[Dixielandjazz] Bass Drummers Peril

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

Some years ago I was in a parade with the AF band.  The bass drummer was three sheets to the wind and had a beer just before we started.  Had I had more stripes I wouldn't have let him go on but I guess that no one noticed that he was drunk.  Needless to say the tempos were strange but when he wandered off into the crowd and kept going was terminal.  It took the CO who was at the head of the band about a quarter block to see that there was something wrong.  The first SGT. took off after him and the whole parade stopped.  A luckless clarinet player got to play the bass drum for the rest of the parade.  The drummer lost a stripe over it.
Larry Walton
St. Louis