I’ve been waiting for this day for some time, because today we get to celebrate the birthday of a big drumming influence for a lot of drummers who grew up in the 1960s, Joe Morello, born on this day in 1928. He’s THE guy who got me interested in the drums. It’s also the day we give the nerd some.
If you think back, there are very few hit records that feature a drum solo. There’s "Sing, Sing, Sing," Sandy Nelson’s "Teen Beat," Cozy Cole’s "Topsy, Part 2," and of course "Wipe Out," but that’s about it, save for one other song, "Take Five." Of all those songs, Take Five has to be the least likely, given that it’s in an odd time and it’s played by a quiet, unassuming guy wearing thick glasses.
Around 1960, it was pretty clear that big band music and the "bounce" beat were relics of the past. Drumming changed a lot, and while other instrumentalists were able to make the transition into the newer "bebop" and "cool" styles, only one drummer, Davey Tough, really did and he died in 1948.
There are a couple of specific things that changed in the transition from the bounce to the bebop. First, the timekeepers changed. Bounce was driven by the downbeat: the bass drum playing steady quarter or eighth notes, often called "four on the floor, and the snare drum playing the syncopated rhythm patterns, much in the same way military and concert bands had done for the previous century. Drummers like Max Roach gave the music a much "lighter" feel, by keeping time with a backbeat with the hi-hat (on the "ands") and putting a syncopated pattern being played on a large suspended cymbal (what had been called a bounce cymbal became the ride cymbal, because the drummer would be riding it all through a song).
Over this time, the drums changed a lot too. The drum set evolved from a convenient replacement for a drum section, to a real instrument in the late 20s and early 30s. Gene Krupa developed the fully tunable tom-tom in about 1935 with the Slingerland Drum Company. Turkish cymbals were adapted from hand playing to being suspended on stands and clapped together by a foot operated mechanical device that started out on the floor (the "lowboy") and eventually rose up to a height so that it could be played with the hands and foot (the "hi-hat"). And, the bass drum began to shrink too. In the early 30s, the standard bass drum was 28" in diameter. By the beginning of WWII, it was 26." After the war, the 24" bass was a popular option, and by the early 1950s, the new style New York drummers had adopted 20" and even 18" diameter bass drums, in order to transport them on the Subway. The drums got softer to match a softer sort of music.
These changes meant that times weren’t as good for the big band drummers like Buddy Rich after WWII. He had his own big band for a few years, but it wasn’t able to sustain itself without financial help from Frank Sinatra. Buddy ended up being a sideman in smaller combos like everyone else. Big bands (like the Stan Kenton Orchestra) survived by staying in the recording studio and playing more experimental music. When the old style drummer played in the bebop setting, there was tension. You can hear it in this clip of Buddy Rich playing with Charlie Parker. It’s certainly not bad; Buddy Rich always played great, but you can hear that four on the floor all the way through, and he doesn’t even have a ride cymbal on that set.
A lot of people have tried to describe how musical styles represent their times. The swing era was a product of the modern industrial age and the depression. That four on the floor beat could represent an assembly line producing cars and eventually war machines. The atomic bomb put all that might into perspective: everything could disappear in a second and there would be nothing you could do about it. Might as well just stay cool.
On the drums, that cool meant you didn’t bounce along going "boom boom boom"; rather, you ooze along going "swisshhh." You stay in the background until it’s time to give the drummer some, you get your 4 bars to say something, and then you drop back again. You remind everyone that we could all be vaporized, and then we can all go back to not thinking about it.
But, here’s the catch. It sounds so smooth and easy, but it’s also often quite intricate. Each limb may be called upon to do something completely different from the others. There’s a level of concentration required that can have an unwanted side effect: volume. You can always hear when a drummer is trying too hard even if you’re deaf, and it’s especially noticeable in smooth jazz. You can’t make it look too hard either; when you're in the middle of the Cold War, you’ve got to look as smooth and cool as the music sounds.
That’s the Joe Morello vibe. The drums kick off the song softly, joined by the equally smooth bass and piano. Finally, Paul Desmond oozes out that melody. You know those are the coolest guys on the planet, as long as you don’t actually see them.
Whoops! Well I guess that if you’re going to look like a 7th grade math teacher, you’d better have some chops.
And, you have to be able to show the world it’s not a fluke. You don’t play it the same way twice. This one is my favorite, I think. I just love the hand playing and the interplay between the floor tom and ride cymbal, and that understated intensity at the end.
There’s one other thing. Joe didn’t fall into the modern jazz trend with his drums. The "hip" set of drums was the Gretsch Progressive Jazz kt with the 18" bass drum and the shallow wood-shelled snare (pictured above). Joe Morello had the Ludwig Super Classic kit, with a 22" bass, and a brass shelled Super-Ludwig snare drum that could rip the paint off the wall. It was a kit that a rock ‘n’ roll drummer would love (and many did – it was Ludwig’s most popular kit ever and it’s still around today). He also had silver sparkle, the loudest finish of all, and yet, he played the smoothest sounds ever.
So let’s review: take an undanceable song, played by a bunch of nerdy guys who hardly move and act as if there’s no audience, add a drum solo, and get . . . a hit record. Those guys must be special.
Joe Morello is special. Ringo may have really pushed the Ludwig drums out the door but every kid who went down to the music store to buy those drums Ringo had on the Ed Sullivan Show looked at the same catalog, with the same nerdy guy featured in it. If you didn’t know who he was, the old guy at the music store would probably tell you, and maybe even show you. Then you understood. You wanted to BE like Ringo, but you wanted to PLAY like Joe Morello.
A lot of people got that chance over the years. Joe hasn’t been with Dave Brubeck for a long time, but he’s been out there, quietly teaching several generations of new drummers (such as Max Weinberg) finger control, independence, and freedom to play whatever needs to be played.
Now for today's kitchen tip: How to "burp" a cucumber.
Some people I've met tell me that cucumbers make them burp. If that's you, then try this. Slice off the end of the cucumber. Take the sliced end and rub it against the other sliced face of the rest of the cucumber in a circular motion. You should see a white milky substance oozing out. Apparently, that's the stuff that makes you
burp. Rub for a minute, and you will be able to enjoy that cucumber without embarrasing yourself.
Happy Birthday Joe Morello.