Drummers

Hal Blaine and Buddy Rich/Alla Rakha

A lot of drummers in jazz have either made solo albums under their name or are clearly the leader of such a band, for example - Art Blakely, Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, and others. Even in rock, there are bands where the drummer is the head honcho, such as Mick Fleetwood (business-wise, but creatively?) Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, Ginger Baker, Sandy Nelson, Dave Clark Five, and the Safarai’s Wipe Out with drummer Ron Wilson. However, there is something odd about middle-aged drummers when they make an album in 1967/1968, the age of Aquarius, or around the Summer of Love. Youth belongs to the Sixties, and I think the middle-aged men of that time had a feeling of time passing by without them.

Both albums are by legendary drummers Hal Blaine’s Psychedelic Percussion and Buddy Rich (and Alla Rakha) collaboration Rich À La Rakha. After hearing that album, I think it is more of a work by Alla Rakha, with a special guest star, Buddy Rich. There are Western touches here and there by Rich, but it is mostly the remarkable musicianship by Rakha that makes this album unique. Paul Horn, the jazz flutist and one of the forefathers of the famous New Age music category, also contributed to this album. The first track, Khanda Kafi, is a nice interplay between Rich’s drums and Rakha’s masterful Tabla work. Shamim Ahmed plays the sitar, and he and Horn have a nice groove. Besides drums, Rich plays dholak, which is a two-headed drum that is played in Indian music. The third track, Rangeelā, is more of a workout between Rich’s drums and Rakha’s Tabla. Considering Rich brings a Western approach to Rakha’s music, it flows naturally in an Indian music context. It’s jarring in parts, but the juxtaposition of both instruments is fun to hear. Ravi Shankar wrote most of the music on the album, and others I think are a jam session between Rakha and Rich, with the others adding a melody here and there, but mostly a platform or an ambient landscape for the others to float on.

Buddy Rich, a jazz musician from the Big Band era, witnessed the death of that type of music when BeBop made its appearance, and although Rich did record with Diz and Charlie Parker, he is very much thought of as from another era. Especially in the 1960s, and I suspect that his leap to Indian music was perhaps a calculated decision to jump on the world music market at the time, or I suspect as a drummer, he may genuinely love Shankar and India’s music. It would be impossible for a drummer not to be fascinated with Indian rhythms. So I bought this album expecting a kitsch listening experience, but that’s me falling for some fallacy in my head because the album is overly fantastic.

Psychedelic Percussion is an oddity in that it is an album put together by one of the great in-studio drummers in America at the time. The drum riff in Be My Baby is one of the great singular pieces of drum identification that leads to the greatness of Hal Blaine. Under the supervising eyes and ears of such talent as Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, Blaine was an essential part of the group recording sound of so many outstanding records. The early solo albums he made in the 1960s are of interest, and I do like his “Hot Rod” album Deuces, "T's," Roadsters & Drums, which is not unusual and pretty much a straightforward Car orientated album, but with his talents as well as the producer Lee Hazlewood. No, what is really interesting is Psychedelic Percussion.

On the surface, it sounds like a musician who may have had a great deal or discount for studio time to do what he wanted to do. It's not a commercial album by any means, but it is not super weird, either. It is a combination of Russo’s Art of Noise with go-go drums, with exotic instrumentation supplied by electronic wiz Paul Beaver. It is kind of the little brother album to the recorded works by Martin Denny. As Denny makes the Asian or Pacific islands exotic playgrounds, so does Blaine with his “psychedelic” sounds, which convey a ‘fake’ or artificial world.

Music is food for me, and I can’t listen to music that I’m not in the mood for, and that includes works that are artificial, yet I admire the ability of an artist to make up a world that one leaves their world for forty minutes or so. Some go to music for an aural adventure or a place they don’t know about, and some go for a familiar sound. But I like the stuff that takes me on a journey within myself, and only art (music, visuals, film, reading) is the vehicle to take me from one point to another. Hal Blaine and Buddy Rich/ Alla Rakha do that for me.