It's a steel drum on most of the records. He died a few years ago, nice player.He was a Pearl guy. I've read he used Jupiter snares. Steel and COB. Not sure if Pearl was even making aluminum snares back then (1979 was the song). You can look thru Pearl catalogs here ....... http://www.drumarchive.com/Pearl/
But like others have said, chasing a particular studio sound ...... there's a lot going on "besides" the snare itself, to what your hearing.