Pages

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Groove o' the day: now exclusively an Al Jackson feature

I include these Al Jackson grooves not because you can't figure them out for yourselves, but because in this current technocratic, amazingness-fetishizing period of drumming, I like to keep in the front of my memory examples of what the actual best, most real drumming in the world actually sounds like. The tune here is Over Easy, originally from Soul Limbo, by Booker T. and the MG's; I had it on the old Best of Booker T cassette, released on Atlantic:




The cymbal is generally played at an even volume— with no pulse on the quarter notes— a way of playing most good players today are loathe to do— we always have to be putting some inflection on things. And since we are nothing today if not ornament obsessed, it's always refreshing to hear a drummer play as cleanly as Jackson; here he plays the ensemble figures by just tapping the instrument in unison with them, with no set ups. That's when he doesn't just play through them— another skill more of us need to master: playing through figures, rather than having to catch every damn thing to demonstrate how on top of it we are...

Audio after the break:


No comments:

Post a Comment