Hendrix: Classic or Dud?

Baker's best stuff came late in his career — the first Ginger Baker Trio album and what I think was his final release, Why?, are both good. I also like the album he did with Peter Brötzmann and Sonny Sharrock, No Material. He wasn't amazing but he could be put to good use in the proper context.

No Material was the first or second CD I ever bought, credited to Baker: a live rave-up with Brotzmann and Sharrock, yeah, also guitarist Nicky Skopelitis and bassist Jan Kadar (of Das Pferd(---all I can say about Baker is that he fit right in, which is no small thing. Another show eventually appeared, Live in Munich 1987, also cred to Baker alone (didn't know about that one 'til unperson mentioned it---thanks again!). Both performances are available on one CD/MP3/stream, under the title of the first release: https://www.amazon.com/No-Material-Ginger-Baker/dp/B00A9V1QYY/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1464022599&sr=8-18&keywords=ginger+baker

Let us be honest, Baker's opinions are not out of the realm of many musicians in the "jazz" world to anything not of that place. The dude wanted to be thought of a level with musicians like Art Blakey or Tony Williams. That said, he seemed to have a taste for a lifestyle way beyond your usual jazz purist would be able to afford, which means he had to mercenary whore out. And his general volatility probably steered many musicians who could have perhaps utilized his talents to not seek him out.

Thing I got from reading on Mitch Mitchell was that really everything else he got into seemed pretty crap after playing with Jimi and others just wanted him for the Jimi connection so he hung it up. The lifestyle also was not too good for him.

Out this year! Looks like it might be good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Forum:_April_26,_1969
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix_posthumous_discography

I can't think of many jazz drummers who have been integral parts of a truly great rock album and a truly great jazz album (not counting "fusion" albums that can be categorized as both). Connie Kay is the only one that comes to mind at the moment (Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Modern Jazz Quartet's best albums particularly Dedicated to Connie)

Forgot, Connie Kay even played drums on Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll"!

I was thinking maybe Brian Blade - he's been on great jazz albums, but he's never really been on a great rock album except for Time Out of Mind, where he's actually one of THREE different drummers (four if you count Winston Watson's drum loop), and whenever he's played, it was also with Jim Keltner on the same take.

mitch is so good

idk i think it have must been hard after locking in so beautifully with jimi (and noel) to get the same kind of, uh, motion? with anyone else

like there’s lots of great musicians but that combination of clockwork mechanical interlocking parts fitting perfectly combined with that shared-brain courage & intellect to go wherever the music goes … you can’t get that just walking into rooms of dudes

and then to perhaps question if you were only good ~with~ him or people like baker shittalk you having any abilities at all

idk its weird, i guess because obv there are joyrnemen players who can lock in with anyone too

v weird later-life it must have been for mitchell

VG otm. And while it's true that there are session players who can lock in with anyone, it's rare that session players get beneath that surface and actually consider the song itself, if that makes any sense. If you're Dylan's drummer, locking in with bassist Tony Garnier is one thing, but playing with a certain understanding of "Key West" (for example) is another thing altogether (and Charley Drayton does both brilliantly).

… you can’t get that just walking into rooms of dudes

It's funny because that's essentially what happened with the Experience. Only two drummers auditioned (Aynsley Dunbar lost the coin toss), and Noel Redding showed up thinking he was auditioning on guitar for a new lineup of the Animals.

and then to perhaps question if you were only good ~with~ him or people like baker shittalk you having any abilities at all

I would hope that Mitchell didn't take Baker's comments to heart (especially since Baker talked shit about everyone). It really is a shame that Mitchell never found another situation he could flourish in, and I refuse to believe that those situations didn't exist. I mean, listening to "Third Stone From The Sun," Mitchell handily eclipses ALL of his UK "jazz"-drumming contemporaries -- why someone like, say, John McLaughlin didn't try to work with Mitchell is a mystery.

v weird later-life it must have been for mitchell

I can't attest to the accuracy of this story, but some years ago on a Massachusetts message board someone posted about having worked on a loading dock in eastern Mass in the '80s. A new coworker showed up one day, they got to talking, and he noticed the new guy's English accent. The new guy said, "Hey, my band's playing tonight, you should come check us out." So the guy goes to a small bar that night to see his new coworker's band...and it's Mitch Mitchell. The guy was floored, and the next morning, Mitch was back at the loading dock.

Mitchell obviously didn't get publishing money (not having any songwriting credits), but also at the time apparently wasn't getting mechanical royalties. This was during the lengthy period when Hendrix's estate was in something of a shambles, and control hadn't yet reverted back to Jimi's dad Al.

It's amazing how propulsive his drumming is, especially on the Hendrix ballads - he's busy, but it's never too much. He even keeps something as amorphous as "1983..." mobile and active.

to further VG's point, when you've played in a band and on albums that are among the small handful that truly changed rock music forever, you're never going to find anything that comes close.

Elvin Jones played on Allen Ginsberg's awesome Songs of Innocence and Experience which isn't really a rock album of course, although it's got the fearless spirit of jazz and rock (Don Cherry's on there too). Buddy Miles was not a great drummer, but effective w Band of Gypsies, Electric Flag, Carlos Santana, and on McLaughlin's Devotion, an inspired (and perhaps Alan Douglas-edited)one-off: not "fusion," as I think of it, which tends to have too many rules.

The original Tony Williams Lifetime (with or without Jack Bruce) was also post-/para-Miles pre-fusion jazz-rock or jazz x rock.

very pleased to see all the Mitch love here

hal blaine has a sorta jazz background, played w/count basie but don't know if that was that significant or if he appears on albums

I knew he met Count Basie, didn’t remember him playing with him.

ah i saw something that he played in one of his bands on wiki but either way i'm probably trying to puff up his jazz background to fit the premise, doesn't seem like he was a real player or anything

very pleased to see all the Mitch love here

Seconded!

when you've played in a band and on albums that are among the small handful that truly changed rock music forever, you're never going to find anything that comes close

Are you suggesting Fat Mattress don't measure up to the Hendrix records?

There was something Blaine wrote about encountering Basie in Vegas maybe and being surprised that Basie knew who he. To which Basie replied “with all the drums that you play, Hal Blaine?” Don’t recall whether that was before some kind of gig they were playing.

Web record reviewer CapnMarvel had some harsh critique for Buddy Miles in his review of Live at The Fillmore East:

These drumbeats may be metronome-steady, but that's only because the man is doing nothing on the drum kit. His fills are so simple they're funny, besides being badly timed. The man plays leaden 2-4 snare hits so much you wonder if a bomb would go off and spread dead hippie parts for 3 miles around if he didn't keep bashing that TWO FOUR TWO FOUR TWO FOUR!!! Don't forget the ride cymbal!!! FUCKING RIDE CYMBAL!!!! Those aren't 8th notes he's beating on that fucker, he's just whacking it as fast as fucking possible, just to keep that irritating fucking swish noise happening for 2 hours straight. Jeee-zus! I mean, I've heard bad drummers before: Simon Wright of the 80's AC/DC, whoever played drums for the Runaways, but to match such an awful drummer to Jimi Hendrix is like putting tricycle wheels on a Ferrari. Jimi is really hampered by this fool.

Blaine had a fairly high profile in Vegas, especially for a drummer. He had a large kit, but his name also appeared on the Caesars Palace marquee (he was in Nancy Sinatra's band) -- unless the drummer was the bandleader, the drummer's name did NOT appear on a marquee in Vegas (or anywhere else).

Wikipedia (and Variety) sez Blaine played in the Basie band in the '50s. Not sure if it was a one-off/substitution situation or what.

xp

Don't forget the ride cymbal!!! FUCKING RIDE CYMBAL!!!! Those aren't 8th notes he's beating on that fucker, he's just whacking it as fast as fucking possible, just to keep that irritating fucking swish noise happening for 2 hours straight.

I'd hate to play a Sunny Murray album for this guy.

If you have access to BBC iPlayer, highly recommend this documentary about the making of Rainbow Bridge. Features an amazing array of hippies straight out of an issue of Eightball, and includes an archive interview with Mitch Mitchell who looks incredibly dapper and would make a convincing Radio Two DJ. Apparently the live sound was so abysmal at the Maui outdoor performance, Mitchell went into the studio and recreated all his parts by playing along to the film footage - incredible precision!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fqf7/music-money-madness-jimi-hendrix-live-in-maui

Apparently the live sound was so abysmal at the Maui outdoor performance, Mitchell went into the studio and recreated all his parts by playing along to the film footage - incredible precision!

Yeah, there's some discussion of this in the liner notes to the recent Live in Maui set, which I bought. (Here's the thing: he only played along to the songs that were used in the movie, so there's a very noticeable change in the sound of his kit from song to song on the CD, which contains all the music from that day.)

VG otm. Mitchell is all-time.

FWIW I don't like Baker at all. True, he approached drums differently from other people, but not in a way I will ever enjoy or wish to emulate. Much of the time he isn't even musically attuned to an ensemble sound; he's just off on his own project.

Not so with Mitch, whose drumming was always appropriate in context.

Hate Baker's horrible clunky drumming on the Blind Faith album.

(Here's the thing: he only played along to the songs that were used in the movie, so there's a very noticeable change in the sound of his kit from song to song on the CD, which contains all the music from that day.)

The thing is, the sound of his kit is the only way you’d know his parts were overdubbed. There isn’t the slightest hesitation in his playing, no second-guessing of any of his choices, and no clumsy collisions. It sounds like he just put himself in the mindset of, “Right, I’m playing a Hendrix gig,” and went for it.

the thing that i love about Mitch & Noel is that they are so often playing ~with~ Hendrix, weaving around what he does to create real grooves

like, i know us music nerds love them & we all know that but i dunno if they get enough credit for that out in the world. Experience was a legit band, and not just 2 dudes putting down a nondescript/workmanlike bed for jimi to go off
which is maybe how they’re seen culturally ie not seen? idk

i love them, anyway, is my point

I had no idea Aynsley Dunbar auditioned with Hendrix. That's an interesting theoretical pair. He's one of the few jazzy rock drummers from that era that I would put on an equal level with Mitch Mitchell, just an absolute monster.

I suspect he would've been too much of a big personality to fit in. Mitchell seemed pretty self-effacing, thus avoiding the trap Cream fell into where all three members were the leader (or thought they were). Does make me think of an alternate world where Mitchell played on Whitesnake's "1987" album instead of Dunbar though.

Far be it from me to stick up for Eric Clapton but, from what I can gather, pretty much all of the problems in Cream were down to Bruce and Baker.

Maybe. Clapton has other charges to answer wrt Cream though…

I’ve got agree with this commentator:

I never understood how Eric, who really loved Johnson and James, could be part of regular massacres of Crossroads and I’m So Glad.

Had to dig around to find some more detail on the Hal Blaine/Count Basie thing, which gets magnified a lot.
https://www.pas.org/about/hall-of-fame/hal-blaine

“I’ll never forget when we worked at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City with the Count Basie Band,” Hal recalled. “Count’s drummer, Sonny Payne, had gotten sick and yours truly got to play the gig. I knew most of the charts, and now there I was, kicking my favorite big band. It was every drummer’s dream in those days. Count Basie even offered me the job of a lifetime. I was flabbergasted. But I explained that Tommy’s job was my job, and I couldn’t think of leaving the group.”

I'd figure many have seen it, but there is quite a bit with Hal Blaine in that movie "The Wrecking Crew" that goes over his personal highs (living very large in Vegas back in the Sinatra days) to back to a working slug who cannot get a paying drumming gig. Pretty wild.

I can't think of many jazz drummers who have been integral parts of a truly great rock album and a truly great jazz album (not counting "fusion" albums that can be categorized as both).

Hmmm...I can't come up with many classic jazz drummer examples (Tony Williams with Public Image Ltd, although Ginger Baker is also on that, lol). But some modern ones - Mark Giuliana on Bowie's Blackstar, and Nate Smith on the Brittany Howard album. Karriem Riggens should count for his work on rap and r&b albums. Chris Dave on D'Angelo, Me'shell Ndegeocello, and Maxwell on the pop side and Robert Glasper and Kenny Garrett on the jazz side.

Justin Brown from Ambrose Akinmusire's band is now a member of OFF! (punk band formed by Circle Jerks singer Keith Morris and Burning Brides guitarist Dimitri Coats).

oh shit! wow I think they are coming through in a couple months, I saw them on the first tour and it was fantastic.

that reminds me that Thundercat is (was?) in Suicidal Tendencies

I asked him about that when I interviewed him for The Wire...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FknoLJ4WQAA5XTB.jpg

He left ST in 2011

Remember Soft Machine played with JHE A LOT. Seems like Wyatt and Mitch were of the same dna.

Robert Wyatt thought so.

talking of the soft machine, i watched that kinda boring rainbow bridge documentary recently and mitch popped up on that as an interviewee sat in front of a console and for a moment i thought it was andy summers, not just looks-wise but the exact same demeanour

Doubtless Baker was a total prick but would rep for the album he did with Fela and the Masters of Reality album he was on (*Sunrise on the Sufferbus*).

Re the question of what great drummer has played on a great jazz record and a great rock record, Jordan's recent Rolling Jazz post may be a great answer---I loved Mark G. on Blackstar, as previously cited by Jordan upthread, but hadn't heard enough of him on the Donny McCaslin Group's own albums, for instance, to know if he'd played on a great jazz record, although I enjoy what I do know by McC.'s crew:

I'm listening to Mark Giuliana's album from this year, 'the sound of listening', and liking it way more than expected. He's always been a great drummer, but I don't think he's had a great (solo) record until now. Love the sonic palette of the group and the electronic interludes.

― change display name (Jordan)

Paul Motian playing Woodstock with Arlo Guthrie was an unexpected story that I picked up from the documentary about him.

I found another jazz drummer in a rock (blues) context that fits in where this discussion was going.

I enjoyed a documentary on Paul Butterfield and it got me curious on his records after the first two. I’ve had the first two and enjoyed them for literally 30 years now but never heard any of his later music.

I got one of those Original Album Series and was checking out “Pigboy Crabshaw” and thinking the drums were really groovy and sounding great. The drummer for that later Butterfield group was Phil Wilson who has a pretty heavy duty Jazz resume.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Wilson

Thought it was an interesting nugget to come across.

he plays drums on julius hemphill's "dogon A.D."!

Ran into a Hendrix cd lot on the Bay at a good price, so got a bunch of the recent live remasters in a single shot, including a couple I never had before.

So for the last three weeks I have been on a pretty big dive into Jimi James.

First, for all the crap his sister and they get, I do have to say that Eddie Kramer has done a good job using modern tools to get pretty lush mixes out of these 60s recordings. Cheese ball marketing and some of those studio demos probably should have been left on the shelf, but these live recordings are fairly well done.

Miami Pop 68 was a new one for me and it is one of the tighter Experience performances.

Forum release is much better sounding than the Reprise one from 90s. Got to wonder how much software used, even if remodeled it is fairly seamlessly done. That was a good show anyway.

Atlanta Pop I had before and parts of it I always thought was some of my favorites, especially that ‘Here My Train A Coming’. I’ve got it planned in my head to listen to it and Allman Brothers Atlanta Pop as road trip soundtrack some long drive this coming summer.

Berkeley I had before but never caught me as a great show, as he had some tuning issues but in this few listens - I Have to admire opening the show basically developing material on stage. That Machine Gun with Mitch is pretty hot. I Don’t Live Today is grebt.

Winterland (highlights single disc)…I always really liked the old Ryko disc, but this single disc is all killer and no filler. Sound was good but this one is excellent. I’d say a definite recommendation to check out.

This always happens in movies, and I guess most people don't notice, but it can be distracting for me when they take a poster of a Jimi Hendrix exhibit from 1992 (with the kind of art and design that screams '90s) and use it in a scene that happens in 1980.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq0LycNDU8o