State of the Art, as Three Drummers See It

Is there anyone out there who did not, at some point of very early life, want to play the drums? How could it be otherwise, with all those shiny cymbals, mother-of-pearl and chrome snares, and sheer noise-making potential? Ah, the thought is still seductive--to sit there in the midst of all that glorious paraphernalia and bang away. . . .

But enough with the fantasies. Sunday at 1 p.m., Remo Inc., a leading producer of drum heads, will present “Drums in Concert”--a seven-hour marathon of flams, paradiddles and rimshots at UCLA’s Royce Hall that will include everyone from the UCLA Drum Line to such major names as Louis Bellson, Vinnie Colaiuta, Ndugu Chancler and Jeff Porcaro. Who knows, they might even give the audience a chance to whack out a few rhythms.

Three of the participants--bandleader/drummer Bellson, drummer/percussionist Chancler and jazz/classical drummer Steve Houghton--sat down recently at the Remo factory in North Hollywood to discuss the state of the drums as we move into the 1990s. Each expressed some concerns, as well as some optimism, about the changes that have taken place in the last decade or so.

Bellson, the veteran of the group, has worked with everyone from Duke Ellington and Count Basie to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. “But my real mentors were three great drummers--Chick Webb, Big Sid Catlett and Jo Jones,” he said. “If it wasn’t for those three, I don’t think I’d be playing today. Whatever I have to hand something down to younger players is what I got from them.”

Bellson attributed his continuing longevity on the jazz scene to the open-mindedness he learned from Webb, Catlett and Jones. “They used to say to me, ‘You have to keep your eyes and ears open. Things are gonna change and you gotta stay up with everything.’

“I think maybe that’s why today I’m a little more open-minded than the other players who come from my era are to the changes that are taking place--and there are a lot of changes. I may not agree with them all, but I don’t close things out. I always welcome new things, because that’s what it’s all about.”

When Houghton, a music educator and the author of two texts on jazz drumming, came on the scene in the ‘70s, both jazz and rock were competing for the attention of young players, with jazz still somewhat pre-eminent. But a change was clearly in the wind.

“At the time I was in college,” Houghton recalled, “we all wanted to get on a big band--Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton. Today, it seems as though a lot of the young players want to get into studio work--that’s a high priority for some of them--or get with a major, major group.

“As a result, I think their listening habits and their musical priorities are a lot different from what ours were. I’m generalizing, I know, but I think maybe some of them have put aside some of the important basics of jazz drumming.”

“They sure have,” exclaimed Chancler, a well-rounded percussionist who has toured with Weather Report, the Crusaders, Patrice Rushen and his own band. “They’ve put aside swinging. The emphasis is not on swinging anymore. It’s on technique.

“It used to be that if a guy could swing, it didn’t matter how good his double-stroke roll was, or how fast he could play, or whether he could play paradiddles around a drum set--it was how he swung. Nowadays it’s, well, ‘Is he fast?’ or ‘Did you hear how he played that roll?’

“And it’s making music very impersonal. I mean, we got machines doing a lot of things. We got playing to machines, playing with machines, playing with other elements that take away from the human swing. And that’s scary.”

Despite their reservations over the eminence of technique over swing, and concern about the dangers of technology, all three drummers expressed confidence in the future.

“Music travels in cycles,” said Bellson, “and I think we’ll see some better cycles coming along. But we’re going to have to teach those little teenie-weenie drummers to listen to all kinds of music while they’re growing up. They deserve to know what music is all about--all of it.”

Houghton agreed, but with a cautionary note. “I’m still a little worried about some of the things I see,” he said. “But I’m positive about the music, so long as musicians keep a sense of the bigger picture. I’d like to see us encompass everything--Brazilian, African, world music. That’s the stuff that’ll really make it.”

“It’s true,” said Chancler. “We talk about fusion, but we haven’t witnessed fusion yet. Real fusion would be a mixture and blend of the world cultures and the world musics all coming together.

“Think about it. We could have rock drummers who incorporate some Latin or Brazilian rhythms inside the rock. We could have more things like Paul Simon did with African music. And if we do it with a real sense of swing, we’re home free.

“Let’s face it. Every country has a drum. It’s the heartbeat that all music, everywhere, has to have to be alive.”