How The Rhythm Section Got Its Name - Jerry Coker - Part 1, Drums

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Since 1900, when jazz -a uniquely American music form - began to evolve, much of its allure and artistic growth has depended on the creative freedom and expressive force that improvisation allows its performers.

Jerry Coker, himself a teacher, composer/arranger, and noted saxophonist, has written How To Listen To Jazz to fill the need for a layman's guide to understanding improvisation and its importance in the development of this artistically rich yet complex music form. Without relying on overly technical language or terms, Jerry Coker Shows how you can become a knowledgeable jazz listener-whether you are an aspiring musician, student, jazz aficionado, or new listener. In addition to looking at the structure of jazz and explaining what qualities to look for in a piece, the author provides a complete chronology of the growth of jazz, from its beginnings in the rags of Scott Joplin, the New Orleans style of the 1920s made famous by Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong, the Swing Era with Benny Goodman, and Art Tatum, Be-Bop, post Be-Bop, to the greats of Modern Jazz, including Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Wes Montgomery.

Also including a list of suggested recordings, a section on the improvised solo, and a complete glossary of jazz terms, How To Listen To Jazz offers you a complete introduction to the entire jazz experience... the music and those who make it.

The following excerpt forms Chapter 3 of this excellent book which every Jazz fan should have along with Ted Gioia’s treatment of How to Listen to Jazz to help enhance your appreciation of the music. 

The Rhythm Section 

The term rhythm section probably began to be used in the early days of the big jazz bands (1925-1930), when one spoke of the trumpet section, the trombone section, or the saxophone section, in other words, when there was, for the first time in jazz, multiplicity of the trumpet, trombone, and saxophone (or clarinet). In prior times, as in the New Orleans style (1890-1925), such instruments seldom appeared in numbers greater than one. But when one spoke of the remaining instruments of the big band, like the piano, guitar, bass, and drums, the term rhythm section was used, lumping together four rather dissimilar instruments that shared the common function of maintaining the pulse or beat for some eight to thirteen wind instruments, in ensemble and during solos. This is an oversimplification, of course, as their duties also included supplying chords, bass lines, solos, rhythmic settings, and even melodies. But jazz is a music "with the big beat" or an emphasized pulse, and the piano, guitar, bass, and drums are especially suited to carrying that beat.

It is probably true, however, that the name rhythm section is, when applied to today's jazz, inaccurate and degrading. The term reduces those four marvelous instruments to the function of a bass drum player in a marching band or a drone in Eastern music. We surely wouldn't refer to the Oscar Peterson Trio or the Bill Evans Trio (each made up of piano, bass, and drums) as a rhythm section, as each of these trios is an entire group, one that does not rely on wind instruments to carry melody, harmony, arrangement, or solos.

Most music of the Western world will be found to have three main structural elements: bass line, chords, and melody. In the Baroque trio of the seventeenth century, for example, the bass line was played by a viola da gamba, the chords by a harpsichord, and the melody by a wind instrument (flute, recorder, etc.) or perhaps a violin. A group of instruments like piano, guitar, bass, and drums can easily carry the three structural elements of bass line, chords, and melody (indeed all three elements could be carried by piano or guitar alone), plus the added rhythmic dimension made possible by the inclusion of drums. Doubtless, we will continue to refer to them as a rhythm section for some time, but we mustn't think of that section as existing merely to supply a "big beat."

Such misconceptions have even found their way into the minds of the musicians themselves. For example, an arranger is subject to scoring all the horn parts first, leaving the rhythm section parts for the last, sometimes not even supplying written parts for them, an omission he could hardly consider in the case of, say, the lead trumpet part. For another example, the pecking order for improvised solos in sessions and in recordings will usually direct that all the wind instruments play their solos first, giving the last (and usually shorter) solos to the members of the rhythm section, when some of their solo drive has been dampened or used up accompanying long solos by the wind instruments. Rhythm section players, then, are understandably reluctant to come to a jam session and receive more punishment, especially if there are too many horn players (as, remember, the rhythm section plays virtually all the time, regardless of who is soloing). Still another example of warped values is evident in some horn players who won't learn the chord progressions by hard work and study, but expect the guitarist, pianist, and bass player to know the progressions and supply them endlessly while the horn player tries to find his notes by ear and guesswork. It would be helpful to take a closer look at each of the instruments of the rhythm section and how they function in the jazz group.

DRUMS

It has often been stated by jazz historians that jazz rhythms have their origins in the music of West Africa. No doubt there is some truth in this, but it would be a mistake to think that jazz rhythms and West African rhythms are very much alike. The music of West Africa is far more sophisticated and complex by comparison and well beyond the grasp of jazz drummers, even black drummers, as their color and ancestry cannot overcome several centuries of detachment from African culture. Even the music played at Congo Square in New Orleans by the blacks who gathered there in the late nineteenth century was already a diluted form of West African music, and the unusual rhythm instruments used there were largely at variance with the instruments of West Africa. Whatever similarities did exist during the spawning of jazz, soon faded away, replaced by a forerunner of the modern drum set (bass drum, snare drum, tom-toms, and cymbals). One of the earliest jazz drummers was Baby Dodds, but except for very small details, we can hardly relate his style to the West African style. In fact, we'd have an easier time proving that jazz elements like improvisation, call and response patterns, the blues style, jazz intonation, and jazz phrasing are derived from West African culture. About all that remains of African drumming in jazz (recent efforts to rediscover African drumming notwithstanding) is the general emphasis on rhythm and a few polymetric aspects.[Polymetric means the playing of one time signature against another.]

Early jazz drummers (1900-1930) were not very prominent or adventurous, tending to play relatively simple time-keeping figures and seldom soloing. Ironically, white drummer Gene Krupa probably did more to liberate the drummer from purely time-keeping functions than any drummer before him. This can be easily recognized by comparing Krupa's recordings (with Benny Goodman in the late thirties) with previous drummers. He is significantly prominent and solos often in those recordings. There were other important drummers in Krupa's time, like Sonny Greer (with Duke Ellington) and Cozy Cole, but Krupa's extraversion and flashiness were needed to bring the drums out of the purely supporting role. He forced you to listen to the drummer. He played a loud, heavy pulse with his bass drum, pounded out a quasi-jungle style on tom-toms (which was purely illusory and bore little resemblance to West African drumming), participated heavily on the overall sound of the ensemble, and played virtuoso, dramatic solos.

Joe Jones was another important drummer, also active in the late thirties, with the Count Basie Orchestra. Rather than focusing on a solo style, as Krupa did, Jones mastered the rhythm-section function of the drummer, supplying a solid, steady beat and blending with the other members of that great rhythm section (Basie on piano, Freddie Green on guitar and Walter Page on bass).

A few years later, in the early forties, the bebop style was born. As it was a very different style from the music of the Swing Era (1930-1940), it required a vastly different approach to playing drums, which was first supplied by Kenny Clarke. Clarke did away with the bass drum pulse, keeping time on the cymbals instead, using the bass drum only for explosive accents or for echoing improvised figures played on the snare drum. The pulse was infinitely more subtle than Krupa's, replacing the bass drum's "thump-thump-thump-thump" with a "ding, ding-a., ding, ding-a" on a very large cymbal (italics are used to show accents here).

Another change took place in the pulse feeling: whereas previous drummers either accented all four beats of a measure (as in 4/4 time) or accented the first and third beats, Clarke and other bop drummers switched the accents to the second and fourth beats, playing them on the sock cymbals (two cymbals that come together, operated by the foot) in a figure and sound that might be described as "(rest), chick, (rest), chick." Note that both the sock cymbal figure and the large (ride) cymbal figure played by Clarke have accents on the second and fourth beats and that neither figure is merely a thumping, unadorned pulse beat. The sock cymbal figure omits the first and third beats altogether and the ride cymbal figure adds sound between the beats, represented here by the "a" of "ding-a" These changes made quite a difference in the overall sound of drummers, the pulse, and the rhythm section.

Another innovation of the Bebop Era (chiefly 1945-50) was the new relationship between drummer and ensemble, particularly in the big bands. In the late forties, Woody Herman recorded "The Goof And I," in which drummer Don Lamond was very prominent, not as a soloist but as a sort of rhythmic coach to the entire ensemble. Lamond emphasized the ensemble's heavier accents, duplicating them on his bass drum, sometimes on snare drum or cymbals as well. This is not to be confused with the thumping pulse-beat played by Krupa in an earlier time. In Lamond's playing the bass drum was only supporting the band's accents, which are much less frequent than the pulse. His bass drum sound was explosively loud by contrast with the beats in which he wasn't using the bass drum at all. Lamond also played loud figures just prior to ensemble entrances and accents that made it easier for the ensemble to feel their rhythmic figures accurately. Several new terms were coined in this period; (1) bomb, a name for the explosive accents; (2) set-up, a figure that preceded an ensemble entrance and made that entrance more positive and accurate; and (3) fill, material improvised by the drummer in otherwise empty places, to take up the slack.

During and after the Be-Bop Era, the drums became an instrument for sizzling virtuosos, especially in the hands of Max Roach, whose phenomenal technique was baffling to the drummers of the time. Roach was particularly dazzling both as a soloist and as a drummer who could drive a group through some of the fastest tempos ever attempted by a jazz group. Most of his career was spent playing in the greatest of the small groups of that period, with Charles Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, and the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet. Roach dwelt on polymetric figures and on rhythmic form (variations on rhythmic motives). [Sometimes the rhythmic motives used by Roach were actually the rhythms of a known melody. By using the various components of his drum set, he even implies the contours of the melody.]

In the early fifties, while the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet was in full bloom, a group in Detroit let by Barry Harris was featuring a new drummer on the rise, Elvin Jones, who later joined the John Coltrane Quartet and made some of the most significant recordings of the late fifties and early sixties with this group, including the album A Love Supreme. Jones perfectly complemented the dynamic Coltrane style. Far from merely keeping time for the group, Jones was a fully participating member, coinciding with and echoing every important rhythmic nuance of both the ensemble and the solos. It was a boiling, brewing, conversational style that didn't wait for empty spots to be filled.

About this time musicians and critics were beginning to refer to a new rhythmic concept, called the implied beat, in which it was no longer necessary for the rhythm section, particularly the drummer, to produce timekeeping figures. Instead, as long as they were all feeling the pulse together (and they were), it was no longer necessary to play the pulse

itself, as it would be apparent anyway in everything they chose to play. In other words, they didn't ignore the pulse, as everything was related to and measured by that pulse, but they simply didn't need to thump it out anymore. The pulse would be implied by what they did play. This was new to jazz, yet it had existed in many other forms of music for centuries. Thus we seem now to have arrived at a point about 180 degrees from where we started our discussion, at a stage where pulse-keeping was deemed redundant.

Compared to singers and to players of wind instruments and strings, a drummer plays an instrument that is almost without the capability of being tonal or melodic. Early drummers in jazz, when they tightened or loosened the heads on their drums, doubtlessly were more attentive to the tone quality than to the actual pitch of each of the drums. And the drummer is not likely to change the tuning of the drums to suit the key of each selection played. Furthermore, the pitches produced by drums do not sustain, nor are they Very distinct vibrationally or a high enough range to be perceived as specific pitches by many listeners. Even the cymbals, for all their beautiful ringing, are almost indistinct in terms of specific pitches heard by the average listener. Finally, the cymbals and drums used in jazz are, under normal circumstances, not built for the spontaneous tuning to specific pitches during the performance used with the timpani (which can be spontaneously tuned, owing to a foot-pedal mechanism) or the tabla (of India, tuned by pressing on the bottom head of the drum with the hand that is not beating the rhythm). Drummers like Art Blakey partially solved the problem by pressing the top head of the drum with an elbow, thereby raising and lowering the pitch at will. This limited solution, however, could not, in itself, push the drum style much closer to a recognizable melody.

If drums are relatively unmelodic, compared to wind and string instruments, they are even less capable of producing harmony. Thanks to these limitations, drummers often acquire, by experience, a defensive attitude about studying music, formally. Melody and harmony reign supreme in music classes (too much so, in fact), but the members of the class who play drums have less opportunity to apply melodic and harmonic principles to their instrument. Application and experience being crucial to the assimilation of such principles, the drummer is often at a disadvantage and called a "slow learner."

The solutions to all these problems are interesting to observe, historically. Krupa was already working on the melodic problem in the thirties, by rapid alternation between the different drums, creating the illusion of counterpoint (simultaneous melodic-rhythmic events, usually in imitation), and by using accessories, like the cowbell or the woodblock, in semi-melodic ways. Drummers of the forties, like Max Roach and Shelly Manne, began tuning their drums to specific pitches to aid the drive toward a more melodic concept. Roach and Mel Lewis did much to aid the element of story-telling form to the drum solo, that is, they repeated rhythmic motives and developed them slowly and completely, like the melodies to familiar songs. Some drummers, like Benny Barth, spent many practice hours drumming the rhythms of hundreds of popular and standard songs, in an effort to be more melodic.

Somewhere along the way, drummers stopped trying to compete melodically with the other instruments. Instead, they developed a pride in percussive melodies, not compared to or in strict imitation of or limited by standard pitch-melody concepts. Listen, for example, to the constantly chattering, conversational style of Elvin Jones, both in soloing and in accompanimental capacities.

Many of the foregoing contributions came together in the drum playing of Tony Williams, in the sixties and into the present, and were developed further by him. Finally, spontaneous tuning of pitches was added (though not in imitation of traditional scales and melodies), chiefly by Billy Cobham, through the use of electronic gadgetry that can alter pitch, quality, and reverberation. A Cobham solo is, by anyone's standards, extremely melodic.

Even the overall image of the drummer's musicianship has increased greatly over the years. In the forties and early fifties, drummers like Tiny Kahn and Louie Bellson were writing choice arrangements and teaching chord progressions to other members of a jam session. In  1958, at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Max Roach electrified the San Francisco Symphony with his performance of a difficult piece by Peter Phillips, written for Roach and the orchestra. By the end of the sixties, Elvin Jones and Tony Williams had become leaders of major jazz combos. In the late sixties, Stan Kenton had two drummers who had switched from wind instruments to drums, Dee Barton and John von Olen. And then there are those, like Stevie Wonder and Billy Cobham, who can perform virtually every task of the well-rounded musician, composing, arranging, playing several instruments, singing, and leading, with success and with perfection. Drummers like Alan Dawson and Max Roach, in addition to being great players, have also become successful as teachers of jazz drums in major colleges and conservatories. 

Another dimension was added to drumming in the late sixties when Miles Davis added a percussionist to his rock-oriented jazz group that recorded albums like In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Davis retained the drummer, as well, simply adding Jim Riley or Airto Moreira on miscellaneous percussion instruments too numerous to list fully, but the numbers included strings of bells, Latin American rhythm instruments, and virtually anything that would rattle, scrape, or jingle. The percussionist's music (written) or parts were generally unassigned, leaving to their tasteful discretion to play whatever and whenever they felt the need. Such percussionists add color, texture, and dimension to the overall sound of the group. In a sense, we have returned to percussion instruments like those used in Congo Square, a full 360 degrees of change and development.

To be continued in Part 2 with Bass and Guitar