Big Drum Thump

Elder drumming statesman, double bass pioneer, and all-around great showman, Louie Bellson died two days ago at the age of 84. Click on over to the Telegraph for an excellent obituary on this excellent drummer. Condolences and cards, should you wish to send any, can be addressed as follows:

Mrs. Louie Bellson
c/o Remo, Inc.
28101 Industry Drive
Valencia, CA 91355

Jazz master Jimmy Cobb, perhaps best known for his drumming on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, is the subject of a long and excellent 4-part interview with the site JazzWax. Cobb discusses playing with other jazz legends (e.g., Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis) and lots of other awesome tidbits that you’ll definitely dig. Here are the links to each part:

Interview: Jimmy Cobb (Part 1)
Interview: Jimmy Cobb (Part 2)
Interview: Jimmy Cobb (Part 3)
Interview: Jimmy Cobb (Part 4)

Bill Leikam over at All About Jazz has reviewed a recent Cindy Blackman show and coined a perfectly genius phrase to describe her playing: power-jazz. It’s a style marked by energy and passion, of course, but it’s also one in which the “drums become the lead instrument of the band and the other instruments most often support the drummer as a working unit, together.”

Awesome. Now we just need power-reggae, power-country, and (why not?) power-polka.

We’ve all heard the stories about Buddy’s legendary temper…but damn. Seriously damn. Here he rips his band a new and very large asshole.

[via Drummerworld]

Steve Smith just completed a North American tour with his band Jazz Legacy. For those of us who missed them, a 10-minuteish documentary has been posted to YouTube (and, of course, embedded in high quality below). Most sobering revelation: even drumming royalty have to set up their own kits on jazz tours.

After jazz drummer, vibraphonist, and all-around-legend Lionel Hampton died in 2002, many of his papers and scores went to the good folks at the University of Idaho, who later established the International Jazz Collections. Lucky for all of us jazz-historian thumpers, the collection devoted to Hampton is now available online…for free. The site includes pics, videos, and a searchable database with over 100 pages of scores, photos, and other coolness that lifelong students of the instrument will definitely want to check out. Why? See for yourself. Here’s Hampton dueling it out with Gene Krupa and Chico Hamilton.

….And you didn’t really think John Blackwell invented stick twirling did you?