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Haynes, a longtime admirer, added, “He reallyknew how to tune his set. He had a sound.”By the end of the ’30s, Krupa was leading hisown big band. He was the world’s most famousdrummer and the matrix for Rich’s looming stardom.He would redeem his fame, however, withmuch finer work starting with the inspired primitivismof “Sing Sing Sing,” which DownBeat predictedin October 1937 “will make record history.”“Teeming with imaginative variations,” thereviewer wrote, “this is musical genius.” The factthat all genius ultimately becomes a cliché merelyattests to the original inspiration.Greer (1895–’82) took big band drumming inan entirely different direction that could only havethrived within Duke Ellington’s band of inspiredcontradictions. “I love Sonny,” Haynes said. “Igot closer with Sonny when I was my 60s.”Hamilton did not wait that long. “Sonny was thefirst drummer I ever saw,” he said. “My mothertook me to the Paramount Theater in L.A. when Iwas 8. Everything he touched turned to music.”More an artist than a virtuoso, his instinct for color, shading and ArtNouveau flourish fit perfectly with Ellington’s early jungle effects and hislater interest in Mideast exotica. He was perhaps the only drummer whocarried timpanis, chimes and a gong in his set.“Greer was always more of a percussionist than a drummer,” DeMerlesaid. Hamilton considers him “jazz’s first percussionist.”Greer’s growth paralleled Ellington’s, so that by the early ’40s he gavethe band’s richest work a defining sense of style and dimension that noother player could have delivered—and perhaps no other band could haveused. No single personnel shift in Ellington’s history had a more transformingimpact than the departure of Greer in 1951 and the subsequentarrival of Louie Bellson.“A lot of players tried to imitate Sonny at his peak,” Hamilton said.Yet, today that influence seems too dispersed to track. There is noGreer dynasty perhaps because he made no musical home outside ofEllington. He was an unforgettable eccentric. One of Greer’s originaldrum sets was among the treasured artifacts displayed for years at SteveMaxwell’s Vintage and Custom Drums in Chicago. Various offers werepolitely declined, until recently when a certain fan made an offer thatcould not be refused—something in excess of $25,000. Greer’s set nowresides in the home of Charlie Watts.If Greer was a sui generis eccentric, Jo Jones (1911–’85) was a vastlyinfluential visionary who gave the original Count Basie band a stunningaerodynamic efficiency that helped change the basic laws of motion injazz. “He was my mentor,” Hamilton said.By shifting time off the bass drum to the hi-hat (while bass and guitarkept a soft pulse), Jones’ beat had a lift and elasticity that seemed to coaston air. Its coaxing contours didn’t so much “drive” the band as carry it,becoming the perfect foil for the satin fluidity of tenor saxophonist Young.Jones, who was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in Augustthrough the Veterans Committee, was the essence of modernism in an ageof streamlining—a musical metaphor for an overarching sensibility thatsought to turn functional machines into sculptured expressions of speedand velocity. He did it all with a minimum of choreography and a maximumof poise and control. Arguably the most important pre-war jazzdrummer, his airy caress of the hi-hat is a sound many have approachedbut few have achieved.Most pre-war drummers bloomed once with the right sound in the perfectcontext. Tough (1908–’48) did it twice. It would be hard to imaginetwo more dissimilar bands than Tommy Dorsey’s quasi-dixieland band ofthe mid-’30 and Herman’s early bop madhouse of the mid-’40s—or thatone drummer could be so central to each. “He played the way the bandleaderwanted him to play,” Hamilton said.Greer with the Duke Ellington OrchestraWith Dorsey, Tough pitter-pattered melodically on rims, woodblocks,toms and cymbals in clever, relaxed clusters that sounded like jelly beanstossed on a tin roof. His rim shots seemed to drop by lucky accidents, buthis hi-hat triplets had a buoyant, stabilizing consistency. His personalityshaped every Dorsey record on which he played. A few years later,though, there was no room for pitter-patter in Herman’s born-to-be-wildFirst Herd. So Tough focused on the hi-hat, opened it up and made it boilunder the band. A smoldering, unceasing sizzle punctuated by splatteredbackbeats drove the band as no drummer ever would again on the lastgreat classics of the big band era (“Apple Honey,” “Red Top,” “NorthwestPassage”).“Players with chops play on top of the beat,” DeMerle said. “Davedidn’t have big chops but he could play behind the beat like Mel Lewisand Grady Tate. They play under a band. That’s an art.”Finally, there is Catlett (1910–’51), the most versatile but perhapsleast remembered of the six. In a career that spanned Sidney Bechet toCharlie Parker, he ended up buried under his own versatility. He was anactivist drummer, often insubordinate but never inappropriate. He couldimpale a phrase in mid-air with a casual rim shot or splash and make itshimmer. But he hitched his wagon to so many different stars and styles,he surrendered the focus that lets history find and properly brand itsimmortals. As long as critic Whitney Balliett lived, he had a powerfuladvocate in the media and the court of posterity. But today we have tofind Catlett on our own. He left huge footprints in Goodman’s 1941band and countless small groups through the ’40s.“He was a huge man,” Hamilton said. “But he had the lightest touch ofany drummer I knew.”Haynes and DeMerle made virtually the same observation. Thebreadth of his impact can be heard with various groups in a 1944 EsquireConcert. Then there is the recently discovered Town Hall performancewith Parker and Gillespie issued by Uptown Records in 2005. “He playseven lighter than Max,” Washington said.The wonder was that Catlett’s elegance was equally at home in the1947 Symphony Hall and Town Hall concerts of Louis Armstrong.Notions of “early” and “modern” became irrelevant in his big hands.Other forgotten drummers exist: Baby Dodds, Zutty Singleton, WalterJohnson, Ray McKinley, Cozy Cole, Kenny Clarke, Panama Francis,George Wettling, Don Lamond, Gus Johnson, Shadow Wilson, J.C.Heard, Nick Fatool, Denzil Best, Mel Lewis and more. To remember sixis not to forget the others. What’s old may be abandoned. But once abandoned,it just awaits its time to be discovered and born once more, and perhapscelebrated as new, original and path-breaking all over again. Fordrummers, it’s always a matter of time.DBDOWNBEAT ARCHIVES54 DOWNBEAT November 2008