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Hanging Out with Drumming Legends Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson
- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 7 months ago by
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My mother was a superb musician and music teacher, who studied classical piano and organ at an excellent music university known for producing many musicians who played for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Consequently, I grew up on A LOT of classical music and took piano and organ lessons, in addition to drum lessons privately and in school bands (and a handful of guitar lessons). I played drums around the Chicago area in our family band since age 4. And later, around age 8 or 9, would work out piano and organ parts for a rock and R&B band my mother played keyboards in, and sometimes sit in on the drums during rehearsals. By age 9, my mother was taking me to clubs as kind of a showpiece. I’d sit in on the drums for a song then commonly be asked to finish the set. It led to my regularly coming back and playing sets with several Chicago area bands as a bit of a novelty — a kid drummer, sitting in on drums, doing solos, showing off. So, by my 16th birthday, my mother took me to see what people often referred to as the “world’s greatest drummer,” Buddy Rich. Now I was a pianist, organist, and drummer musically, and an amateur photographer who worked as a photo lab technician (boy does that date me!) at that age. I knew nothing about jazz until seeing Buddy perform. My mother arranged for me to sit in with the band for a song, but I wisely declined. Buddy was screaming, dropping F-bombs left and right at the bass player all night. I had no experience playing jazz, I didn’t want to make my first experience in front of that guy. He was savage.
So, Buddy let me hang out with him for the better part of an hour on his tour bus. He told me his life story and how he played drums as a little boy. We really hit it off and I could see that Buddy loved having a young generation drummer fan so enamored of him. He was very generous with his time with me and was extremely kind. But I still couldn’t forget how he treated his bass player. That was inexcusable.
Two years later, I began working semi professionally as a drummer. The leader of a band I played in (who recently passed away; an educator who taught jazz at Purdue University and a HS), invited me to rehearsals for a recording session with another jazz great, Louie Bellson, on the drums. Louie was the polar opposite of Buddy as a human being. He was incredibly kind in a way that was really rare. I was drawn to him. I wanted to learn from him and be more like him. The way he treated the other, young ,musicians; he was instructing them. He was firm, but there was this incredible warmth. I spoke to him after the rehearsal and asked if I could help him pack his drums (yep, a jazz legend doesn’t even have an assistant / a drum tech pack his drums, it did feel unfair). We talked for maybe 40 or so minutes, and Louie shared about touring with Count Basie and dealing with bomb threats because he was in a mixed race marriage (Louie was Italian-American and his wife was Pearl Bailey). I really admired him so much as human being and a role model (we were both drummers, had similar ethnic backgrounds, and grew up in IL). That was the drummer who made a huge mark on me as a musician and human being. The man Duke Ellington referred to as “the greatest musician I’ve ever played with.” Buddy, well, he was an amazing drummer technically, although candidly, while his drumming was amazing to watch, it never moved my soul. Both men were drumming legends. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera with when I met Louie.
Here’s one of the photos I took of Buddy.
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