[Dixielandjazz] Sherrie Maricle (was "women drummers")

[Ed Danielson]

Here's an interesting N Y Times article about Sherrie Maricle, who will be 
performing at the next Summit Jazz Foundation Swinging Jazz Concerts in 
Devner on Valentine/President's weekend.

January 30, 2004
PUBLIC LIVES
The Beat Is From Mars and From Venus
By CHRIS HEDGES

SHERRIE L. MARICLE was in the fourth grade living with her divorced mother 
and two younger sisters when she decided, like many girls her age, to play 
an instrument. She told the school music teacher she would like a trumpet.

"He told me girls don't play trumpets and gave me a metal clarinet," she 
said. She swiftly ditched the clarinet, tried the cello and then when the 
school band couldn't find anyone to play the bass drum, volunteered. She was 
searching for her sound, her musical self-expression.

It arrived at age 11, when she went to hear Buddy Rich and his Killer Force 
Orchestra in concert in Binghamton, N.Y. "My eyes were saucers," she said. 
"I had no idea someone could play the drums with such intensity and power. 
The passion I felt cannot be manufactured. It can only be unleashed. Buddy 
Rich triggered something that was there, deep inside of me. I knew 
immediately I would be a jazz drummer."

But if girls did not play trumpets, they certainly did not play drums. The 
drive to become a drummer went underground, literally, to her basement. "I 
set my drums up in the basement and learned to play by listening to Buddy 
Rich," she said. "But I did not play the drums in public for a few more 
years. Girls were not supposed to play the drums. I was not ready. I was 
scared."

Dr. Maricle, 40, will be very public tonight when she and the Diva Jazz 
Orchestra, which she leads, play Carnegie Hall. The 15-member group, which 
plays big band music, is composed entirely of women, although as their 
manager, Stanley Kay, says, "turn around and tell me if women or men are 
playing." It was Mr. Kay, 79, a former drummer who managed Buddy Rich and 
Gregory and Maurice Hines, who in 1990 suggested to Dr. Maricle that she 
form a female jazz band.

Mr. Kay sat next to her, clutching an aluminum cane, in a cramped office in 
Carnegie Hall. "She is an amazing drummer," he said. "Women musicians such 
as Sherrie have never been appreciated in jazz they way they should be. They 
are often seen as a kind of gimmick. They are not given the appropriate 
respect."

Dr. Maricle was wary of his idea. She detested the pressure on female 
musicians to doll themselves up in strapless gowns and gobs of lipstick as 
if to apologize for their talent. She did not want the band to become a kind 
of curiosity, a sideshow in the jazz world. "I was not going to form a band 
where we all wore miniskirts and showed our cleavage," she said, "especially 
since mine is not impressive to begin with. The few women swing bands in the 
past had to do this, performing in long strapless evening gowns. I knew a 
lot of serious women jazz musicians who wanted a chance to play. This was 
the only thing that interested me."

THE road to Carnegie Hall was a long one. Dr. Maricle, carting 30 pounds of 
equipment around, learned to play nearly every type of music to survive as a 
drummer. She also plays with the New York Pops and teaches at New York 
University. "I worked my way through college playing the drums," she said. 
"I was in every musical group from the chorus, to musical theater, to jazz 
bands and ensembles. I played for the Ice Capades and Ringling Brothers 
circus when they came to Binghamton. I had a wedding band, and in summers I 
played in parks in upstate New York. It turned me into a well-rounded 
musician and a great sight reader."

When she finished school at Binghamton she packed up her drums and moved to 
New York. She filled in for drummers on Broadway musicals, drifted from band 
to band, finished her doctorate in music from New York University and formed 
another wedding band with her boyfriend to survive. The weddings finally got 
to her. She grew tired of "playing the beats I played in my basement in 
seventh grade." But it was the song "The Bride Cuts the Cake," played to the 
tune of "The Farmer in the Dell," that broke her. At one wedding she had to 
pound it out for 15 minutes until she threw her sticks down in disgust and 
walked to the bar. "I thought, Why am I doing this?" she said. "I told my 
boyfriend I could not play music like this anymore."

Her band travels throughout the United States and Europe with their manager. 
The schedule, at times, can be relentless, meaning hours in a bus driving 
from town to town, setting up, playing, breaking down, getting a bad night's 
sleep and doing it again.  "Buddy Rich's band were priests and rabbis 
compared to this group," Mr. Kay volunteered.

Dr. Maricle, who is a composer-arranger for many of the numbers, has the 
well-toned arms of a woman who plays the drums a lot. She also runs and 
cycles. But her passion is fixed. The apartment where she stays in New York 
and the house she has in Pennsylvania are filled with drum sets, lots of 
them.

She only once got up the courage to storm Buddy Rich's bus and ask for an 
autograph. She was a young girl who saw more in Mr. Rich than perhaps he 
understood. "He was in his bathrobe," she said. " 'Yeah, what do you want?' 
he asked me. I told him I wanted his autograph. He signed a napkin. I still 
have it. I saw him many, many times after that in concert, but did not dare 
speak to him."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company



Ed Danielson

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