Bill Stewart's expression is clear, musical & articulate. He's really come into his own.
Here's one with his old trio: Larry Goldings (Hammond B3) and Peter Bernstein (guitar)...
Bill has done some nice work also with John Scofield (guitar) and Steve Swallow (bass). I've been listening to their live disc, "En Route". Here's a solo from Bill with the En Route combo (with the addition of Pat Metheny on guitar)...
I first caught notice of Bill's playing when he was with Maceo Parker's group something like 13 years ago, and saw him about 7 years ago in New York (was it at Fez?) with his Goldings|Stewart trio. His improvement & refinement since then is astounding.
Among my very favorite Rock drummers is Mitch Mitchell, whose work with Hendrix is too far out to describe.
Mitchell: a jazz drummer kid from London on the silver sparkle Premier kit.
This video, below, is a clip of The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing 'Purple Haze' -- a priceless clip because you don't always get to see the drummer so clearly.
I want young drummers to notice Mitchell's relaxation into the fills. Using grace notes with his left hand, he combines syncopated accents and moves into flourishing rolls so much in support of the phrasing of the song. Look how lightly he holds the sticks in the straight-ahead grip, as he dances laconically on his drumstool.
Mitch's impact and intensity come not from playing hard all the time -- but at the right time; and, here, from playing on the front of the beat. Feel how his left hand and right foot dance together across the bar.
'Purple Haze' itself here is a great example of the drums taking a prominent, forward role in the voice of the song. This is typical of the great power trios emerging at that time (1966): The Who, Led Zeppelin and Cream come quickly to mind. Mitch is punctuating the meaning, phrases, transitions & stops as if he's singing the song himself.
Wynton Marsalis told a story about how Art Blakey as a band leader used to require everyone in his band (the Jazz Messangers) to memorize all the words (to all the songs in their "book" -- even though in their Bebop format, no one was literally singing). It was a rule young musicians always found hard to understand. The point is, you can't play the tune right, otherwise.
Mitch Mitchell, as a kid playing jazz and accustomed to kicking a band around the stage, had this great instinctive musical sense which made his playing highly influential in the Rock format after Hendrix exploded onto the London scene -- and made cinematic history shortly after at Monterrey. It wasn't the same after that.
The very best Rock drummers almost always came from Jazz. David "Panama" Francis is another good example of this.
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