Word: drummer
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...Simon, 55, executive director of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. At Harvard in the early 1930s, Simon was so excited by the Casa Loma Orchestra's flashy beat that he used it as the style for his own college band; later he became a drummer for Glenn Miller, a writer and editor for the old Metronome magazine, and a producer for records, radio and TV. Now, drawing heavily on his Metronome files, he has packed all he knows about the peak of swing (1935-46) into an encyclopedic volume, The Big Bands (Macmillan; $9.95). Like...
...Shots. Best of them all, says Simon, was Tommy Dorsey's orchestra. Others may have been more creative, hard-driving or distinctive, but, all around, Dorsey's band "could do more things better than any other." At one time or another, it featured such talents as Drummer Buddy Rich and Trumpeter Bunny Berigan, Singers Frank Sinatra and Jo Stafford, Arrangers Paul Weston and Sy Oliver-and, always, the warm, silken trombone of T.D. himself, from whom Sinatra learned most of what he knows about breathing and phrasing...
Dorsey raided other bands so mercilessly that one rival, Joe Marsala, wired him: "How about giving me a job in your band so I can play with mine?" Egos clashed within the ranks-Drummer Rich jealously shattered Sinatra's romantic numbers with noisy rim shots until Sinatra exploded and tossed a full water pitcher at him. The touchiest ego of all belonged to the quick-tempered, perfectionist leader. Arrogant, yet gregarious, shrewd at finance, yet at times childlike and yearning for a less complicated life, Dorsey was one of the most powerful and enigmatic personalities...
Apart from a probing sketch of Dorsey, Simon provides little that is fresh on such familiar figures as Miller, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington, but he gives appropriate recognition to some of the brilliant though now largely forgotten ensembles of the period: the sizzling band headed by tiny, hunchbacked Drummer Chick Webb, featuring Ella Fitzgerald, which triumphed at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom in a 1937 battle of the bands with Goodman's group; the lush, colorfully textured Claude Thornhill band; the showmanlike Jimmie Lunceford unit, whose buoyant two-beat style influenced such latter-day bands as Billy...
...Ginger Baker, 28, is a dazzling drummer, perhaps the only one in the rock field who can sustain long, inventive solos. His crackling stickwork and splintered rhythms give Cream a complex yet driving beat that few rock groups can equal. An antic cockney, he drums on other things besides drums: on tours, he leaves behind a trail of hotel bills for damage to furniture and other property...