© -Steven
Cerra . Copyright protected; all rights reserved.
"Drummers begin by whacking things for the thrill of turning serenity into noise. Over time, they learn rudiments, tools by which most rhythms are fundamentally formed. Drummers grow their abilities to keep rhythm and, with positive experiences, they learn to consider the aesthetic effect; how rhythm seduces us. Drummers who play long enough re-learn, or re-invent, themselves to change with the times. Musical growth is often cyclical; seldom does it go in straight lines."
- Gregory J. Robb
“The drum stick should be an
extension of your hand. The motion should be as natural as waving a cap or to
someone on the street.”
- Freddie Grubber
“Get out of your own way.
Don’t think, just play it as its lays.”
- Freddie Grubber
Every instrument
has one; a “Mr. Fix-it.”
Their reputations
are carried word-of-mouth throughout the Jazz community.
They are the
people to see when you hit the proverbial brick wall and can’t get into your
hands what you are hearing in your head.
For drummers,
names such as “Murray Spivak,” “Billy Gladstone,” and “Freddie Gruber” come to
mind.
These guys had the
ability to literally transform your playing.
When you went to
see him, Murray
He’d sit back and
observe while you read and played written exercises based on the 26 rudiments
from the George Lawrence Stone or Jim Chapin books on drumming techniques.
Sometimes he would
ask you to do certain things over again with his eyes never straying from
watching your drum sticks in motion on the snare drum.
Then he would make
a suggestion or two about grips or hand placements and everything just fell
into place . No more barriers; things just started to flow again.
Freddie Gruber,
who died on October 11, 2011 at the age of eighty-four [84], was
another clinical wizard who had earned a revered place in the Pantheon of
Drummer Gods.
Freddie had the
uncanny ability to get inside your technique, both analytically and
intuitively, and make suggestions that would literally elevate your playing to
another dimension.
Freddie could free
you; he could liberate you, often times while disguising the fact that he was
“teaching” you by telling you parables, or fables or old war stories.
The next thing you
know – shazam! – no more hang-ups.
The editorial
staff at JazzProfiles thought it would be nice to remember Freddie on
these pages with the following piece by Bill Milkowski.
© -Jazz
Times; Bill Milkowski. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.
NOVEMBER 2004
Freddie Gruber:
None of a Kind
Freddie Gruber and
Buddy Rich are driving along at 3 a.m. in Palm Springs
One year later, Rich
and Gruber are driving along that same stretch of road in Palm Springs, heading
to the same 7-Eleven at three in the morning when out of nowhere Buddy blurts
out, "I changed my mind. You're none of a kind!"
This is one of
many classic Freddie Gruber stories-apocryphal or not-that many of his students
like to tell.
But Rich was
right.
Anyone who has
ever gigged with, studied with or even encountered the colorfully cantankerous
Freddie Gruber - as I did in a marathon late-night interview session at his midtown
Manhattan pad-understands that he is indeed none of a kind. And though he may
be regarded largely as irascible and enigmatic, Freddie remains one of the most
widely revered figures in the drumming world.
Active on New York 52nd Street Dave Weckl and Steve Smith. As drummer Nussbaum notes: "Freddie
has helped me become more physically aware of what's happening with my body and
the instrument. He's really opened me up."
Vital Information
bandleader Steve Smith adds, "Freddie was able to help me play with a much
more graceful and natural approach, which translates to a more relaxed and
swinging time feel and the ability to easily play my ideas. When he comes to my
gigs and I'm getting in the way of the music or trying to force something,
he'll nail me on it, and he'll always be right."
Or as Jim Keltner
puts it, "Freddie is a veritable walking book of musical history and one
of the few remaining links to the most innovative era in drumming."
Born on May
27, 1927 , Gruber
grew up in an East
Bronx tenement.
Living in that ethnically mixed neighborhood, Freddie quickly soaked up the
clave feel until he had the Afro-Cuban rhythm in his bones. "I picked up
the Latin thing from playing in the backyards on soup cans and from hearing it
every day on the way to school. That was the language of the neighborhood and I
understood that language. It helped keep me from getting beat up."
Starting out as a
tap dancer gave Gruber a strongly ingrained sense of swing, which he applied to
his drums. Along the way he studied with some great teachers, including Henry
Adler, Freddie Albright and Mo Goldenberg, while apprenticing with pianist Joe
Springer, who was also Billie Holiday's accompanist at the time. Gruber would
later put in nine months of roadwork with Rudy Vallee and debut on 52nd Street
"The Shape of
Drums to Come," a 1947 Metronome article by Barry Ulanov, raves about the
hotshot 19-year-old drummer from the Bronx: "This kid is the end, or
anyway the beginning...something like a cross between a Belgian percussionist
and Buddy Rich, with overtones of the music of Edgard Varese, that astonishing
composer for the drums. It's a handsome amalgam of all the great schools of
percussion-primitive, sophisticated, old, modern; and it jumps!"
Two years later,
when he was playing in a quartet led by clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and also
featuring guitarist Tal Farlow, Gruber was included in a 1949 Down Beat
roundup, "Listing Top Drummers," that stated: "His ability to
play multiple rhythms, his constant playing behind the band and what seemed
like his impeccable taste in his choice of what to play, mark him as a musician
to watch closely."
The legendary drum
teacher Jim Chapin and jazz writer Ira Gitler confirm that Gruber was indeed way ahead
of his time with his freewheeling approach to the kit. As Chapin said in a
recent instructional DVD : "Forty-five years have gone by, and nobody has caught up to
Freddie's solo style yet. He was the first one, to my knowledge, to play in a
polyrhythmic way."
Although Gruber's
years in New York during the golden years of the 52nd Street scene are filled
with rich tales of innumerable gigs, sessions, rehearsals and loft jams-a
veritable bebop highlight reel-one of his more memorable musical situations was
an all-star big band that came together briefly in 1949. The group was
comprised of such heavyweights as Charlie Parker, Zoot Sims, Red Rodney, Frank
Rosolino, Al Cohn and Al Porcino. "That was basically a rehearsal band,
but the problem was you couldn't control these guys because everybody was a
star and everybody was stoned out of their minds. The best moments happened
when everybody went to the bathroom to get high, leaving just the rhythm
section and Bird to play. That's when it really took off." (Today, only
bootleg recordings exist of this mythical rehearsal group.)
Around this same
time, Gruber also played several private parties at the home of New York
From 1952 to 1955, Gruber maintained a special friendship with drummer Philly Joe Jones. He was living inGreenwich Village during that period and gigging regularly at the nearby Riviera Roger "Ram" Ramirez (composer of "Lover Man"). The
subsequent pianists on that Riviera Dave Schildkraut and Eddie Shu (who also worked as a ventriloquist when
he wasn't playing in the Gene Krupa Trio) and cult-figure trumpeter Tony
Fruscella, whom Gruber calls "the heart and soul of what lyricism is all
about."
From 1952 to 1955, Gruber maintained a special friendship with drummer Philly Joe Jones. He was living in
But by 1955,
Gruber's long-standing heroin habit had gotten the best of him. "By that
time I was down to 92 pounds and I couldn't get further than the corner to see
my connection," he says. "Every day it was the same horseshit, and at
some point I just realized, 'Man, I'm gonna die!' Fuck this! I'm outta
here!'"
He remembers
seeing Charlie Parker three days before his death on March
12, 1955 , and by
May he left town with the intention of reclaiming his life and his career in Los Angeles
And although he
got sidetracked in Las Vegas for about a year and a half ("That was a fun
time-staying up all night, having breakfast with crazy comics like Buddy
Hackett and Shecky Greene"), Gruber did eventually make it to Los Angeles
in 1957. One of the first people he ran into there was fellow drummer Shelly
Manne, who encountered him on Sunset Boulevard one day and stated, "I
thought you were dead!"
Manne had known
Gruber from back in New York 3 p.m. We weren't making any money but we were
having a ball."
But by 1965,
Gruber reverted to his old ways with heroin. "I went back to the New York City
Around that time
that he received a helping hand from another transplanted New Yorker living in Los Angeles Los Angeles
Drum students
began seeking him out at Gibbs' music store strictly by word of mouth and
Gruber generously shared his wisdom, experience and abrasive charm with every
one of them. By the early 1970s, as he began to formalize his intuitive
teaching methods somewhat, his students began getting jobs in small groups, big
bands, TV, movies, jazz and pop. Another result of this teaching phase was that
Gruber himself started to get healthy. "I was swimming every day in the
reservoir, which was technically illegal, and banging everything that moved,"
he recalls with a tone of swagger. "I was as strong as a bull then. And
every night around midnight all these drummers were hanging at my house-Buddy, Irv Cottler
[Frank Sinatra's longtime drummer], Mitch Mitchell [Jimi Hendrix's drummer],
Jim Keltner and others. I was having a ball."
Gruber would
return to New York Central Park talking, watching the pickpockets do their thing, observing and
commenting on life going by. And I think back and realize now that whenever I
was out of my mind or in a bad place for whatever reason, Buddy was always
there for me. He was the best friend I ever had. I miss that guy a lot."
Through the '80s
and '90s, Gruber's ideas about drum ergonomics-a means of achieving fluidity
and alleviating tension while playing the drums-aided countless more players.
"Freddie can watch a drummer play and be able to deeply understand where
they are coming from," says Steve Smith. "He'll be able to understand
their conceptual approach and technical approach, and he can zero in on exactly
what they need in order to take their playing to the next level. He'll break a
technique down, demonstrate the motions slowly and help you really get
it."
Peter Erskine
recounts one enlightening lesson with Gruber when he really "got it":
"After a couple of false starts-lessons where we seemed to get to know
each other over several cups of coffee, trading stories, but not much else-and
my insisting that he show me something concrete, Freddie suddenly began to tap
dance. So he's dancing away and he finally looks up at me with a big smile, and
says, 'Do you see? Do you get it?' as he continued tapping away. I told him,
'Help me out here, I'm not getting it,' and he explained, still dancing, 'Don't
you see, baby? I'm not trying to dance beneath the surface of the floor, I'm
dancing on top of the floor.' A light bulb started to go off in my head and I
asked him to show me this same idea on the drums: 'Sure,' he replied, and he
danced over to the drums and proceeded to play his kit and produce a full and
beautiful tone that was, at the same time, light and filled with velocity. At
that point, I got it, and I thanked him. And his lesson has stayed with me.
"Freddie has
shown me one other thing," he continues, "and that is about the
beauty and importance of expressing our love and enthusiasm for each other and
what we do. Freddie has been up and down during his storied lifetime, but he
has always been a true believer in music and a true giver to other people. I'm
grateful for his wisdom-street wisdom, drumming mechanics wisdom, jazz wisdom,
human/life wisdom-that he imparts to our community. For drummers, Freddie is a
national treasure."
While visiting New York
Though still
energized and excited about the music, Gruber is far less frantic than he was
during his fabled tenure on 52nd Street
"I've come to
a period in my life where you begin to look back and wonder, 'What was it all
about?'" he adds. "But I really had some fun in my life, man. And if
I could do it all over again-all the good and the bad, the ups and the downs-I
would do it exactly the same and not change a thing. I really am aware, man, of
the magical thing that happened here in New York
