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Slim and Him Bob Rusch Interview<br />
BR: Well that’s probably true too…I wasn’t wired for school at all.<br />
H: As I remember, you do show up in the [Tom] Lord discography on a<br />
couple of occasions.<br />
BR: Yes. First of all, I pride myself. I have produced over 600 records, and<br />
including over 300 live dates which I have directed, and not once have I ever<br />
suggested, or taken anybody up when they say: “Why don’t you play on<br />
this.”<br />
BUT, having said that, we recorded Roswell Rudd, and he was doing music<br />
of Herbie Nichols, and he wanted extra percussion for us to do different<br />
things. So we brought grandchildren, and an employee who was working<br />
for the magazine at the time, and they added percussion or made noises or<br />
sounds, and therefore got into the Lord discography.<br />
S: Let’s listen to just a bit of that right now. (music excerpt played)<br />
S: So which of those sounds were you?<br />
BR: You’ll have to look in the Lord discography. I haven’t really played<br />
drums in any semi-professional manner for almost 40 years.<br />
S: If you were to talk about the trajectory of your drum playing, what would<br />
be the highlight?<br />
BR: The highlight was playing with Jaki Byard, no question about it. And,<br />
not because I was any good, but because Jaki was such a fine person. I also<br />
played with Cedar Walton and Charles Davis, and those weren’t as pleasant<br />
experiences because, let’s put it this way—Jaki was very encouraging and<br />
put up with my poor drumming. I remember one day we were jamming, and<br />
we started trading fours, nobody said we would trade fours, you could just<br />
tell. I mean if you listen to music long enough you can feel those things,<br />
but as a drummer, it was exciting to me because I assumed he knew that I<br />
was going to take four bars, and in fact, he did. And I was able to do drums<br />
and he was able to do piano so it was very exciting. Jaki was a wonderful<br />
teacher—he could get frustrated like anybody else, but he was really (?<br />
unintelligible). And also, a really fine piano player and saxophone player,<br />
most people don’t think of Jaki as a saxophone player, but he did play sax,<br />
and he played it well.<br />
S: What are some of your favorite Jaki Byard sides?<br />
BR: I like the ones that he did with Rahsaan Roland kirk, known as Roland<br />
kirk at the time.<br />
[Plays selection] (I love Rip, Rag, and Panic-Elvin, Richard Davis, Jaki,<br />
and Rahsaan)<br />
(END OF PART ONE)<br />
65 | CadenCe Magazine | april May June 2013
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