FROM CONGO SQUARE TO TIMES SQUARE
CELEBRATED NEW YORK CITY–BASED JAZZ DRUMMER BILLY DRUMMOND RECALLS HIS FIRST VISIT, WITH THE GROUP OTB (“OUT OF THE BLUE”), TO THE MOUNT FUJI JAZZ FESTIVAL IN YAMANASHI PREFECTURE, JAPAN. IT WAS 1988. THE FESTIVAL’S ELITE DRUMMERS RANGED IN AGE FROM 69 (ART BLAKEY) TO 26 (RALPH PETER-SON). IN BETWEEN WERE ROY HAYNES, TONY WILLIAMS, CLIFFORD BARBARO, VICTOR LEWIS, LEWIS NASH, KENNY WASHINGTON, CINDY BLACKMAN—“AND ME,” DRUMMOND TOLD ME, BY PHONE.
Drummond, who is working on his fourth album as leader and teaches drumming at Julliard and NYU, continued. “Everyone was killing, then Roy Haynes played, and he’s taking it out. He walked to the front of the stage and played an entire solo on the hi-hat. The people went berserk. We’re going nuts. Afterwards, Haynes comes off the stage and says to us, ‘Take that you young m***** ******s!’ We fell out, because he just served us, man. Remarkable.”
Art Blakey. Roy Haynes. Tony Williams—three of the greatest jazz drummers ever. Blackman, Nash, Peterson,1 Washington, Drummond: Five of the best young jazz drummers of the era.
I interviewed Drummond—who played on the Stereophile album , —for this article, seeking his commentary on the best drummers in the history of jazz: what made them special, what to listen for in their music. I also talked to Paul Wells, the drummer for Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, who play mainly jazz from the ’20s and ’30s. Wells’s repertoire is much wider than that, though: He has also worked with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis, and Elvis Costello, among others. You can hear him on the soundtracks of , , and . He’s a Professor of Jazz Drums at the Juilliard
