[Dixielandjazz] Drummers

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

The tale I was telling of an inaudible musician had nothing to do with drummers, probably the guy with the drumsticks was busy struggling to be -- as I remarked in a recent post -- felt more than heard.  

Ken Mathieson's friend and mine, the late Francis Cowan, who had a lot to say against bass players. He was a responsible bassist and very much more. (and he treasured a memory of being congratulated by the late Fred Hunt, wonderful pianist, as immune to the temptations to which many bassists succumbed).

Francis was very interested in my comparison between one supporting trio for a couple of visiting Americans, by no means bad, and the trio in which he and Ken Mathieson were with the same starry duo. He didn't live to hear the tape.  
Ken was the more audible of the two drummers, because of the way he and Francis worked together, but the other bassist was fine though nearer to the (metaphorical) boundary Francis talked about. The bassist who crosses that metaphorical line is hard pushed to avoid being in front of the front line, getting in the way of the band.  It's one thing the Peter Clayton/ Peter Gammond comment about "Higginbotham Blues" having been hard to record because the whole band was crowded inside Pops Foster's bass, and quite another when a band is hidden by and blocked by somebody playing in an untraditional way -- and unsupported. Playing a lot of pointless notes, and playing quite possibly the right notes (considered as marks on paper) but in a wrong way. 
I would suppose a drummer's musical instincts would incline him or her to fill in where Francis insisted the bassist should have been doing his job but wasn't. If I'd query Ken Mathieson's recent competence to talk about compensating for inadequate bassists it would only be in praise of the very able Scottish bassists with whom I've always heard him.  

One current American drummer (non-OKOM) I've heard a lot of both live and on record, and admired, had a disastrous night in a band lumbered with a preposterously too far forward bass-player. The egomaniac on bass was crowding even him.

The silliest comment I remember overhearing from a drummer was from an American, telling his bassist colleague (young, French, very much non-OKOM in what they were playing) that his arm hurt probably because of the weather. The problem was I suppose that their band had to go on without their usual or any other pianist.  Actually they had done a magnificent job. 

Don't blame the drummer, unless it's his or her fault (which it by no means always is) not being part of a team, or a conversation. 
But when things get too loud, who/s to be the first one to stop shouting? 


Robert R. Calder