The Roots of Rock Drumming - Roots
of the Book
by Steve Smith
In the mid-'90s, I started doing research on
the history of rock n roll music. My
motivation was a 1996/1997 reunion album with
the members of the group Journey (the album we
made was called Trial By Fire). I
wanted to have a better understanding of rock
music so I could address playing my drum parts
with a deeper understanding of the actual roots
of rock drumming.
I started by reading
dozens of books on the history of U.S. Music:
jazz, ragtime, blues, boogie woogie, country,
bluegrass, folk, R&B, gospel and rock. While I
read the books, I bought stacks of CDs so I
could hear the music I was reading about. Many
of the CDs had credits so it was clear who was
playing drums on the recordings. But some of the
songs I was listening to had no credits and no
indication of who was playing drums. Being
curious and wanting more insight - I needed to
know!
Listen to Steve and Daniel Glass
talking about the book on the
I'd Hit That
podcast!
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I had to ask a lot of questions and do a lot
of research to find out the names of the
drummers that
played on certain records. I was surprised to
learn that the drummers that played on the early
rock records were actually jazz drummers! I also
started to notice many threads and connections
between the various forms of U.S. music, the key
point being: originally, they all shared the
same rhythmic base: the swing pulse.
After noticing this pattern, it finally dawned
on me that in those early years of rock n
roll, there were no drummers who had come of age
listening to rock, nor did any grow up wanting
to play rock. In the late '40s and early '50s
there were, in fact, no rock drummers yet! Or,
to be more precise, there were no drummers that
identified themselves as rock drummers.
This research became the foundation of my Hudson
Music DVD Drumset Technique / History of the
U.S. Beat. But, before we filmed that DVD
in 2002, I had an idea to film interviews with
the drummers that I had been reading about and
listening to in order to make a
documentary-style film about the early roots of
rock drumming.
It took me a lot of
effort to learn about the music and the drummers
that were involved in creating the music. I had
come up with some of my own theories and
hypotheses of how the drumming actually
developed but I noticed there was no clear
documentation from the drummers themselves. I
wanted these drummers to tell us how they came
up with the groundbreaking grooves and feels
that we all take for granted today.
I had
discussions with Paul Siegel and Rob Wallis of
Hudson Music about making a documentary-type DVD
about the transition in music that occurred in
the late 40s/early 50s - giving birth to rock
n roll, and the largely unknown (and many
times un-credited) drummers that developed early
rock drumming. It was a story that hadnt been
told and we felt it would be interesting to the
drumming community. Rob and Paul decided to go
ahead with the project.
I started by
developing a template of questions to ask each
drummer. This way, we could cut from one to
another and have different drummers answer the
same questions. The drummers could tell the
story from various perspectives. Paul Siegel,
Rob Wallis and I compiled interview footage from
2001 to 2003.
I felt that the drummers
were very open, honest and insightful. These
drummers all found the process interesting; they
were being interviewed by drummers, for a
drum-oriented project, which made them dig in
and answer questions that many hadn't been asked
before.
When we finally stepped back and
looked at what we had, and started to begin the
work of assembling a documentary, we found that
it would be cost-prohibitive to make it the way
we originally envisioned because of licensing
fees (for historic video footage and song usage)
and the editing time that would be involved. As
we all got busy with other projects, The
Roots Of Rock Drumming was put on hold.
In 2012, we revisited the project. We
settled on the idea of having the interviews
transcribed and then edited for a book.
Drummer/writer/historian Daniel Glass was
engaged to edit the interviews and write an
intro about each drummer.
Daniel is
extremely knowledgeable about the early years of
rock n roll, and was highly motivated to take
on the assignment. In fact, in the early 2000s,
Daniel was conducting his own interviews with
drummers from the early rock n roll era and
some of his interviews have been incorporated
into the book.
The book succeeds on a
number of levels: its interesting, entertaining
and informative. I believe all drummers can
learn something of value by reading the book and
watching the accompanying DVD where you can see
and hear these drummers talking about the
Roots of Rock Drumming.
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