The Greats
Modern Drummer is the world’s most widely read drum magazine, is dedicated entirely to the art of drumming and caters to the needs of amateur, semi-pro, and professional drummers.
The Greats: Carmine Appice
Power, showmanship, and personality are what make Carmine Appice one of rock’s most notable players. His aggressive, double-bass, hard-hitting style was unquestionably unique when he emerged in the mid-1960s with Vanilla Fudge. With the Fudge’s trippy treatments of well-known pop…
Dave Lombardo: Slayer’s Patron Saint Of Speed Drumming
Born in Havana, Cuba, into a family that moved to the States in the mid ’60s to escape communism, Dave Lombardo was perhaps destined to be attracted to extreme music. The drummer most readily cited as the king of thrash…
Sonny Greer: Duke Ellington’s Crowd Pleaser
Sonny Greer was born in 1903 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and studied drums with vaudeville drummer J. Rosemond Johnson. His first professional job was as a youngster in a pit band in Red Bank, New Jersey. Within a few…
George Wettling: The Ultimate "Chicago style" Accompanist
George Wettling was one of the leading proponents of the early “Chicago style” of jazz drumming. A tasteful, imaginative, unobtrusive player, Wettling quickly built a reputation as the ultimate band drummer. Wettling took the conceptual and stylistic elements of Baby…
Chick Webb: The First True Drumming Idol
Chick was born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 10, 1907. He suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, which left him badly crippled. It wasn’t until he underwent a painful operation as a child that he was able to use his…
William "Cozy" Cole: The Father Of Coordinated Independence
Cozy Cole, an incredibly adept player, was strongly rooted in the rudimental style, but he contributed much to jazz drumming. One of the first players to develop his own brand of hand and foot coordination, he mastered the technique thoroughly,…
The Greats: Art Blakey
The origins of Blakey’s hard-swinging style can be traced back to his early years as the drummer in Fletcher Henderson’s big band, as well as his three-year tenure in the mid-’40s with Billy Eckstine’s experimental large bop band (featuring future…
"Papa" Jo Jones: Drumming’s Fearsome Father Figure
It’s been said that modern drumming made its first step towards maturity when Jo Jones arrived in New York in 1936 with the Count Basie band. Within a few years, “Papa” Jo became the idol of hundreds of drummers across…
Roy Haynes: The Hippest Of The Hip
It’s taken the jazz community nearly half a century to catch up with the inventive and super-hip stylings of Roy Haynes — the oft-proclaimed “father of modern drumming.” Nowadays, you don’t have to look too hard to spot Haynes’ influence…
Warren “Baby??? Dodds: The World's First Great Jazz Drummer
“Dodds was swingin’ so much, I was late an entire set. But I couldn’t leave. I sat down and just stayed.” —Philly Joe Jones “Baby taught me more than all the others. He was the first great soloist.” —Gene Krupa…
Ray Bauduc: His Own Inimitable Style
Strongly influenced by both Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton, Ray Bauduc was Singleton’s counterpart in the white Dixieland revival. His style was an intriguing combination of vaudeville, ragtime, and the basic New Orleans rhythms he’d grown up absorbing. Bauduc was…
Max Roach: Setting Standards And Raising Bars
If you were to ask any jazz historian to name who they feel is most responsible for setting the standards in bebop drumming, 99.9% of the time you’re going to get one name: Max Roach. Roach wasn’t the first drummer…
Influencer: Alan Dawson
Alan Dawson was an outstanding jazz drummer and a legendary teacher. He was strongly influenced by Papa Jo Jones, and his first break came in the early ’50s with the Lionel Hampton band. By 1951 he was working with Sabby…
Philly Joe Jones: One Of The Greatest Hard Boppers
Philly Joe Jones is one of the greatest of the hard boppers. His contributions to the art of jazz drumming are immeasurable. He was a virtuoso with a pair of brushes, and a genius at turning the rudiments into fluent…
