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Very cool! I got to see them once, around 1999 at a blues festival in Portland, OR. They had Steve Potts on drums, and they put on a great performance. I had a backstage pass that I had gotten from playing earlier in the day at the festival, so a friend and I went backstage after their set and...

You're welcome! Al Jackson, Jr. is my favorite drummer, and I have most recordings that he's on. His playing on just about every track is consistent with his phenomenal performance on "Knock on Wood."

One of the greatest executions of the money beat ever. In Dave Marsh's book "The Heart of Rock and Soul" he discusses this song, and he describes it as (I paraphrase from memory) a song in which Al Jackson plays his ass off, Steve Cropper plays as if being handed crisp 100 dollar bills at the...

Todd, your comment reminds me of when I took a few lessons from Todd Strait many years ago, and we did a few things out of New Breed (he studied it with Gary Chester in the late 70's or early 80's, at the same time that Weckl was studying with Chester). He told me that he went through all of...

I'm glad you like it! Odie Payne is on a lot of great blues tunes going back to the 50's, but on the Montreux album (from the late 70's) you can hear what he's doing a little more clearly than on earlier albums. One of my favorite shuffles is the one he plays on Chuck Berry's "No Particular...

Here are some albums, off the top of my head, that I particularly like: My Blues, by Kim Wilson (Richard Innes on drums) His Best, by Little Walter (Fred Below et al on drums) His Best, by Sonny Boy Williamson (Fred Below et al on drums) Best of Booker T. And the MGs (Al Jackson on drums) Live...

Funky Primer is a great book; it was the second book I went through with my first drum teacher (after Roy Burns's Advanced Rock and Roll Drumming) and it helped me a lot. After Funky Primer, we were going to start on Chapin's book, but my teacher moved away before we got to it. I eventually got...

That makes sense--thanks! I'm not sure the exact time; I'd have to dig the book out and calculate it. But I think he recommended doing each A-B exercises (and I think there were four of them) around 4 times each at 8 different tempos, and you were to do that whole sequence at three different...

Thanks for the reply! No, I did mean the double stroke exercise, the one with all the A and B motions. I actually reached out to Kim (RIP) on Facebook once, to make sure that I understood the directions correctly, and he was kind enough to reply and confirm that I had it correct. I did practice...

I was aware of that book for a while before acquiring it, but I mainly got it because of your recommendation on here, Jeff (some 15 years ago). It's an absolutely fabulous book. I'm curious, did you ever work on his double stroke exercise at the beginning like he describes it? I think I...

That one's been extremely helpful for me as well.

I've practiced more out of the first three pages than any other part of the book, but I've spent a lot of time in other areas as well. I've especially spent a lot of time practicing the short roll exercises, which I feel have really helped develop and clean up my single, double and buzz rolls at...

For me, I'd say without a doubt it's Stick Control, which I still practice out of almost daily. After that it might be Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer by Jim Chapin. I haven't practiced too much out of the Chapin book in the last 20 years, but working on it in my teenage years and...

Here's a nice one I heard recently by Buddy Rich on the old tune "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie" (this is from the 1959 big band album Richcraft). It seems like he subtly implies the phrasing of the melody in these 8 bars:

This is so true. I remember that when I was a young drummer, I wasn't able to understand what drummers were playing on records (like I was eventually able to do as I got better and gained more understanding). A pivotal moment for me occurred in the summer before my junior year in high school. I...

When I was in my first rock band (some 30+ years ago) I learned all of our original tunes by ear, and I never once wrote up a chart. But that's because we rehearsed the tunes a bunch (over weeks or even months) before we started playing them on gigs, and I gradually memorized them over time...

For live playing, I would prefer to never use a click. When recording, I'm somewhat ambivalent. I would never want to use a click for recording jazz, but for pop/rock/blues, I tend to like using a click because it will keep me from slowing down or speeding up, and I can follow the click just...

Bobby Whitlock is not a drummer (or at least I'm not aware that he plays drums in addition to keyboards), so I'm not sure why his autobiography is on this list.

Really, from Eugene? He seems to have a southern accent, so I assumed he grew up in the south, but maybe it's just that he's been there a long time. I believe Wooton worked a bit with Mazur when he was in the Phantom Regiment (and Mazur was an instructor) in the 1980's, but I get the sense that...