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Steve
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issue eight
Winter 2009
The Golden Age Of L.A. Session Drummers Blaine, Palmer, Gordon, Kunkel, Guerin & Keltner
• Into Uncharted Territory With Andrew Cyrille • Transcription & Analysis Sonny Payne Plays The
Breaks • Dreamkit Buddy Rich Drum Company, Bosphorus Cymbals, Vater Sticks, Axis Pedals
TRAPS
steve
gadd
Cover Story
the
Ultimate
Groove
By Bill Milkowski
CHAPTER ONE
I
Photo by Ian Gittler
26 TRAPS
Winter 2009
trapsmagazine.com
THE LEGEND
t would be extremely difficult to exaggerate the impact that Steve Gadd has had on
two generations of drummers since he hit the scene with tsunami-like force in the
mid-1970s. No other drummer is more revered in the drum community and more
highly regarded within music industry circles today. At age 63, Gadd has attained regal
status among drummers. More importantly, he has maintained his masterful touch –
that indefinable, intangible something that allows him to groove like no one else on
the planet while instantly elevating the proceedings on any bandstand, regardless of
the musical setting. As Chick Corea said in the new Hudson Music DVD on Gadd, which
documents his third “Mission From Gadd” North American clinic tour of 2006, “He’s
able to take a piece of music and actually compose something for it that makes total
sense ... that actually brings the music to a completeness.”
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Winter 200\
TRAPS 27
“My goal is to give something
to the artist that’s going
to be meaningful to them”
Whether executing chops-busting unisons, swinging at blazing tempos with Corea, laying down
relaxed, fat grooves with Joe Sample and The Crusaders, digging deep in concert with Eric Clapton on
faithful renditions of “Layla” and “Sunshine Of Your
Love,” or demonstrating his inimitable ability to
lock it in on tour with the likes of James Taylor, Paul
Simon, or Randy Crawford, Gadd continues to make
the music feel good every time he hits.
It’s a rare talent that has as much to do with the
drummer’s early years in drum corps back in his
hometown of Rochester, New York as it does with
his legendary technical proficiency on the kit. While
playing in the drum corps back in the late ’50s
helped form his team-player aesthetic (while also informing what stands as his most famous drum part
on record, Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your
Lover”), Gadd is also fluent in many idioms, from
bop-fueled swing and shuffle blues to pop, rock,
funk, fusion, disco, and Latin jazz, as well as being
an incomparable improviser who strikes a perfect
balance between orchestration and imagination.
As renowned bassist Tony Levin, a longtime friend
and colleague who played with Gadd during the late
’60s back in Rochester, says, “Steve is fluent and
expert and comfortable in all styles. He’s an artist
who has transcended all labels and categories, and
invented some of his own in the process.”
Watching Gadd do his thing – the slick, signature
paradiddle interplay between hi-hat and snare, the
intricate ride cymbal and bass drum patterns, and
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Winter 2008
explosive around-the-kit fills, all executed with uncanny precision and conviction – is like observing a
martial arts master holding class at his dojo. There’s
the same yin and yang sense of ultimate control yet
total abandon to the flow, the sheer economy of motion producing extraordinary power, the Zen-like
relaxation underscoring remarkable intensity, and
an overall sense of being wholly in the moment.
At a memorable performance a few years ago at
the Blue Note nightclub in New York City during a
week-long reunion engagement of Corea’s Leprechaun band from the ’70s, the keyboardist made a
point of stating to the audience that Gadd is “the best
musician I have ever played with – not drummer,
musician.” Others who have worked with Gadd over
the years in the studio, on sessions or out on tour,
concur with Corea’s assessment. As guitarist Steve
Khan, a longtime friend and collaborator who hired
Gadd for his string of potent fusion recordings in the
late ’70s (Tightrope, The Blue Man, and Arrows), puts
it, “He is, first and foremost, a great musician. And
that is much more than being a great drummer. This
is why Steve set a standard for a particular level of
artistry, creativity, swing, groove, and musicality,
which influenced so many drummers and will influence generations of drummers to come.”
Vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, who recruited Gadd
for a succession of groups during the ’70s, beginning with White Elephant and including L’Image
and Steps, recalls his initial encounter with the kid
from Rochester. “The first time I heard Gadd play it
was that kind of thing where you get goose bumps
and you think, ‘Wait a minute! Something’s happening here, and it’s deep!’ He was that good.”
Mainieri has maintained a working relationship with Gadd over the past four decades and, to
this day, never fails to be amazed by what Gadd
brings to the table. “I can’t say enough about the
guy. He always plays with such conviction and
a musical sensibility, no matter if it’s Joe Sample
or Chick Corea or Luciano Pavarotti
– and it’s totally effortless. It’s like
watching Muhammad Ali in the ring.
There’s a certain grace there that is
sort of inexplicable.”
The typically unassuming Gadd remains humble in the face of such high
praise. “My goal is to give something
to the artist that’s going to be meaningful to them,” he says in describing his
role. “If you give them something that
helps take their music where they want
it to be, that’s a good energy to share.
That’s what I try to do when I’m on the
bandstand, is to try and be the most
supportive that I can be – figure out
what’s going on and what I can do to
sort of pull it together. And then when
it’s time to solo, have some fun.”
trapsmagazine.com
Photo by ebet roberts
steve gadd
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Winter 2009
TRAPS 29
CHAPTER TWO
Rochester Roots
s
teven Kendall Gadd was born in Rochester,
New York on April 9, 1945. He showed an
interest in drumming at the age of three and
around that time received his first pair of sticks and
a practice pad from his uncle Eddie, who had played
drums in the service. “He showed me how to hold
the sticks,” Gadd recalls. “We’d put records on and
play along with them together – John Phillip Sousa
marches and stuff. He also liked jazz. I remember he
bought me an Art Blakey album early on and later
gave me records by Max Roach and Oscar Peterson.
He was a real music lover and constantly wanted
me to listen to these different albums.”
By age seven, Steve, along with his younger
trumpet-playing brother, Eddie, had taken up tap
dancing, entertaining folks at nursing homes and
hospitals around Rochester. That same year, 1952,
Steve received his first drum set (with calfskin
heads) from his grandfather and began formal
study with Elmer Frolig at Levis’ Music in Rochester, which was located right across the street from
the Eastman School Of Music.
“We were also serious about
the drumline. We weren’t
screwing around. ”
At age nine, Gadd’s father took him to meet one
of his drumming heroes, Gene Krupa, who was
appearing at the Ridgecrest Inn in Rochester. This
may have inspired the youngster to bear down even
harder on his drumming lessons, because he continued to show remarkable progress from this point.
After winning a local talent contest in 1956, at
age 11, Steve was flown to Hollywood to make a
national TV appearance on Walt Disney’s popular
variety show, The Mickey Mouse Club. His segment
featured him playing drums and also tap dancing
while Mousketeer Cubby O’Brien supported him
on the kit. He continued studying drums with
William and Stanley Street and by 1959 began lessons with John H. Beck, principal percussionist
with the Rochester Philharmonic.
While still in his early teens, Gadd’s parents began bringing him around to local clubs to observe
the visiting jazz musicians who came through
Rochester. “I got to see people like Dizzy Gillespie,
Art Blakey, Oscar Peterson, Kai Winding, Carmen
McCrae, Ray Bryant, and many others,” he recalls.
“On Sunday afternoons they’d have matinees,
30 TRAPS Winter 2009
and sometimes the musicians would let us sit in.
So I was sitting in with some of these jazz greats
when I was just a kid, and so was Chuck and Gap
Mangione.” On one memorable matinee, Gadd sat
in with jazz trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie, and
on various other occasions he got to showcase
his shuffle groove with Hammond B-3 masters
Groove Holmes, Hank Marr, and Jack McDuff.
All through elementary and high school, Gadd
played in drum corps, later drawing on that
invaluable experience to help forge his groundbreaking style. As he says of those formative years
in the Rochester Crusaders drum corps, “I loved
it. My best friends were also in the drum corps, so
it was a lot of fun. But we were also serious about
the drumline. We weren’t screwing around. We
wrote our own parts – some really hip four-part
things – and we practiced hard. We really listened
to each other and really tried to play like one person. And the thing that made it inviting to me was
the power of the team together.” That aesthetic
ingrained into him at such an early age would help
make Gadd the consummate team player on New
York’s lucrative session scene years later.
In 1961, as a member of the School Band Of
America, Gadd participated in a European tour.
After graduating from Eastridge High School, he
enrolled in the Manhattan School Of Music and
later transferred to the Eastman School Of Music.
In early 1965, Gadd was hired by Rochester-based
trumpeter Chuck Mangione to play in his quintet,
which also featured a young unknown pianist from
Boston named Chick Corea. During their tenure
with Mangione, Corea and Gadd would get together
after gigs for late-night record-listening sessions. As
Corea recalls, “Steve was already a great player but
his style was coming more out of the old school. So
I had him check out more closely what Tony [Williams] was doing with Miles [Davis], and I think
that really affected him. It opened up his concept a
bit and gave him a looser approach to the kit.”
During the mid-’60s, while still attending Eastman, Gadd also played frequently in a trio with
Mangione’s pianist brother, Gap, and an upright
bassist from Brookline, Massachusetts named
Tony Levin (who would go on to fame as an electric bassist playing with the likes of John Lennon,
Paul Simon, King Crimson, and Peter Gabriel).
Gap’s trio had a steady five-nights-a-week gig
at The Other Side Of The Tracks supper club in
Rochester – a laboratory of sorts for Gadd to develop new ideas and work on creating an indelible
chemistry with the rest of the band.
Gadd graduated from Eastman in early 1968
and by August of that year found himself on his
first-ever New York City recording session, playing on Gap Mangione’s Diana In The Autumn Wind,
a collection of compositions by his brother Chuck,
arranged for Gap’s trio and a 15-piece ensemble
trapsmagazine.com
infographic by josh sukov
steve gadd
that included such veteran New York session players as trumpeters Snooky Young, Clark Terry, and
Marvin Stamm, saxophonists Jerome Richardson,
Frank Wess, and Joe Farrell, trombonist Wayne
Andre, guitarist Sam Brown, and vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, an alumni of the Buddy Rich
big band who would later form White Elephant,
L’Image, and Steps (later known as Steps Ahead).
Mainieri remembers the positive impression 23year-old Gadd made on that Gap Mangione session.
“That was a very busy time for session players
in New York. If you were an A player or even a B
player, you could work 24/7, as they say. It was the
kind of thing where you’d get a call for a date and
you didn’t know whether it was for an album or a
jingle, but you’d show up and play the gig no matter
what it was. And one day I got a call from Manny
Albam, who was one of my producers. And Manny
says to me, ‘We got a session for you from 1:00 to
6:00 p.m. Bring mallets. You’re playing vibes and a
little timpani.’ So I show up and it turns out to be a
big band session. All the usual A players were there
– all the cats. And this guy was conducting. What’s
his name? Chuck Mangione. Never heard of him.
And who’s the artist? His brother, Gap Mangione, a
piano player from Rochester. Gap brought his own
trio down for the session. It was Tony Levin playing
an upright electric bass and this kid with a G.I. haircut on drums named Steve Gadd. And all of us guys
on the session were looking at each other wondering, ‘Who are these guys?’ And we’re thinking, ‘This
is going to be a long day.’ In any case, all I remember
about the session was that the charts were nice, well
written. The piano player was okay. I don’t remember too much about the bass player. But everybody
walked away from that session saying, ‘Who the
fuck was that drummer?’”
Shortly after that Gap Mangione recording, Gadd
enlisted in the military and wound up playing in
the U.S. Army’s Stage Band based in Washington
DC, a gig he held for the next three years. “At that
time, the draft was on,” Gadd explains. “And if you
went in that way they could send you anywhere. I
didn’t want to go to Vietnam, so I enlisted before I
could be drafted. That was my plan. I auditioned
during my last year at Eastman and got accepted
into the army band. Then, right after I graduated
from college that June, I got my draft notice. But
since I had already enlisted in the band before I had
to show up for the draft, I didn’t have to go to Vietnam. Instead, I was based just outside of Washington DC, and I stayed there for three years.”
After being discharged in late 1971, Gadd returned to Rochester and began playing in big bands
while also gigging around town and occasionally
in New York City in a trio with bassist Levin and
pianist Mike Holmes. As Mainieri recalls, “Tony
invited me down to check out their trio and sure
enough it was Gadd on drums. That was the second
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gadd’s traps
DRUMS Yamaha
22" x 14" Bass Drum
14" x 5.5" Birch Snare Drum (with wooden
hoops, Steve Gadd sig. series)
12" x 8" Tom
13" x 9" Tom
14" x 12" Floor Tom
16" x 14" Floor Tom
CYMBALS Zildjian
14" K Custom
Session Hi-Hats
18" K Custom
Constantinople Crash
18" K Custom Session Ride
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Steve Gadd also uses Yamaha hardware, LP percussion, Vic Firth Steve Gadd
signature sticks, Shure microphones, and Remo drumheads.
time I met Steve. I was playing a few nights later
with White Elephant, but it was actually called
Red Eye then. We had a gig at the Village Gate
and Steve came down to hear the band. I talked to
him afterwards and said, ‘Man, you belong in New
York.’ And he said, ‘Tony’s trying to get me down
here, but my father, my family ... it’s difficult.’ He
was a family guy with a wife and two kids and was
hesitant about leaving that scene up in Rochester.”
Nevertheless, Gadd started coming down to New
York City to do sessions and would invariably stay
at Levin’s house in the Yorktown Heights section
of Westchester. “Tony had been in New York while
I was in the army, so he was already on the scene,”
Gadd says. “And he introduced me to people like
Mike Mainieri and all those guys. Mike also had a
jingle company back then, so he was hiring me to
do jingles and he also got me involved in the White
Elephant thing, which was basically a late-night
jam situation with some of the great young players
on the scene at the time. That’s basically how my
career in recording got started, from Tony introducing me to people that he knew.”
As Mainieri explains, “Starting my own jingle
company gave me access to a lot of the recording
studios around town. Jingle studios in those days
Winter 2009
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steve gadd
David Sanborn
How
Does He
Do That?
“With Steve, it’s always about
picking up where you left off,”
says alto saxophonist David Sanborn. “We’ve known each other
for over 30 years, and we’ve
been through a lot together.”
Perhaps more than any other
musician Steve Gadd has played
with, Sanborn has been a veritable
constant in the drummer’s personal as well as professional life.
“I am friends with Steve,” Sanborn
notes, “and consciously and unconsciously we share the same
values about music. I certainly
have a personal rapport with him.
“We were both on the road
together with Paul Simon back
in the mid-’70s during Paul’s
Still Crazy After All These Years
period. Playing with him night
after night on the road, I loved
the extraordinary connections
he made. His playing was so
simple it had everybody going
completely fucking crazy! It was
about the groove, that sense
of swing, which was and is so
profound in Steve’s playing. He
made [Paul] McCartney, Carly
[Simon], and Paul [Simon] swing.”
32 TRAPS
Winter 2009
Having appeared on countless Sanborn recordings, Gadd
is once again the saxophonist’s
drummer of choice on his new
Here & Gone CD, an album
of blues, R&B, and jazz that
features, among others, Eric
Clapton, Sam Moore, and Derek
Trucks. “Whatever situation I
am in,” Sanborn relates, “I can
relax because the shit is there,
because Steve’s being creative.
He frees you up. He makes that
Chapter Three
Beck, pianist Warren Bernhardt, trombonist Barry
Rogers, drummer Donald McDonald, and various
others in a rotating cast of characters. Their first
self-titled album, a compilation of tracks recorded
between 1969 and 1972, was released on vinyl in
1972 on Just Sunshine Records. (Mainieri’s NYC
Records label would release a CD version in 1996,
and in 2007 a two-CD set with several bonus tracks
was released in Japan.) Noticeable Gaddisms are
apparent on this lone White Elephant recording,
particularly on tunes like the whirlwind jam “The
Jones,” the groove-heavy “Peace Of Mind,” the
urgently funky “Animal Fat” (featuring a mindboggling tenor solo by Michael Brecker), and the
gospel-soaked “Prelude To Sunshine Clean” (which
predates the signature Stuff sound). Gadd was
making his mark, and word soon spread around the
Big Apple about this phenom from Rochester.
stuff happen. You can leave
a space and he can make that
space make sense – that’s magic.
He knows how to use space
like Miles, Hank Crawford, Ray
Charles – Steve is a living manifestation of that. That’s why,
to have moments like that with
Steve, it’s addictive, better than
anything else.
“Steve is one of those guys
who’s got real humility as a musician,” Sanborn continues. “He
plays in the service of the tune.
It ain’t about showing off, about
‘me.’ And he’s got incredible
chops that blow you away even
though he’s not a flashy drummer.
He can elevate the situation he’s
in, make you want to play and be
in the zone with him. His momentum and groove are so strong, he
makes me feel I can play, man! A
good measure of what that is, is
you’ve got this guy listening to
everything you are doing, and he
makes you sound good.
“With Steve, it’s about reconnecting to the essence, reminding yourself why you do this,
making music. When I heard Ray
Charles growing up, I realized
there’s a world out there that I
have to be part of, even if I can
only be on the fringes of it –
that’s the thing that Steve has
had over the years. He retains
that, always listening, always
learning. He’ll come up with
these things that will turn the
corner, thinking, ‘What can I do
to make this happen?’ He’s a real
collaborator. He infuses everything he does with the jazz spirit,
because he’s a jazz drummer.
“Steve’s always coming up off
the beat – it’s so natural. His shit
with independent motion with
all four limbs – how does he do
that? I’ve been watching him do
that for 30 years and I still can’t
figure it out!”
John Ephland
trapsmagazine.com
New York,
New York
F
photo by lynn goldsmith
were pretty much dark at night, so whenever there
was a night when nothing was going on in the
studio I’d jump in there with members of different
groups like [early jazz-rock band] Jeremy & The
Satyrs and other young musicians around who were
into experimenting. And I’d put out the word, ‘Hey,
let’s get together and just blow.’ And that small
original ensemble grew into this big hang. Whoever
was around came in those days. All the studio guys
would come by to blow and get high. And that gradually evolved into what became White Elephant.”
Mainieri’s experimental ensemble White Elephant
was a sprawling 23-piece hippie jazz-rock tribal
experience comprised of such future greats as
saxophonists Michael Brecker, Ronnie Cuber, and
George Young, trumpeters Randy Brecker, Lew
Soloff, and John Faddis, guitarists David Spinozza,
Hugh McCracken, Sam Brown, Bob Mann, and Joe
ollowing his experience with White Elephant,
Gadd took up with his bass-playing partner
Levin, Mainieri, and pianist Bernhardt in an
offshoot group called L’Image. While they worked
up lots of original material and gigged occasionally
around Woodstock, Rochester, and New York City,
the group would disband before ever recording. As
Mainieri recalls, “We were all living in Woodstock
at the time. We actually spent six months in my
barn rehearsing material and we got it really tight.
We were ready to go record an album and do some
touring, but then Steve came to us and said, ‘Guys,
I’m going to join Stuff. I can’t do this.’ Naturally, we
were all pretty saddened by that.”
“We were all committed to that band,” Gadd
recalls. “We rehearsed and they wrote some great
music. It’s just that back in those years it was hard
to get a record thing happening, and so everyone
had to take other work to pay the rent. And for
me, that meant doing sessions in New York City.
But it just got to be too hard to keep it going – going back and forth to the city a few days a week to
try and work in the studios, then going back up to
Woodstock to rehearse for three or four days with
L’Image. It just seemed like I was continuously
doing stuff but I wasn’t making enough money
in New York to support what I had to do. And
L’Image wasn’t really working yet. So we sort of
parted ways. It was a difficult decision to have to
... to not commit to that band. But I don’t think it
was the right thing for me to do at that time.”
In 1973 Gadd was recruited by his former Chuck
Mangione Quintet bandmate Chick Corea for his
exciting new band, Return To Forever. The group
had already put out a hugely successful album,
Light As A Feather, which was largely an acoustic
project that featured the Brazilian singer Flora
Purim and her husband Airto Moreira on drums.
But by ’73 Corea was ready to enter the fusion
sweepstakes with a full-blown electric band of his
own in the wake of groundbreaking successes by
Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew,
Jack Johnson, and On The Corner, Joe Zawinul and
Wayne Shorter’s Weather Report, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. For Corea, this would require
a radical retooling from soft, alluring, Brazilian
tones to a more bombastic attack distinguished by
roaring, distortion-laced electric guitar licks and
thunderous, slap-happy electric bass lines, and
fueled by precision, powerhouse drumming on the
order of Mahavishnu’s Billy Cobham or Lifetime’s
Tony Williams. Gadd was hired as a replacement
for Airto and immediately filled the bill.
trapsmagazine.com
“The band was me, Stanley Clarke on electric
bass, Mingo Lewis on percussion, and Bill Connors on electric guitar” Gadd recalls. “We did all
the stuff that later appeared on Hymn Of The Seventh
Galaxy and we played that material at colleges and
at clubs in New York like the Village Vanguard, the
Bitter End, and Max’s Kansas City. We also played
at the Bijou in Philadelphia and the Jazz Workshop
and Pall’s Mall in Boston. And it was great.” (You
can hear a sample of Gadd with Return To Forever
on the Verve/Chronicles compilation Return To
The 7th Galaxy, which includes live renditions of
“Spain,” “After The Cosmic Rain,” and “Bass Folk
Song,” recorded in concert at Quiet Village on Long
Island and originally broadcast live on Long Island
radio station WLIR-FM.)
Gadd’s stay with Return To Forever would be
short-lived, only six months. As he explains, “At the
same time I was playing with Return To Forever I
was getting called to do so many recordings with so
many other people. The studio thing just became
too lucrative, so I had to make a decision, because
I knew that Chick wanted the band that ultimately
recorded Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy to be the same
“Funk playing, to me, is just
groove playing, and I always
like to groove”
band that went out on the road in support of the record. So I decided to leave the band, which was one
of the hardest decisions I ever had to make because
it was some of the best music I had ever played. But
choosing to stay in New York and do studio work
enabled me to not be on the road as much, which I
think was the right decision for me at the time.”
Needless to say, Gadd’s career didn’t suffer for
his decision to remain immersed in the New York
City studio scene at the very peak of its activity.
On his frequent trips into the city to do session
work, Gadd would invariably stop by Mikell’s, the
intimate nightclub on Manhattan’s Upper West
Side, to sit in with bassist Gordon Edwards and his
funky crew of fellow session musicians collectively
known as the Encyclopedia Of Soul. That group,
which featured the guitar tandem of Eric Gale and
Cornell Dupree, pianist Richard Tee, and drummer Chris Parker – first-call studio cats all – would
eventually morph into the group Stuff. Gadd began
by sitting in and occasionally subbing for drummer Parker. “I knew Chris was real busy too with
different gigs, so one night I said to him, ‘If you
ever need someone to play up here for you, I’d love
to do it. Or if you want to alternate nights so that
Winter 2009
TRAPS 33
steve gadd
up at Mikell’s, which had such a great vibe in the
room. A lot of it was acoustic, so we could hear
each other well, which made it a very comfortable
situation and really allowed us to relax and lock it
in. And there was no sound guy that was trying to
interpret what they were hearing to make it sound
better than what it really was. What the people
were hearing was exactly what we were hearing.”
On a recent DVD/CD release of Stuff in concert
at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1976, one can readily feel the remarkable gospel-soul-funk chemistry
that these five kindred spirits regularly generate on
their buoyant themes like “Foots” and “How Long
Will It Last,” along with covers of Stevie Wonder’s
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered” and “Boogie On Reggae
Woman,” Dave Mason’s “Feelin’ Alright” (a hit for
Joe Cocker), Earth Wind & Fire’s “That’s The Way
Of The World,” The Isley Brothers’ funky anthem
Lee Sklar
“He Goes
With His
Gut”
“I’ve always been a huge fan
from his recordings.” Colleague/
bassist Lee Sklar has that much
respect for Steve Gadd going all
the way back to their early days
of the mid-’70s. “I met Steve
when he was in the house band
for Saturday Night Live,” says
Sklar. “I’d be touring with Bonnie Raitt, or Jackson Browne, or
James Taylor, and we’d hang out
and get to know each other.”
Since Sklar has always been
an L.A.-based musician, working with the New York-based
drummer hasn’t resulted in a
lot of face-to-face work. Case
in point: A recent “collaboration” between the two musicians
came at the urging of producer
Richard Perry. “It was for a Ray
Charles record on [Leon Russell’s] ‘A Song For You,’” Sklar
remembers. “Richard called me
up to see if I’d do the bass part
since he wasn’t happy with the
bass and drums. He sent me the
track with Steve’s overdubbed
playing. I listened and just basked
in the coolness of his part while
I added mine. We did end up in
34 TRAPS
Winter 2009
the same place for a Livingston
Taylor album about four years
ago in Nashville. It was great. He
and I looked at each other and
basically said, ‘I can’t believe we
actually recorded a record in
the same studio together!’ He’s
got a unique ability to take the
mundane and make it special.
With just the simple placement
of a beat, he can change a song
from night to day. Steve reminds
me a lot of Jeff Porcaro: He’s a
brave musician who goes with his
gut. What Steve played may have
sounded pretty basic in the studio, but you go back and listen to
the tapes and realize his playing
was fantastic.”
A familiar name on scores of
records in his own right, Sklar
has vivid memories of listening
to “so many records where I
asked who was playing drums; I
knew, but I wanted to reaffirm
it.” Along with Raitt, Taylor, and
Browne, Sklar has worked with,
among others, Billy Cobham,
Toto, Phil Collins, not to mention being part of one of the
great rock and roll backup bands
of all time: The Section, with
Danny Kortchmar, Craig Doerge,
and Russ Kunkel. You could say
Sklar knows a thing or two about
great musicians. “You just sit
there and listen,” he notes, “and
you go, ‘This cat’s so good!’ Steve
is part of that old school, from
the ’60s and ’70s. He’s one of the
guys who came in as part of a full
rhythm section cutting records,
pre Pro Tools, pre-click. He
has an organic quality of laying
down the beat. It’s a heartbeat
instead of a brainwave, a living
and breathing beat instead of a
click machine. Steve’s pocket is
so deep.
“Like Jeff,” Sklar continues,
“Steve doesn’t do what’s expected, but exactly what’s needed to
make it special, not pedestrian.
You go anywhere in the world,
and there is a reverence for him,
a kind of ‘Oh yeah, Steve Gadd!’
He carries a ton of credibility.
He’s an all-around musician –
you can’t cubbyhole him. And he
has appeal across generations.
If a kid is serious about being a
drummer it’s imperative that
he or she to listen to Steve.” As
if to sing his praises endlessly,
Sklar adds, “Steve’s the cream of
the crop when it comes to great
drummers. If the chance comes
along, I will jump at it in a second
to play with him.”
John Ephland
trapsmagazine.com
Photo by andrew lepley
you can do other gigs, just let me know.’ It worked
out so we both did it, splitting it up. And occasionally the both of us would play together with two
sets of drums in that little place. It was fun.”
The chemistry that Gadd struck up with Gordon, Gale, Dupree, and especially Tee, was rare
and beautiful. They’d lock in so tight that they
would generate palpable waves of joy rolling off
that band that swept into the audience at Mikell’s.
That magical quality eventually manifested itself
on recordings as producers of the day began hiring them as a unit to generate those same infectious grooves behind pop stars like Joe Cocker,
Paul Simon, and others. “Stuff was basically a
bunch of guys who were in the studio all day, and
at night they had an opportunity to play whatever
they wanted to for fun,” says Gadd. “There was
very little miking done when we were playing
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Winter 2009
TRAPS 35
steve gadd
“It’s Your Thing,” and Edwin Hawkins’ gospel classic “Oh Happy Day” (featuring a cameo appearance
by folk singer Odetta).
Gadd’s unaccompanied drum showcase during this set is also a must-see for fans. As singer/
songwriter Chris Rea states in the liner notes, “The
purity of what’s on this video is the true history of
modern music. It’s as good as it ever got and ever
will get. It’s honest, it’s real, it’s complex, it’s sophisticated, it’s blues, it’s gospel, it rocks, it swings
as good as Ellington. While everybody else breaks
their knees and ankles trying to get an inch off the
ground, these guys just fly. It’s heaven. Game over.”
In retrospect, Mainieri believes that Gadd pursued Stuff in order to further develop that style of
playing and incorporate it into his ever-expanding
drum vocabulary. “We were playing fusion with
“the fact that we were stoned
out of our minds most of
the time made us easy prey”
L’Image, and Stuff was playing more of the funky
shit, and Steve was really digging that. So he made
his decision: ‘Guys, I’m going to do this.’ And the
thing was, Steve couldn’t play funk that well at the
time. He had all of the mechanics in terms of all the
drum corps stuff and swing that he had come up
playing. And that was why he wanted to play with
Stuff so much, to really refine his approach to funk
drumming and incorporate that into his arsenal.”
Gadd confirms that his funk chops weren’t up
to par back in those early days in New York. “The
closest that I had come to doing that kind of thing
back in Rochester was playing syncopated rhythm
and blues – we used to call it boogaloo – with Jack
McDuff and Groove Holmes. But I didn’t get into
real funk playing as we know it today until I got to
New York. Funk playing, to me, is just groove playing, and I always like to groove. But I never got a
chance to play an even eighth-note kind of groove
until I got to New York and started doing studio
work, and especially when I got with Stuff. That’s
when it really started happening for me. And
someone who really helped me get it together was
a friend of mine, the great drummer Rick Marotta.
Rick’s got a great pocket. I love the way he plays,
and I learned a lot about playing funk from him.”
In 1975 Gadd played on his first #1 hit, Van McCoy’s disco anthem, “The Hustle.” It was a harbinger of things to come for the in-demand session
drummer who came to personify the essence of
groove. Guitarist Steve Khan, himself a ubiquitous
figure on the New York session scene during that
36 TRAPS
Winter 2009
time, recalls his first encounter with Gadd. “Like
everyone else who had migrated to New York, I
came here with my various drum heroes all neatly
tucked away in their place of honor in my memory.
In my experience, prior to that moment, I had
never seen a drummer take a lead sheet, not even
a specific drum part, and while sight-reading it,
interpret it and personalize all at the same moment.
As the years were to come and go, I saw Steve do
this on countless occasions, each experience more
wondrous than that which had come before.”
“It was definitely a busy time,” Gadd says of his
prolific output on the New York City studio scene
during the ’70s. “And I had a chance to work with
people that I admired my whole life.” Among the
countless sessions that he played on during that
period of unprecedented productivity in the studios, Gadd’s signature groove graced a staggering
array of recordings by a remarkably wide range
of artists, including Bette Midler, Art Garfunkel,
Carly Simon, Kenny Loggins, Grover Washington Jr., George Benson, Dave Grusin, Jim Croce,
Aretha Franklin, Ringo Starr, Chet Baker, Judy
Collins, Bonnie Raitt, Carla Bley, Maynard Ferguson, Chick Corea, Al Di Meola, Stanley Clarke, the
Brecker Brothers, David Sanborn, Angela Bofill,
Joe Cocker, Dr. John, Rickie Lee Jones, Weather
Report, Gato Barbieri, Tom Scott, Stuff, Charles
Mingus, and the soundtrack to The Wiz.
But perhaps his most significant contributions
of the decade came on Paul Simon’s 1975 Grammy
Award-winning Still Crazy After All These Years and
Steely Dan’s 1977 classic Aja, two albums that cemented Gadd’s legendary status among drummers.
Regarding the title track to Aja, he says, “That wasn’t
one of those meticulous sessions that Donald [Fagen] and Walter [Becker] were so noted for. A lot of
that was done live. I think they had been working on
this piece with different people the whole week, so
a lot of the guys who were in that session that I was
at had already played it before, maybe several times,
in fact. So it wasn’t like everyone was learning at
the same time. I think Donald and Walter wanted to
get different approaches from different drummers,
so they had different guys come in throughout the
week. And when it was my turn they asked for fills
between those figures, and that’s how I filled it. It
was basically a live take.”
Regarding the evolution of his memorable military march lick that underscored “50 Ways To
Leave Your Lover,” the catchy tune that helped
drive Simon’s Still Crazy to the top of the charts in
1975, Gadd says, “We were working on that song,
and the chorus felt all right, but we were having
a hard time coming up with something that felt
all right and was interesting for the verses. Now,
I was doing a lot of recording back in those years,
so between takes I might be practicing different
things that didn’t necessarily pertain to that partrapsmagazine.com
selected discography
Solo
(on Electric Bird): Gadd About.
With The Gadd Gang
(on Columbia): The Gadd Gang;
Here & Now.
With Carly Simon
(on Elektra): Boys In The Trees; Spy.
(On Warner Bros.): Come Upstairs.
(On Arista): My Romance; Have
You Seen Me Lately; Bedroom
Tapes.
With Ron Carter
(on Kudu): Anything Goes.
With Peter Gabriel
(on Real World): OVO.
(On Geffen): Up.
With Eric Clapton & B.B. King
(on Reprise): Riding With The King.
With Eric Clapton
(on Reprise): Reptile. (On Warner
Bros.): One More Car, One More
Rider.
With Art Garfunkel
(on Columbia): Watermark; Fate
For Breakfast. (On Sony): Songs
From A Parent To A Child. (On
Rhino): Some Enchanted Evening.
With Simon & Garfunkel
(on Sony): Concert In Central Park.
With Return To Forever
(on Polygram): Return To The
Seventh Galaxy.
With Chick Corea
(on Stretch): The Ultimate
Adventure; Rendezvous In New
York. (On Polydor): My Spanish
Heart; Friends; The Mad Hatter;
The Leprechaun. (On Warner
Bros.): Three Quartets.
With Quincy Jones
(on Warner Bros.): From Q With
Love. (On A&M): Sounds ... And
Stuff Like That.
With Steely Dan
(on MCA): Gaucho; Aja.
With Paul Simon
(on Warner Bros.): Hearts And
Bones; One-Trick Pony; Still
Crazy After All These Years;
Graceland; Surprise; Rhythm Of
The Saints.
With Ray Charles
(on Warner Bros.): My World.
With Manhattan
Jazz Quintet
(on Sweet Basil): Manhattan
Blues. (On Pro Arte): Sidewinder;
Autumn Leaves. (On Projazz): My
Funny Valentine; Manhattan Jazz
Quintet.
With Frank Sinatra
(on Qwest): L.A. Is My Lady.
With Weather Report
(on Columbia): Mr. Gone.
ticular session, only because I’d be shut away in a
drum booth and couldn’t easily go back and forth
to the control room during downtime. So maybe
I’d be working out different things and practicing
stuff in the booth that only had meaning for me.
“So as Paul and [producer] Phil Ramone were
trying to work out the verse for ‘50 Ways,’ I started
working on these little patterns with the left hand
on the hi-hat, just to kill time. And from there I got
into a little syncopated thing between the snare
drum, the hi-hat, and the bass drum. It was like a
little march beat, but the fact that I was playing the
left hand on the hi-hat and playing the foot first
made it a little bit different. Anyway, Phil heard me
doing some of that stuff and he suggested I try doing that on ‘50 Ways.’ So that’s how that happened.
And I’m still playing that riff to this day.”
In 2007, at a Kennedy Center celebration of
Paul Simon (he was the first annual recipient of
the Gershwin Prize, a lifetime achievement award
presented by the Library Of Congress), Gadd
kicked off Simon’s performance portion of the
nationally televised proceedings with that same
memorable march beat that takes him back to his
drum corps days in Rochester. “Yeah, it’s been a
good ride for me,” he says with a laugh.
trapsmagazine.com
With Eric Gale
(on Columbia): Ginseng Woman;
Multiplication; Part Of You.
With Charles Mingus
(on Atlantic): Me, Myself An Eye.
With Sergio Mendes
& Brasil 77
(on Elektra): Sergio Mendes & The
New Brasil 77.
With Ringo Starr
(on Atlantic): Ringo The 4th.
With Paul McCartney
(on Capitol): Pipes Of Peace; Tug
Of War.
With Bob James
(on Tappan Zee): One; Two.
With Tom Scott
(on Columbia): Apple Juice. (On
Epic): Blow It Out. (On Ode): New
York Connection.
With Grover
Washington JR.
(on Columbia): Soulful Strut. (On
Elektra): Inside Moves; Come
Morning; Winelight. (On Motown):
Feels So Good.
With Stuff
(on Warner Bros.): Stuff; More
Stuff; Live Stuff; Stuff It.
With David Sanborn
(on Verve): Closer. (On Decca):
Here & Gone. (On Warner Bros.):
A Change Of Heart; Backstreet;
Voyeur; Heart To Heart.
Chapter Four
The Arrival
Of Steve God
B
y 1978, Gadd accepted an offer from Mainieri to join the group Steps, which featured
former Bill Evans trio bassist Eddie Gomez,
pianist/composer Don Grolnick, and Gadd’s former bandmate in White Elephant, the young tenor
titan Michael Brecker. “That was a hell of a band,”
says Gadd, recalling the excitement that they
evoked, particularly in Japan, 30 years ago. The
group had its beginnings abroad in Tokyo, where
Gaddmania was already in full swing.
“Yeah, it started in the late ’70s, actually a little
bit before Steps,” says Mainieri. “In 1978, a Japanese pianist named Jun Fukamachi had invited
a bunch of us who were on the scene at the time,
playing at places like Mikell’s and Seventh Avenue
South, to come and play in Japan and make a live
recording of one of the concerts. He invited the
Brecker Brothers, David Sanborn, myself, Richard
Tee, Steve Gadd, Anthony Jackson, and Steve Khan
Winter 2009
TRAPS 37
steve gadd
Listening To Gadd
Any attempt at narrowing a body of work by a great artist like
Steve Gadd down to six selections is fundamentally futile from
the start. This is because over a recording career that spans 40
years, Gadd has lent his genius to records by artists as diverse as
Paul Simon and Chick Corea, Eric Clapton and Pavarotti. And in the
course of creating all of this music, he has played with a measure
of heart, soul, and creativity that have rarely been matched in any
style of music, by any instrumentalist. Still, it’s fun to put a list
together of those recordings that, taken as a whole, might be seen
to represent the essence of who Gadd is, in some way. No doubt
that each of you would come up with a very different list.
By Paul Siegal
“50 Ways To
Leave Your Lover”
By Paul Simon
I invariably mention this song
whenever I have had to explain
who Gadd is to a non-musician,
and inevitably I
get an immediate
sign of recognition.
Rarely has a drum
part been so closely
identified with a song. And Gadd’s
beautiful interpretation of a
marching cadence applied to the
drums meshes in such a perfect
way with the rest of the music,
that the entire song is magically elevated in the process. The
drums here speak to non-drummers just as strongly as they speak
to drummers. And I think this is
mark of a truly great musician.
Gadd. It is a brilliant composition by Donald Fagen and Walter
Becker. As Gadd has said, it’s
rare to be asked
to play busily or
in a really aggressive way in a pop
session. And when
Fagen and Becker asked him to
do that in this case, he went
seamlessly from complementing
the song with an appropriately
delicate side-stick/hi-hat part
during the vocals, to explosive
fills in the instrumental section,
with the force of a lion that had
been let out of his cage. And
then at the end of the track he
autographs the tune with a paradiddle-driven masterstroke that
drummers have been completely
amazed by ever since.
“Aja”
By Steely Dan
This song would be on anyone’s
list of top recordings by Steve
“Chuck E’s In Love”
By Rickie Lee Jones.
I picked this song first of all
because it represents what is
38 TRAPS
Winter 2009
In some circles around Tokyo, he was known
as ‘Steve God.’ And Mainieri began to see Gadd’s
over-the-top popularity manifest in other ways.
“One strange thing I recall was something that I
saw while traveling on the bullet train. The Japanese have these little books that they read that
have different cartoon characters in them. And
one of the cartoon characters in one of the books I
saw was Steve Gadd. He had reached that sort of
star status where he suddenly was appearing in
these cartoon books.”
While Gadd is still quite well known and even
revered among musicians in Japan, there was a
golden period that lasted from 1977–’87 where he
was indeed Steve God. “There was just this surge
of energy that happened where the stars were
always at the heart of Gadd’s
approach – the shuffle (going
back to him sitting in with organ
trios, as a kid), or
in this case, the
half-time shuffle,
except for the
chorus where it
breaks out into a full shuffle.
The second reason I picked it
is because of the backwardssounding fill that Gadd plays
after the bridge that is so incredible, and so perfect, that
drummers can only shake their
heads when they hear it. The
third reason is that in spite of
the crawling tempo, it swings so
hard that it’s impossible not to
swing along when you hear it.
“Late In The Evening”
By Paul Simon
This is of course, another classic
instance of Gadd contributing to
a record in a way that makes it
something entirely
different from
what it would otherwise have been.
I remember when
Rob Wallis and I had the incredible fortune to work on the first
video with Gadd in 1983, that
when he played the four-stick
Mozambique pattern for “Late
In The Evening” it seemed to
me that he could have made a
roomful of people dance all by
himself. You can hear the horns
and the rest of the band, somehow, all in his drum part. Who
else but Gadd could possibly
have come up with that drum
part for that song?
Friends
By Chick Corea
For the fifth “track” I included the
entire album, originally released
in 1978. To my ear, this record
represents Gadd’s
jazz approach in an
exceptionally relaxed and beautiful
setting. His playing
is perfectly balanced with Corea,
Joe Farrell, and Eddie Gomez.
And Corea’s tunes here, including “Samba Song,” “Sicily,” and
the title track, offer Gadd’s own,
amazing take on the samba.
Stuff
By Stuff
The sixth “track” that I have
picked is the entire first album by
Stuff, which in some ways seems
to me to represent Gadd at his
most soulful and at
home. The gospel
feel that he and the
band created (often
with the great Chris
Parker on drums as well), and
especially, the deep connection
between Gadd and keyboardist
Richard Tee, is still breathtaking.
Stuff was able to transmit the
Texas groove pioneered by the
great King Curtis (and the Kingpins, with Tee, Cornell Dupree,
and Bernard Purdie) and go even
deeper with it, somehow, thanks
to a great extent, to Gadd’s incredible grooves.
trapsmagazine.com
Photo by andrew lepley
to join him on this tour. We played in big concert
halls throughout that tour, and that was my first
experience with just how popular Gadd was in
Japan at the time. Maybe he had been over there
earlier with Stuff, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. But
when we went over shortly afterwards with Steps,
in May of 1979, Gadd had become a star in his own
right – like a rock star. It was kind of strange because we’d show up at the hotel and there’d be hundreds of fans outside the hotel, mostly girls. They’d
be holding posters that read ‘I love you Steve’ and
shouting stuff to him. And they’d rush the stage at
the concert halls, trying to break through the police
lines to get at the band. This is something that only
rock bands would experience. So it was strange. It
was like Beatlemania or something.”
aligned, and it just came together in terms of almost reaching that rock star status.”
Aspiring Japanese jazz musicians, who had
never heard a drummer like Gadd before, were
clearly taken by his unique talents. “That was the
other thing,” Mainieri continues. “Previous to that
period, they were mostly into straight-ahead cats.
So this whole idea of Steve coming over with Steps
and showcasing his unique style, incorporating
funk and jazz and fusion with that marching band
thing, and also being able to explode and play
straight-ahead on the kit. And I think with the
Japanese especially, the idea of his impeccable precision playing also connected with them.
“There was just no one playing like that at that
time. And the energy – this guy lifting himself off
the seat when he’d play – was like nothing they
had ever seen before. He was just so charismatic on
stage that you could not take your eyes off the guy.
Some people have that magical quality. As a kid,
when I was playing with Buddy Rich, no matter
how much you hated the guy, when he took a drum
solo, you had to turn around and look. You knew
that he was going to do four solos a night and it was
just something that you wanted to watch because
it was just that special. And with Steve, he had that
charisma that made you want to watch when he
soloed. He had a way of connecting with people.”
Gadd’s tenure with Steps lasted only a year
and a half. By the outset of the ’80s, his studio
work became too plentiful and too lucrative to
turn down. There were sessions with the likes
of Paul McCartney, Grover Washington Jr., Al
Jarreau, Chuck Mangione, James Brown, Frank
Sinatra, Manhattan Transfer, along with the
soundtrack to A Chorus Line and followup recordings with Rickie Lee Jones, Steely Dan, and
Paul Simon (including One-Trick Pony, which
was also made into a documentary film of a 1980
tour featuring members from Stuff).
In the early ’80s, Gadd also made a triumphant,
worldwide tour with former Return To Forever
guitarist Al Di Meola in a potent fusion band featuring former Mahavishnu Orchestra keyboardist
Jan Hammer and electric bassist Anthony Jackson
(documented on 1982’s live Tour de Force). But one
of the most significant live gigs of the ’80s that
Gadd participated in came earlier in the decade
when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel got together
for a reunion concert on September 18, 1981 in
New York’s Central Park. An incredible 750,000
people attended that free concert, held on Central
Park’s Great Lawn. (Warner Bros. released a CD
and accompanying DVD documenting that historic event. And yes, Gadd does his thing once again
on “50 Ways.”)
Also during this active decade, Gadd released his
first instructional video in 1983 and his debut recording as a leader, 1984’s Gadd About, with pianist
trapsmagazine.com
Richard Tee, baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber,
and trumpeter Lew Soloff. By 1985, that group had
morphed into the Gadd Gang with former Stuff
bandmates Dupree and Tee along with former
Steps bandmate Eddie Gomez on bass. “It was an
opportunity to put a band together because the recording thing was going through its changes with
the electronic stuff [i.e., producers relying more on
drum machines and less on living, breathing drummers] and Stuff wasn’t happening,” says Gadd.
“And I thought it would be interesting for Dupree
and Richard Tee to play some of the same stuff we
did with Stuff, only with an upright player instead
of an electric player. So we did some of those things
we did with Stuff, just a little bit differently. It was
basically a band with guys that I loved to play with
that really liked doing what we were doing, which
was grooving. It’s always nice to have a bunch of
guys that you really like to play with.
“And it was the kind of band where we pretty
much all shared equally. I thought that was important too,” he continues. “Stuff had some issues,
business-wise, along the way with record companies and management and things that weren’t
cool. Plus, the fact that we were stoned out of our
minds most of the time made us easy prey for that
kind of thing. But that was the period, man. That
was what was going on at the time. It was one long
party that lasted through the ’70s and into the
’80s. And if you weren’t taking care of business
and you got screwed, it was your own fault. That’s
just what happened back then.”
Winter 2009
TRAPS 39
steve gadd
CHAPTER FIVE
FURTHER
ADVENTURES OF
DR. STEVE
A
t the outset of the ’90s, Gadd hooked up
once again with Paul Simon on another
landmark recording, Rhythm Of The Saints,
his paean to Afro-Brazilian rhythms and song
forms. In 1991 the Gadd Gang released its selftitled debut, which featured a soulful rendition of
Wilton Felder’s anthemic “Way Back Home,” an
old Crusaders tune that Gadd continues to play
to this day. For that Columbia Records outing,
the drum maestro dusted off his shuffle chops
for an earthy rendition of Bill Doggett’s “Honky
Tonk,” and he also demonstrates his patented
Mozambique lick on the solo drum piece “Duke’s
Lullaby.” That same year, Gadd played on James
Taylor’s New Moon Shine. It was the first of many
copacetic sessions to come with the lanky troubadour from North Carolina.
“The stuff that I play is the
stuff that I heard other
people play”
By the end of the decade, Gadd began a longstanding working relationship with British guitar
hero and rock superstar Eric Clapton, first in 1997
with the all-star band Legends featuring Clapton,
bassist Marcus Miller, alto saxophonist David
Sanborn, and keyboardist Joe Sample, and the following year on Clapton’s 1998 recording Pilgrim.
“I think Russ Teitelman mentioned my name to
Eric and when he might’ve been looking for somebody,” Gadd recalls. “I just started playing with
him and doing a bunch of albums with him and
a bunch of tours. I love working with him. He’s a
good guy, and he’s one of those guys who really
challenges you to rise to the occasion when you’re
playing with him.”
In 2000 Gadd participated in a collaboration
with Clapton and 74-year-old B.B. King on the
Grammy Award-winning Riding With The King,
a dream come true for the blues-loving Brit
who came up devouring B.B.’s old Kent Records
hits from the 1950s like “Three O’Clock Blues,”
“When My Heart Beats Like A Hammer,” and
“Ten Long Years,” which they expertly cover
here. Another key collaboration that Gadd
40 TRAPS Winter 2009
enjoyed during the late ’90s was with the brilliant French pianist Michel Petrucciani. Along
with the drummer’s longtime collaborator on
electric bass, Anthony Jackson, they forged an
uncommonly tight, highly interactive trio that
at times was reminiscent of the delicacy and
telepathic intimacy of the classic Bill Evans
trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer
Paul Motian, and at other times was a surging,
swinging unit that roared with rare abandon
like the Keith Jarrett trio with Jack DeJohnette
and Gary Peacock. Their remarkable chemistry
together was documented on 1998’s Both Worlds
and 1999’s Trio In Tokyo. A recent Dreyfus Jazz
DVD release Trio Live In Stuttgart documents
a concert on February 9, 1998, offering great
insight into the inner workings of this extraordinary piano trio. It also showcases Gadd at
the top of his game in a wide-open jazz setting.
Petrucciani, who suffered from osteogenesis
imperfecta (a genetic disease that causes brittle
bones and greatly stunted his growth) died
of pulmonary infection on January 6, 1999.
Says Gadd, “I loved playing with Michel. We
had a lot of fun doing that trio and we were going
to put a lot of energy into writing some material
and really putting our heads together and pooling our energy to try to get something happening
with that. And the next thing I know Michel had
passed away. Unbelievable! Michel was an amazing musician and a lot of fun to be around. He was
so funny. I never laughed so much in my life on
the road than when I went out with him. He had a
great sense of humor and loved to pull pranks and
shit. That was going on the whole time. We had a
ball, man. We made each other laugh and just had
fun all the time. I really miss him.”
In recent years, Gadd has had some special
reunions with key colleagues from his earliest
years in New York. In 2004, he performed at
the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival with a special reunion edition of Steps Ahead featuring founder
Mike Mainieri, guitarist Mike Stern, keyboardist Adam Holzman, bassist Daryl Jones, and
tenor sax great Michael Brecker. While the tour
was a musical triumph, it also marked the early
symptoms of the grave illness (myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS) that would ultimately
take Brecker’s life on January 13, 2007. “After
one gig, I remember Mike coming off stage and
complaining about a severe backache. When he
got back to the States he went to get it checked
out. And he never really got better after that.”
In 2005, the silver-haired sage was accorded an
honorary doctorate degree from the Berklee College Of Music. “Now I need to get my MD plates,”
he laughed after receiving that honor in recognition of his outstanding contribution to contemporary music.
trapsmagazine.com
Gadd’s latest endeavor, Steve Gadd & Friends,
has the legendary drummer collaborating with
some new colleagues, including Hammond B-3
burner (and fellow Arizona resident) Joey DeFrancesco and guitarist Paul Bollenback along with his
longstanding baritone sax partner Ronnie Cuber.
Meanwhile, he’s just finished new recordings with
James Taylor and Randy Crawford, and as of this
writing was about to go into the studio with Mike
Mainieri and the original members of L’Image to
finally record that album that they had prepared for
35 years ago.
Still busy after all these years, Gadd enjoys his
status as an elder statesman of drumming. But even
though generations of drummers have been awed
by his technique and musicianship, Gadd is careful to credit those giants upon whose shoulders
he stands. “The stuff that I play is the stuff that I
heard other people play,” he says. “For example,
on a quarter-note swing pattern, I try to sound like
Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Jimmy Cobb, Jack
DeJohnette. Those were the guys who inspired me
to want to play that stuff. I just try to copy the way
I think they would do it. It just sort of brings it out
of me. And if I can share that and sort of pass it on
to other young drummers out there, then it’s nice.
Because we’re all in this together.”
In 2006 Gadd had a series of recorded reunions
with other old colleagues like Chick Corea, Al
Di Meola, Joe Sample, and Paul Simon. Then,
in 2007, the year he moved to Arizona with his
wife, Carol, he participated in two other nostalgic reunions with old colleagues – one a recording with his fellow ’70s session player, guitarist
John Tropea, on the slamming funk album Take
Me Back To The Old School, which was fueled by
Gadd’s inimitable deep-pocket playing; the other
a re-creation of Chuck Mangione’s orchestral
recording from 1970, Friends And Love, at a gala
performance at his hometown with the Rochester
Philharmonic. This year saw two other notable
releases that he plays on with longstanding friends
and colleagues: Tom Scott’s all-star tribute to
the late, great alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley (Cannon: Re-Loaded) and alto saxophonist
David Sanborn’s blues-drenched Here And Gone,
which includes stirring renditions of R&B staples
by Ray Charles and Percy Mayfield, and also features Clapton singing on a soulful rendition of
“I’m Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town.”
“You know, in this business you run into people
who you played with years ago,” says Gadd, “and
when you finally get together with them, you pick
up right where you left off, you know what I mean?”
GADDISMS
A
look at Steve Gadd’s approach to the kit reveals
a simple dichotomy in
the form of the convergence
of two cornerstones of drum
set pedagogy: the man, at
once, lives and dies by the
pocket (one of the deepest
known to mankind, in fact),
yet remains firmly rooted in
the rudimental studies of the
drum corps world he was introduced to as a youngster. As
a result, his ability to apply all
manner of rudiments to a pop
hit – some common, some not
so much (pataflafla?) – is the
stuff of legend. A great place
to begin an exploration of
all things Gadd is the groove
from the Paul Simon classic “50 Ways To Leave Your
Lover” (Ex. 1), one of his most
beloved achievements as a
session man. Sophisticated
yet uncomplicated, “50 Ways”
Among other rudiments
Gadd tends to favor are the
ratamacue and the six-stroke
roll, the first of which makes a
number of appearances in the
Steely Dan hit “Aja” (Ex. 2), along
with another great example
of Gadd’s open-hand linear
style. During these masterful
solo breaks, the ratamacue is
performed a number of times,
orchestrated around the kit with
a right foot substituted for the
is a lesson in four-limbed
linear phrasing, with Gadd
shifting to an “open-hand”
position (left hand on hi-hat,
right on snare) to achieve
a particular feel. Once this
unique pattern is committed
to muscle memory, playing it
becomes strangely satisfying,
as if it were conceived to be
ergonomic. Also notice the
five-stroke roll that ends with
both feet on beat 1.
Ex. 1 — “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” verse groove
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Ex. 2 — “Aja” 4:41
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steve gadd
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Ex. 4 — Paradiddle grooves from Steve Gadd Up Close
GADDISMS
snare, kick, and hi-hat.
On Stanley Clarke’s epic
“Concerto For Jazz/Rock Orchestra” (Ex. 6), recorded in
1975, Gadd’s innovative sticking applications hit a pinnacle
during an extended solo that
can be described as nothing
short of breathtaking. The last
measure of this example also
features a pattern Gadd is
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of employing
for
terial, the RLLRLL sextuplet.
Other Gaddisms include
white sweatpants and a Rochester accent.
famous Steve Gadd Up Close
video. Although Gadd bases
most of these grooves on the
RLRRLRRL permutation, at
this level, it may be helpful to
think of the sticking simply as
a series of random singles and
doubles within a larger overall
pattern, instead of trying to
group every four or six notes
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A similar groove is created in
Ex. 5, where Gadd applies a
double-stroke
roll by
displacopen-handed
linear
style
ing the rhythm by one note
and orchestrating it between
last note of the figure. Ex. 3 illus- phrases. Even if you’re not
playing the melody people
trates ways in which Gadd likes
relate to those kind of phrasto orchestrate a six-stroke roll,
es, so then it’s easy to keep a
usually leaving the doubles on
the snare while moving the first connection happening with
the audience, so I’m not just
and last notes around the kit.
Ex. 1 — “50
Leave
Lover”
versedrums
grooveand
up there
hitting
Oftentimes
– asWays
in theTo
case
of Your
the “Aja” ratamacue – hands are they don’t know where I am.”
Perhaps more than anysubstituted with the right foot.
thing, Gadd is known for his
“I think within four- or
ability to put the paradiddle
eight-bar phrases,” Gadd
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told Bill Milkowksi,
discussuse in one of his characteristic
ing how he orchestrates his
slow-funk grooves. Check out
solos. “Because those kind of
Ex. 2 —
Ex. 4, a couple of phrases that
phrases
are“Aja”
easily4:41
felt and a
Gadd demonstrates reveallot of times that’s how songs
ingly for the camera in the
are written, in those kind of
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Ex. 6 — “Concerto For Jazz/Rock Orchestra” 6:22 — = ca. 78 — paradiddle mania
By John Natelli
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Ex. 5 — double-stroke groove
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then at 7:12
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Gaddamacue
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Gaddamacue
then at 5:14
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Ex. 3 — PAS 6-Stroke Roll
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Gadd style (tuplet feel)
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Six Stroke Roll
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Ex. 4 — Paradiddle grooves from Steve Gadd Up Close
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Ex. 5 — double-stroke groove
42 TRAPS
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