DrumEatDrum
Platinum Member
I think you (and a couple of other people) misunderstood the initial question. This isn't about putting a tom to the left of the hihat, but reversing the two main rack toms (so that the lower tom is to the left of the higher tom)
Doh, so I did.
So, instead, I'll give you Louie Bellson, circs mid 1950's, with his "out of order" tom configuration:
(well before Cobham).
The Kenny Aronoff thing was actually because of John Mellencamp (then John (Johnny) Cougar) wanting him to ONLY have a 4 piece kit. He wanted that specific look on stage back then.
After a while, Kenny added the 10" tom, but put it lower to "keep the 4 piece look" & so John Cougar wouldn't notice.
That's what I read in MD years ago. I remembered it because JC always seemed really hard to work for.
I think he added a second floor tom directly behind the first one after a while also.
Yes, the story was the albums were recorded with three tom 5pc kit, but John wanted Kenny to have the single rack tom 4pc kit look on stage. So Kenny added with a 2nd floor tom to get the fills of the record right, but the sound guy said it made all his fills sound muddy. So Kenny had the sound man finally convince John to let Kenny have a 2nd rack tom, but by that time Kenny had gotten so used to have the 12" in the "single rack tom" position, that he didn't really want to change that, so he experimented with the 10" off to the side like that,and it just stuck ever since.