Joe, perhaps accidentally, epitomised ‘cool’ with his horn-rimmed glasses and natty suits. A lot of drummers copied his appearance with Brooks Brothers’ button-down collar shirts, knitted ties and short-cropped hair. The look became ‘de rigeur’ for many, many already seasoned drummers – almost as if you couldn’t play serious jazz unless you looked like Joe.

It was ‘Take 5’ which did the trick for me and every aspiring young drummer of the time and there are a lot of technical things we wouldn’t have heard had it not been for Joe – including touch, feel and even sound. Take 5 was in 5/4 and most of us were only just ready for it. We knew 2/4 and ¾ of course from the radio and possibly 6/8 and were capable of playing those time signatures but five crotchets beats in a bar was, in those days, much easier to listen to than to play. And of course it depended upon the other guys in your group being able to play in ‘odd’ time too. We rockers did our best to get to grips with the pulse of Take 5 as Joe played it, but Aynsley Dunbar played a great version with Blue Whale in the very early days of progressive rock. [BTW years ago I was walking through the corridors connecting the Victoria tube line to the Northern line and heard this sax- playing Rastafarian happily attacking ‘Take 5’ in 4/4! I wasn’t sure whether he was intentionally being really avant garde or not!] Joe himself said that: ”Take 5 was conspicuous by being so different and there was little speed involved, it was more about space and playing over the barline.”

Something else we may not have seen without him were Silver Glitter covered drums. Like just about every serious jazz drummer Joe had played a four-piece White Marine Pearl set for many years and happened to be working at the London House in Chicago when Bill Ludwig II turned up to see him play – I’m guessing with Marian McPartland’s Trio. Joe’s drums had quite a few miles on the clock and were evidently beginning to look their age. Bill was impressed by his playing but not by the condition of his drum set. He suggested if he came to the factory he’d swap those well-used WFLs for a new, more salubrious outfit which would not only complement his playing but also help his image. Joe duly turned up with his drums and while looking around the factory his attention was taken by a stack of drums in a finish he hadn’t seen before. Joe said he’d like his replacement set to be covered in that finish and was told he couldn’t because those sparkling finishes were only for Marching Drummers – guys who needed them to add some ‘flash’ to stand out from the crowd from a distance. Joe obviously twisted Bill’s arm and was the first to have regular drums in what was then called Sparkling Silver Pearl. He turns up for the first time with it in the ‘57 catalogue as an endorser when he was still playing with Marian McPartland, and this was at the time when the WFL catalogue was simultaneously using the newly reclaimed Ludwig name. In the 1959-produced catalogue, a couple of years later though, he was pictured playing a ‘Super Classic’ set and had exchanged a wood-shelled snare for the brand-new, soon to be ubiquitous, ‘Super Ludwig 400’ metal drum . Joe’s technique seemed to give them their distinctive sound and that said, once Joe had moved away from Ludwig, some drummers had trouble getting used to him sitting behind any other set – even if it was covered in silver glitter.

I’m ashamed to admit I never went to a Brubeck gig but in the early part of the sixties I went to Joe’s Ludwig drum clinic at the Lyceum in London with my dad and remember his wonderfully accurate playing and nonchalant tap dancing. Ivor Arbiter owned Drum City and was of course the Ludwig distributor and he took him on the road. He told me in an interview in the nineties what a super-nice man Joe was but how doing more than 34 clinics with Joe nearly killed him! I bumped into the great man at a lot of trade shows when I was with Ivor (and wearing my Arbiter AT hat) and he was always wonderfully friendly and affable. I was struck by the thickness of his glasses so wasn’t surprised to be told he was what the Americans call ‘legally blind’. This of course eventually became a major problem to him.

When Ivor Arbiter broke the good news to WFL over the transatlantic telephone in 1964 that Ringo had chosen a Ludwig kit, ‘Old Bill’, who was unaware (like everyone else outside of the UK) of anything about The Beatles, asked if Ringo was as good as Joe Morello…

After 1968 when the Dave Brubeck Quartet broke up Joe reverted to being a clinician and drum teacher working with the likes of Max Weinberg, Danny Gottleib and many more. But without his seamless and effortless playing of ‘odd’ time signatures in my opinion we would not have seen the possibilities offered by them and we may not have had Zappa, Mahavishnu, Don Ellis or even the progressive rock of Yes, King Crimson, Genesis and many others.

The statistics relating to Joe Morello’s career are frankly astonishing. He left a really public legacy. Besides his magnum opus, Take 5 being the only jazz record to get to Number One on the hit parade, he also appeared on sixty albums with Dave Brubeck and played on 120 albums. His awards are also amazing: Playboy Magazine’s best drummer for seven consecutive years, Downbeat Magazine’s poll winner for five years, elected to Modern Drummer’s Hall of Fame in 1988 and a Percussive Arts Society’s Hall of Fame in 1993.

He remains my favourite drummer (although I do have a reserve favourite and in the fullness of time I’ll introduce him to you). As far as finding the best of Joe Morello to get the flavour of him I’d recommend listening to everything he’s ever done and then listening to it again!

In his time Joe Morello came up with some great quotes:

It would be awfully boring if everyone played the same – you’d only have to own one record!”

I think ‘swing’ and ‘feel’ are individual things. There’s not just one way to swing.”

He’s also on record saying: “The most important thing for a drummer is to be original”. Joe certainly was that!

Joe Morello died on March 12th, 2011 and I’ve often wondered if they played ‘Take 5’ at his funeral.

Bob Henrit

May 2014

By | 2017-09-13T11:32:23+00:00 May 25th, 2014|Categories: Groovers and Shakers|Comments Off on Joe Morello

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