Steve Smith's
Drum Talk:
Confessions of a U.S. Ethnic
Drummer (part 1)
By Bill Milkowski
(Modern Drummer)
 There
was a defining moment at the Drummers Collective
25th Anniversary Celebration last November in
New York City in which Steve Smith revealed
himself to be hipper than the room. Following an
awesome display of mondo-technique from a
succession of heavyweight chopmeisters Kim
Plainfield, Dave Weckl and Horacio "El Negro"
Hernandez (all which the packed house of
aspiring drummers ate up with the delight),
Smith took the stage and proceeded to hold court
with simply a snare and a pair of brushes. No
imposing double bass drum flailing, no acrobatic
fills or traversing the kit with pumped up
attack, no heroic cross sticking or clave action
on a wood block triggered by a foot pedal. No
chops grandstanding, no flailing, no sweating.
Just snare and brushes, a totally relaxed
approach and a deep desire to make music. It was
the perfect zen-like response to the parade of
whirlwind sticking the had preceeded him; the
ultimate example of "less is more."
If
Smith hadn't won the crowd over by that point --
playing Ed Thigpen in the wake of Billy Cobham's
thunder -- he certainly did with his next savvy
maneuver. Taking his hi hat and a single stick
to the front of the stage, he proceeded to wow
the crowd with a demonstration of stick
balancing points that was part Papa Jo Jones,
part Harlem Globetrotters. By the time he had
the stick balancing and rebounding in seamless
sequence off his shin, his ankle, his arm,
rolling it between fingers without dropping a
beat, the crowd offered up ecstatic applause.
It's an old school move that never fails to
entertain. Papa Jo himself did it himself before
an awed crowd at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival
and living legend Roy Haynes continues to do it
to this day on the bandstand. But no one
expected a bona fide fusionhead, Mr. Vital
Information, to pull off such a slick old school
trick with such smooth aplomb. Everyone in the
house knew that Steve Smith was a killer
drummer. But who knew he was so hip? As Roy used
to say of himself, "There might be a better
drummer than me, but there's no one hipper."
It might be because Smith had been spending
a lot of time in the past, so to speak, that he
channeled such old school shtick. Or perhaps he
is precisely what drum elder and bop guru
Freddie Gruber called him -- "an old soul in a
young body." As the writer, narrator and
demonstrator of "Drumset Technique/History of
the U.S. Beat," a two-disc DVD set from Hudson
Music that thoroughly examines the evolution of
the drumset in U.S. music while offering
examples of how the kit was used in all the
major styles, Smith immersed himself in studying
the origins of this uniquely American
instrument, going all the way back to Africa to
find clues on how the drumset came to be. Using
a comprehensive and scholarly approach, he
traced the evolution of the drumset from hand
drums and talking drums to "patting juba" to
incorporating cymbals and development of the
first practical bass drum pedal. This
enlightening musical travelogue progress from
early New Orleans jazz at the turn of the 20th
century to big band jazz in the '30s, bop in the
'40s, followed by rhythm 'n blues, blues,
country, gospel, rock 'n roll, funk and
culminating in '70s fusion. Steve provides
detailed examples along the way of how the
drummers implemented the kit into the style of
the times. In addition, his group, Vital
Information, performs seven complete tunes that
feature applications of the techniques and
complex rhythms that Steve broke down in
complete detail in Disc One.
A massive
undertaking, this comprehensive two DVD set runs
over four and a half hours, providing
enlightening and entertainment along the way for
drummers and non-drummers alike. We caught up to
Smith on the evening just prior to his showcase
appearance at the Drummers Collective 25th
Anniversary Celebration.
MD: Did you
consciously put yourself into a scholarly frame
of mind to do this project, "Drumset
Technique/History of the U.S. Beat"?
STEVE SMITH: That mindset of exploring the
history of U.S. music is just something that
I've been living for a long time, so I've been
in that headspace for quite a few years.
MD: Then this project was merely formalizing
something that you've been thinking about
anyway?
SS: Yeah, exactly. I guess the
place to start is the Vital Information album
"Where We Come From." Before we did that album
back in 1997 I had spent some time investigating
Afro-Cuban music. I realized I could learn the
patterns of that style of drumming and I could
play it to a degree but I didn't really play it
well, in my opinion, because I didn't grow up in
the culture. I realized that the best musicians
of the genre are literally all from Cuba or
Puerto Rico or somewhere in the Caribbean and
most of them know the history of their music and
culture. This inspired me to focus on the music
of my own culture and use that same approach. I
had to admit that as a U.S. drummer I didn't
know a lot about the origins of my own music. I
knew some jazz history and I had lived through
'60s rock and the fusion era but I didn't know a
lot about early jazz or the early rhythm and
blues, blues, country and gospel and all that.
And at a point I really started seeing myself as
part of a lineage, a U.S. ethnic drummer playing
the percussion instrument of the United States
-- the drum set.
MD: And that triggered
your whole investigation of the past?
SS:
Definitely. I wanted to be informed about my own
past and what I was connected to. I became very
engrossed in learning about the whole U.S. music
scene in general and the development of the drum
set in particular. So now I really do see myself
as a U.S. ethnic drummer that plays all the
different styles of U.S. music, not that I'm a
unique person doing it because I think there's a
lot of guys doing it but they may not have
identified themselves as that. It's been helpful
for me to think of myself as a U.S. ethnic
drummer. It's a bigger perspective than "a jazz
drummer" or "studio drummer" or "fusion
drummer."
MD: How did this project come
to fruition? How did you research it and what
areas in particular did you have to study that
you weren't well acquainted with?
SS: I
started from the perspective of a jazz drummer
because that's essentially how I first learned
to play the drums. As a kid I took lessons from
a teacher named Billy Flanagan who lived in
Brockton, Massachusetts. In the 1960s he was
already in his 60s so he had played in the '30s
and the '40s. He was a swing drummer like a
Louis Bellson or a Buddy Rich and that's the
concept that I learned from him. So through
Billy my earliest background was in big band
swing music but growing up in the '60s I just
sort of intuited rock 'n roll because it was in
the culture. I find that you don't so much have
to study the music that is of the culture that you're
growing up in, you just seem to get it.
I just got Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix so I didn't have to really study that music, just
like a kid today wouldn't have to study Blink
182, Tool or whatever bands they're listening
to. And with fusion, I saw it all happen first
generation because when I got out of high school
in '72 and went to Berklee, I got to see Return
To Forever, Billy Cobham's band, Tony Williams
Lifetime, the Headhunters and all of that. That
music, because it was in the air, was part of
the culture of my time.
MD: So what
styles did you have to study in order to prepare
for this DVD project?
SS: Well, initially
I had done research on older styles without ever
thinking about doing a DVD. It was just
something I was doing, following my own
interests because I was curious and wanted to
expand my knowledge and playing ability. But in
preparing the DVD, I had to go back and study
those styles that didn't come naturally to me.
For example, I had to study the early New
Orleans drumming. Obviously, I didn't grow up in
New Orleans and I didn't grow up in the '20s or
the '30s so that was definitely something I had
to investigate. So I studied the early New
Orleans thing and just followed it sequentially
through the swing bands and bebop and rhythm and
blues and all of that. And then I eventually
branched out and started to learn more about all
the different styles of U.S. music that at first didn't have drums but were still a big part of
the culture. I looked for the earliest blues,
gospel and country recordings that I could find.
So it started with the jazz drumming and then I
followed it back as far as I could go through
recordings, writings, listening and talking to
people and just everything I could do to get
educated.
MD: I understand that you're
currently involved in another musicological
undertaking?
SS: Yes, another project
we're doing with Hudson Music is a history of
rock 'n roll drumming. And through that I've
gotten to meet some of the early rock 'n roll
drummers, like Buddy Harman, who was probably
the first Nashville country drummer, and D.J.
Fontana, who toured and recorded with Elvis
Presley. Also Jerry Allison from Buddy Holly's
band The Crickets and J.M. Van Eaton who was the
house drummer at Sun Records. So I've gotten a
chance to talk to and interview these guys --
Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Sandy Nelson. I'm
getting a lot of input for this next project and
learning about these other styles of music.
MD: Any revelations from that project?
SS: I found it somewhat of
a revelation that there was no such thing as
country drummers, blues drummers, gospel
drummers or rock drummers in the very first
generation of adding drums to those styles of
music. It turns out that most of the guys who
played on the early country, blues, gospel and
early rock 'n roll sessions
considered themselves jazz drummers. For
example, in 1935 when Bob Wills wanted to add a
drummer to his Western Swing group the Texas
Playboys he got Smokey Dakus, who was a jazz
drummer, because there was no such thing as a
country drummer at the time. Drums weren't added
to Nashville country music until the '50s. And
the guy who did most of those early country
sessions, Buddy Harman, was a jazz drummer as
well. There were no real country drummers at
that time. If a country musician wanted a
drummer on his record at that time, he hired a
jazz drummer. So the real revelation is that for
about the first 50 years of U.S. music history
the only kind of drumming going on was jazz
drumming, whether it was New Orleans style,
swing style, bebop or early rhythm and blues
drumming, which is really more of a big band
concept applied to a small group with a singer
or sax player out front.
MD: And even
into the '60s with Motown...those session guys
were all working jazz musicians before Motown
hired them as the house band.
SS:
Exactly. And the same with the blues guys. When
Chess Records added drums to Muddy Waters and
other blues players recordings in the early
50s...there were no blues drummers yet so they
added jazz drummers like Fred Below. Same with
gospel recordings. They'd have Panama Francis
play or some other New York or Memphis drummer
who had a jazz background. It was real
interesting for me to see that the jazz drummers
were really the original drummers in every genre
in American music.
MD: That's the common
ground that makes it such quintessentially
American music.
SS:
Yeah! And it was even the same thing with early
rock 'n roll. Earl
Palmer, who is essentially a bebop drummer from
New Orleans, played on all those early Fats
Domino and Little Richard sessions recorded in
New Orleans during the '50s. So the very first
drummers in all the genres -- guys working for a
living and playing sessions -- were jazz
drummers. And then shortly thereafter you did
have young drummers who began identifying
themselves as drummers other than jazz drummers.
When I did these interviews with the early rock
drummers I asked them how they saw themselves
and D.J. Fontana said he clearly saw himself as
a jazz drummer. He grew up in the northern part
of Louisiana listening to Gene Krupa and wanting
to play jazz but ended up getting the gig with
Elvis. And it was a great gig so he did it but
he still saw himself as a jazz drummer. And
Jerry Allison when he was a kid saw Elvis and
saw D.J. playing with Elvis, but Jerry Allison
was then 14 and he said, "I wanna be a rock
'n
roll drummer." He grew up with and played with
Buddy Holly and perceived himself as a rock
drummer. But if you listen to what D.J. and
Jerry play on the records, their playing is not
that far apart from each other, they're both
swinging and they're both playing some real nice
parts. The main difference is how they perceive
themselves as far as one saw himself as a jazz
drummer playing rock and the other saw himself
as a rock drummer. And you could extend that to
today where maybe an r&b drummer is playing on
the first rap record in the late 70s and he's
not considering himself as a rap drummer because
there was no such thing at the time. But then
quickly, probably within a year or so, there
would be a young drummer growing up with the
attitude of "I'm a hip-hop drummer," and that's
his concept. So it doesn't take long for the
thing to catch on where you identify yourself as
a particular kind of drummer. But personally I
guess I see myself as this overall U.S. drummer.
MD: And now you're a scholar too.
SS:
I guess so. But I want to address the common
ground that you mentioned earlier, the rhythmic
common denominator of U.S. music that connects
all of these drumming styles. Just like the
clave is the rhythmic common denominator of
Afro-Cuban music, the swing pulse is the
rhythmic common denominator of all U.S. music.
And if you listen to the early recordings of
jazz, rhythm and blues, country, gospel, blues
or rock 'n roll, it's all swing. All of those
early guys were swinging, from Louis Jordan and
Cab Calloway right up to Elvis and Jerry Lee
Lewis. It all swung! It's a later development
where things started to get a little more
straight eighth note oriented, which comes out
of the boogie woogie piano influence. And that's
a long transition. You can hear records where
Little Richard is playing more even eighth notes
on piano while Earl Palmer is still playing with
a shuffle swing feel underneath. But eventually
the drummers started to play more and more with
the piano players and then the guitar players
also began to imitate the piano sound with a
more straight eighth feel. Listen to Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." Fred Below is the
drummer on that and he's playing swing with a
backbeat against the straight eighth guitar. So
the point is, if you develop a strong swing
pulse in your playing it opens the door to then
being able to play all the different styles
because that is the rhythmic common denominator
of all U.S. music. After you have a strong swing
pulse then you can adapt yourself to whatever
the music needs. And you figure out what the
music needs by hanging with the cats, by just
hanging with the guys who do it and listening.
MD: Will your investigation
of U.S. drumming eventually lead you to more
current styles like hip-hop or drum 'n bass?
SS: I am going
to do a book that will accompany this DVD and go
a little further with it in terms of 60s jazz
drumming and present-day styles. But as far as
doing several volumes of DVDs, I don't really
see the point of it because, to me, all the
essential ingredients to playing just about any
kind of music that you're presented with today
was developed by sometime in the 1970s.
MD: No major innovations on the drums after
that?
SS: After the '70s, drumming-wise,
the next most influential thing that came on the
scene was the drum machine. So things really
changed in the '80s with that drum machine
influence. Throughout time there were key
players who had innovated playing concepts on
the drums. On the DVD I talk about how the hi
hat comes into play on the kit...that's like
Papa Jo playing with Count Basie; the floor toms
is Gene Krupa with Benny Goodman, the bebop
style is Kenny Clarke and the rhythm and blues
style...that's really no one particular drummer
but rather a lot of guys who played with, say,
people like Louis Jordan or Louis Prima. And
then with the fusion stuff, of course, there's
Billy Cobham and Lenny White and Mike Clark. And
then the next drummer who really turned
everyone's head around with a new concept was
Steve Gadd, who brought a real studio
consciousness to his playing. Steve was probably
the first drum star that embodied a heavy studio
consciousness. All the other drum stars before
that from Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich to Tony
Williams to Billy Cobham were guys who played
live. They recorded but you wouldn't think of
them as studio drummers, per se and the studio
players weren't stars. With Gadd, things really
started to shift. You got the studio sound and
deep feel and the very, very accurate time. And
then after him, the next major innovation in
drumming was really the drum machine itself. The
Linn drum machine became hugely influential. It
was used on so many of the pop tunes of the '80s
that it triggered a concept change where
drummers had to play like that in order to be a
pop drummer. It's like you had to play like a
machine in order to get work.
MD: It's
like the machine was emulating Gadd, and then
the next generation emulated the machine.
SS: Yeah, it's a real twist and a real
shift. And so, to me, there's not a lot of new
drum vocabulary since the '70s, the emphasis
became execution -- perfection. Different music's have developed since then but a whole
lot of new vocabulary isn't necessary to play
it. You can pretty much recycle everything that
developed up until the '70s to play the music.
For example, drum 'n bass is basically funk
drumming speeded up and hip-hop is funk slowed
down. And both come directly from James Brown, it's still essentially the same rhythms and
beats that the James Brown bands developed in
the '60s and '70s. So even though some things
have evolved and changed, it remains the same.
Hopefully some new things will evolve but for
the most part the lion's share of the vocabulary
is already there for drummers.
MD: What
were some of the surprises that you had in
researching the early years...even the African
connection. Were there any revelations about how
this music developed as you found out about it
in your research?
SS: I think what was
significant to me is that in the United States
there's no hand drum tradition, which in fact
led to the drum set becoming the rhythmic voice
of the African American community. Whereas, if
history had played itself out differently and let's say we had a hand drum tradition in the
United States, the drumset may have never been a
necessary invention because we would've had a
whole percussive orchestra just with hand
drumming. But because of the no-drumming laws
that were enforced during the time of slavery,
the hand drum tradition that develops directly
out of African drumming was squelched in this
country. It is true that slaves in New Orleans
were allowed to play hand drums once a week at
Congo Square. But when you look at that in the
scope of how long slavery existed in the United
States, which is from the 1500s until the mid
1800s, Congo Square only represents about 40
years in the scheme of things. It began in 1817
and lasted until the mid 1850s. I think in some
ways the significance of Congo Square has been a
bit overemphasized. Congo Square had the
drumming legally but there were other places in
Louisiana and all over the South that had the
African polyrhythmic percussive concepts still
being practiced illegally or underground for the
entire history of slavery in the U.S. There's a
great book by Dena Epstein called "Sinful Tunes
and Spirituals," which is a documentation of
everything she could find on the African
polyrhythmic concept surviving in the United
States throughout the years of slavery. She
found that people kept the African pulse alive
in many ways such as playing washboards,
jawbones, beating sticks on the floor, or
stomping their feet on the floor. Even some
African hand drums or African styled drums that
were made in secret here in the U.S. have been
found.
MD: And you make an interesting
point in the DVD about the polyrhythmic style of
"patting juba" leading to the development of the drumset.
SS: That's another percussion
instrument, so to speak, that was developed in
the U.S., where the person is playing with feet
and hands, incorporating all the limbs just like
the drumset. It's an African polyrhythmic
concept and it was eventually applied to the drumset, which is the only percussion instrument
in the world that uses all four limbs. So in
effect, the slaves being deprived of hand drums
set the stage for the African American community
to embrace the drumset. Without hand drums they
were forced to adapt to the European percussion
instruments that were available in the1800s, the
snare drum and the bass drum, so they were
comfortable with the individual instruments that
would make up the drumset. I find it real
interesting that basically the invention of the
drum set is the invention of the bass drum
pedal. After that happened in the late 1800s,
basically the drum set wasn't used for any other
purpose than playing jazz, which was a creation
of the African American community. So when
people first played the drumset they wanted to
play with that concept -- one person playing a
snare drum and a bass drum with that African
American swing rhythmic concept. The drumset
could've just as easily been used in a symphony
orchestra but it wasn't. It had some
applications in, say, vaudeville and maybe a few
situations here and there other than jazz but
they never took off as playing concepts. The
playing concept that we now take for granted is
essentially an African American concept of how
to use the instrument. This concept has been so
thoroughly assimilated into the culture that
most people don't even think about it or
question how it came to be. Today the drumset is
an instrument that's been accepted all over the
world but it is quintessentially a U.S.
instrument that developed from our unique
history and culture.
MD: Has the drumset
continued to develop as a vital expression in
recent years?
SS: Yes, there are some
drummers who are developing new ideas and
abilities on the instrument and there are some
players that are simply great musicians playing
great music on the drumset. But in general,
during the last decade or so, it's being used in
such a limited and basic way, especially in pop
music, that I find it uninspiring. For example
they hit the snare drum and get one sound, hit
the bass drum and get one sound and play at one
dynamic level rather than really getting into
the nuance of everything you can do on the drumset as an instrument. There's so many sounds
in just the snare drum alone, from a soft press
roll to a rimshot...a stick in the middle of the
head to the edge where you get a higher pitch
and more ring.
MD: And why is that being
phased out?
SS: Well, since the music
industry is so driven by fashion and pop
culture, there's really not much music left in
what passes for music these days.
MD:
It's so homogenized to the point that the tones
themselves are homogenized?
SS: Yeah, in
pop music. Machines are playing most everything
so people sample a sound and you get one sort of
sound or noise and that suffices as a backbeat.
And that's what's used rather than getting into
the nuance of actually playing the instrument.
Meanwhile, I'm getting more and more into the
instrument myself. Just the art of playing the
snare drum itself...there's so much to it as far
as getting a nice sound out of it and exploring
all the tones that are available just on the one
instrument, or getting into the nuances of
playing a ride cymbal. There's so much there.
MD: Well, there's still room for that in
jazz.
SS: There is. And thats
encouraging.
Continue to Part 2... |
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