In Memoriam: Drummers Part I

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m a bad drummer, but nevertheless, I’m a member of the Drummers Club, such as it is. In 2022, the club lost a whole bunch of members, and I’m going to write about some of them, all of whom were, broadly, rock drummers, but with very different styles. As an organizing principle, we’ll start with the oldest and work our way to the youngest. I’ll break this up into a few posts, so that they don’t get too long and you get bored partway through (like with many drum solos. Yes, I said it.)

Jet Black (Brian Duffy)—Duffy, born in 1938, was best known as the drummer for The Stranglers, a band that was better known in its native England than here in the US. Before that, he was an entrepreneur, owning a fleet of ice cream trucks and an off license (look it up, Americans), and was an early proponent of home brewing. Duffy joined The Stranglers in 1974 and played with them until 2015. His playing was not particularly flashy, and had jazz influences, although he could play hard and fast when necessary. Starting in the mid-80s, Duffy moved from an acoustic kit to an electronic kit, eventually creating and patenting the “Jet Black Power Bass Drum Pedal.” He also wrote a few books about his time in The Stranglers. You can hear him here, playing on the 1979 song, “Duchess:”



Duffy had suffered from heart and respiratory issues his whole life, and often had to miss tours and performances as a result. He died on December 6, 2022, at the age of 84. 

Jerry Allison-Allison was the drummer for The Crickets, and was the co-writer, with Buddy Holly, of “That’ll Be The Day,” and “Peggy Sue.” I admit to being surprised that Buddy Holly’s drummer was actually younger than the drummer of The Stranglers, but it’s true—Allison was born in 1939.

Interestingly, on songs that were credited to Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Allison’s drumming was more powerful and used cymbals and snare drums, while on the songs credited to Holly alone, Allison mostly played softer, primarily on the tom-toms. “Peggy Sue,” which was originally titled “Cindy Lou,” was renamed to help Allison get his girlfriend of that name back. It worked—they married in 1958 (and divorced in 1964). You can see Allison backing Holly on the Ed Sullivan Show on “Peggy Sue” here:



Despite (or maybe because) he was only in his teens when the early Buddy Holly songs were recorded, Allison was not afraid to try unorthodox methods in the studio, including foregoing drums altogether in favor of clapping, slapping his legs, or banging on cardboard boxes. He also had a minor hit, under the name Ivan, singing a cover of “Real Wild Child,” featuring Holly on guitar and backing vocals. 

After Holly left the Crickets shortly before getting on that fateful flight, Allison toured with the reconstituted Crickets, before moving to Los Angeles and working as a studio and touring musician for, among others, Eddie Cochran, Waylon Jennings, and the Everly Brothers. 

In 2012, Allison was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which specially added the Crickets to rectify their mistake of inducting Holly alone in 1986. Allison died of cancer on August 22, 2022, nine days before his 83rd birthday. 

Dino Danelli- Danelli, who recently died on December 18, 2022, at 78, after a period of declining health resulting primarily from coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure, was a drummer whose work, but not name, I was long familiar with (and I’m not proud about that). Trained as a jazz drummer, Danelli played with Lionel Hampton and in New Orleans before returning to New York (near his native Jersey City). In the early 1960s, Danelli played with a number of different musicians, and even tried his luck in Vegas casino bands, along with Felix Cavaliere. 

In 1964, though, Danelli and Cavaliere returned east and formed the Young Rascals, who later grew up and became just The Rascals. Danelli’s contribution to The Rascals was critical, if overshadowed by their amazing pop songwriting. But it was not only his fine playing, but his flashy personality that was memorable. You can see that here in this clip, also from Ed Sullivan, where Danelli not only rocks away on "Good Lovin'", but spins his sticks (a schtick he, along with generations of drummers, nicked from Gene Krupa).



After the Rascals broke up, Danelli and fellow Rascal Eddie Brigati formed Bulldog, before playing as a sideman with other groups, including Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul. He also participated in Rascals reunions over the years, including in a brief Broadway run in 2013 in a production that toured North America. In addition to his musical talent, Danelli was a visual artist who designed album covers.

What If: Buddy Holly Lived?

Buddy Holly: Crying, Waiting, Hoping (Apartment Tapes version)
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This may be the hardest theme we’ve tackled here, and I’ll take responsibility for it, for better or worse. As a history major in college, and general history buff, I’ve also been a fan of “alternative history,” where one historical fact changes, and you speculate on how things might have been different. One good recent example of this was the HBO series, The Plot Against America (and the 2004 Philip Roth novel that it was based on), which launches from the premise that Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 election. I’ve also read a ton of “what if the South won the Civil War” fiction, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me or has read my writing. 

But, as I often have to remind myself, this is a music blog, so we are going think about what would have happened if Buddy Holly’s plane hadn’t crashed on that cold February morning in 1959 in Iowa. I’m no Holly expert (although I’ve done some reading about his career), so I’m under no impression that this might be a “definitive” discussion. And because I’m not writing a piece of speculative fiction, and have to therefore pick one path and follow it, we’ll look at a few possibilities, focused more on Holly’s potential career than his potential effect on music as a whole (or the effect of the deaths of the others who were on the plane that day). 

In "American Pie," Don McLean famously referred to the crash that killed Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson, Jr.), and pilot Roger Peterson, as the “day the music died,” but while that’s a great and memorable lyric, of course, it wasn’t. Most notably, two big Holly fans in Liverpool had recently formed a band named after an insect, in tribute to Holly’s band, the Crickets, and had Holly not died that day, I’m pretty confident that Beatlemania still would have swept through the world a few years later, changing the musical landscape forever, and pushing aside the type of “rock ‘n’ roll” music that Holly and his ilk had made popular (even as the Beatles covered Holly’s songs live and on record). In fact, I’d wager that had Holly lived, he would have been a fan of the Beatles, and even worked with them in some form—maybe writing songs with or for them or performing with them, or releasing his own Beatles covers (everyone else did). But probably not producing the Beatles, since they already had a pretty fair producer. (And don’t forget that the Rolling Stones covered “Not Fade Away” on their first album.) 

Another huge Holly fan was Bob Dylan, who actually saw Holly on the ill-fated Winter Dance Party tour in Duluth, MN, about 3 days before the crash, and referenced Holly as his first musical influence in his Nobel Prize lecture. So, again, Holly’s death wouldn’t have prevented Dylan’s rise and influence on music, and again, I’d bet that they might have collaborated—or at least, become acquainted—particularly after Dylan began to perform regularly in New York. You can easily imagine Holly, with Maria Elena, and maybe a friend like Phil Everly or Waylon Jennings, trying to watch the young Dylan incognito from the back of the club, and being impressed by his talents. 

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. 

One way of looking at this question is by starting by analyzing Holly’s life and music before he died. In late 1958, Holly and wife Maria Elena, moved to Greenwich Village, in part to get a new start, but also to get involved in the New York music scene of the time. Holly, who was not only a musical genius, but appeared to have a more sophisticated business sense than many of his contemporaries, wanted to start his own label and open his own studio. So, maybe, part of Holly’s future would have been as a music executive and producer of other acts. 

During this period, Holly explored his love for jazz, regularly frequenting jazz clubs in the Village and elsewhere in the city. And he would go down to Washington Square Park and play with the other musicians hanging out there. The last formal recording session that Holly participated in was in New York, in collaboration with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, recording four songs with heavy string orchestration. So, by some analyses, at this point, Holly was moving away from the stripped down rock ‘n’ roll that made him famous to a more sophisticated, smooth pop sound. For example, one of these songs, Paul Anka’s “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” might have presaged a future career for Holly as another Anka-style pop singer. 

At the same time, though, Holly was recording himself in his living room—what have later become known as the “Apartment Tapes,” and from these, you can hear Holly working both on his songwriting and lyrical craft, but also experimenting with tempo and styles. (Many of these demos were later overdubbed and released posthumously.) Add to this the reports that Holly planned to record with black artists such as Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson and other soul singers (he was, memorably, the first white act to play Harlem’s Apollo Theater), and the prospect of Holly as a pop crooner becomes less likely. Nor do I see him turning to Vegas, like his friend Elvis Presley.

Another way to look at it is to consider the careers of two other musicians who were on the Winter Dance Party tour, but declined to get on the plane—Waylon Jennings, who was Holly’s bass player on the tour and gave up his seat to the Big Bopper, who was sick, and Dion DiMucci, who didn’t want to spend the extra money. There are some who think that Holly’s future, had he survived, would have been to move more toward country music, like Jennings, considering his Texas roots and twang. But I don’t think that Holly would have wanted to be so limited, because his musical tastes were so broad. Dion, of course, had early success, but when that faded, changed his sound to a more mature folk/pop approach, before moving through a Christian music phase, and more recently, focusing on blues, and I suspect that Holly, too, would have kept trying different things. 

Ultimately, I don't think that Holly would have become an “oldies” act, performing versions of his hits to aging fans. Instead, I think that Holly would have gone on to a varied career—writing songs for himself and others, in various styles that would have reflected his curiosity, interests and the new sounds that were developing in the 1960s and 70s, producing and nurturing artists, and continuing to perform new music for years.

Cops: The Clash Covered

The Clash: Police & Thieves
The Clash: I Fought The Law
The Clash: Police On My Back 

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When I thought about responding to this theme, I realized that the Clash covered three songs (that I could think of) about police, and was going to write about them. But then I saw that Seuras was working on a post about their cover of Junior Murvin’s “Police & Thieves,” so I won’t say anything more about that one, and direct you to Seuras’ piece, when it is posted. Although I will engage in some self-promotion by referring to my earlier article about the punk/reggae connection that the Clash was very much involved in, and which mentioned how “Police & Thieves” in part inspired Bob Marley’s “Punky Reggae Party.” 

Although the Clash’s self-titled first album was released in the UK (and elsewhere) in 1977, it didn’t get released in the USA until 1979. In 1978, while working on their second album, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones went to San Francisco to do some overdubs at the Automatt studio, where they heard, for the first time, the Bobby Fuller Four song, “I Fought The Law.” Originally written by Sonny Curtis, the song was recorded in 1959 by Curtis and the Crickets, after Buddy Holly died, to little notice. The song was recorded by other musicians, including Bobby Fuller, with minimal success. But when Fuller re-recorded the song in 1965 with the Bobby Fuller Four, the song became a top-10 hit, and since then has been often covered. Only a few months after the song charted, Fuller was found dead from asphyxiation in his mother's car in a parking lot near his Los Angeles apartment. 

The Clash’s cover was added to the US release of The Clash and was instrumental in getting the band airplay in the US. It’s a great version of the song, to the point that I think that many people (not anyone reading this, of course) think it is an original. And that’s not to take anything away from the Bobby Fuller Four version, which is also great. Although it is interesting to think about the fact that the Clash’s version was released less than 15 years after the Bobby Fuller version, when I think about them as being from such completely different eras. If you'd like to read more about the song, from the Financial Times, of all places, go here.

London Calling is my favorite Clash album, and is actually one of my all-time favorites, and while it has a few cover songs on it, none are explicitly police related (I don’t think). Their next album, Sandinista! was a sprawling three-disc release, and some critics thought it was better than London Calling, while others, including me, thought that it had a little too much filler, and might have made a killer double album. But they do get points for ambition. There was a strong reggae and dub influence all over Sandinista!, and one of the covers on that album was “Police On My Back,” written by Eddy Grant (probably best known for his early-1980s hit, “Electric Avenue”) for his group the Equals in 1967. The Equals may well have been the first popular racially mixed band in the UK, and their version of the song, while sounding very consistent with British pop of the era, had a definite ska undertone. Interestingly, the Clash’s version is a straightforward rocker, with, to my ears, no real reggae or ska influences. And if you want to read a 29 page analysis, “Police On My Back and the Postcolonial Experience,” go here.

In Memoriam: Joe B. Mauldin

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There are lots of talented musicians who have had zero professional success, and there are many reasons for that. On the other hand, sometimes just being in the right place at the right time can lead to a place in rock history—even a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Joe B. Mauldin is a name that is probably unknown to many, even die-hard rock fans. But, as the bass player of The Crickets, backing up Buddy Holly, it is fair to say that he helped create rock & roll.

Mauldin grew up in Lubbock, and was friends with Holly and other musicians in the area. At 15, while still in high school, he played with a band called The Four Teens, which included another local musician, Larry Welborn, on guitar. When Holly made his legendary trek to Clovis, New Mexico, to record with producer Norman Petty, he brought along drummer Jerry Allison, rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan and Welborn, with whom he had played in an earlier group, to play bass. They recorded a number of songs, including “That’ll Be The Day,” during those initial sessions.

But going forward, the band needed a permanent bass player, since Welborn had other commitments, and also wanted to play guitar. Welborn’s “Wally Pipp” moment came when Mauldin—all of 16 years old—replaced him in the band, soon to be named The Crickets, for boring contractual reasons. Welborn went on to a long, if obscure, musical career, and, if you believe him in this interview (and I do), he had no hard feelings. In fact, he even joined The Crickets briefly in the 1960s.

I’ve written before about the place that Buddy Holly has in my family (and also about the effect that Holly had on Don McLean), so I won’t repeat that here. Joe B. Mauldin, at the time he joined The Crickets, was considered only an adequate bass player—not as good as Welborn—but he was only 16, so let’s give him a break. And playing with Holly and Allison led to rapid improvement, until his playing influenced generations of rockers, including another group of young musicians in Liverpool called The Quarrymen (who, in tribute, changed their name to something also insect related).

The video above, from the Arthur Murray Party TV show, features a subdued Crickets, all gussied up for the occasion, including Mauldin, who was generally more animated in his live appearances. Not long after this, Holly moved to New York and severed ties with his band, who continued on, for years, even after Holly died.

Mauldin moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and became a sound engineer, mostly with Gold Star Studios, and worked with Phil Spector, Herb Alpert, Ike and Tina Turner and Leon Russell, while also backing country musicians as “Joe Benson Mauldin” and occasionally participating in Crickets-related reunions. Because he had sold his portrayal rights to another film that never got made, in the movie The Buddy Holly Story, Mauldin’s character is called “Ray Bob,” portrayed by actor Charles Martin Smith, maybe best known for his part in American Graffiti, or as a TV and movie director (drummer Allison, called “Jesse Charles” in the movie, hated his portrayal as a racist, borderline alcoholic).

The Crickets, including Mauldin, were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, joining Holly, who fittingly was inducted in the first class in 1986.

Joe B. Mauldin died on February 7, 2015, of cancer, in Nashville.

BUDDY HOLLY: Well . . . All Right

Buddy Holly: "Well . . . All Right"

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I think one of the most incredible things about Buddy Holly is not that he influenced so many other musicians, or that he wrote so many songs that have withstood the test of time and have been re-recorded by so many other bands and singers, but that he did it all at such a young age and in such a short span of time. Holly had his first hit with the Crickets in May of 1957, at the age of 20, and he died in the infamous plane crash in February 1959, at the tender age of 22. Just a little over a year and a half, but what an impact he had in that short time! He was really just a kid through all of it, but he still runs strong in the blood of rock and roll.

Choosing a song to feature here was a tough choice, as there are so many great options. I considered the ones that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones chose to record early in their careers, acknowledging their debt to Holly -- "Words of Love" and "Not Fade Away," respectively -- and "Rave On," which I think could arguably be pointed to as one of the earliest forms of punk and power pop.

But I finally settled on "Well . . . All Right," the flip side to Holly's 1958 single, "Heartbeat." I find the song to be remarkably mature in its melancholy sound and confidently defiant lyrics. The message is actually quite an upbeat one, but there seems to be some element of wisdom beyond his years running through it. The acoustic instrumentation is also something rarely heard in pop music of that time, hinting at Holly's country influences but staying firmly within the bounds of a pop song. It's a sound that the Beatles fleshed out years later with Rubber Soul, an album heralded for its maturity very much thanks to that type of song, but its roots can most definitely be found here.

"Well . . . All Right" was covered quite well by Blind Faith (Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech) on their one and only album in 1969, but it was much more forceful and lost the quiet fortitude of Holly's original. Listen here to Holly's original for a song truly ahead of its time.