Drum Diaries

Warren “Baby” Dodds 

New Orleans drummer Baby Dodds died at 60 years old in Chicago on Valentine’s Day 1959. He’d played alongside Louis Armstrong and King Oliver as one of the New Orleans exports bringing that city’s jazz first to Mississippi river boats, then to Chicago, then to the entire country. 

Here’s a report from his wake in Chicago, from the Chicago Tribune:

And here’s an obituary from Jet: 

Here’s a documentary about him that has video of him performing (!):

From the Q magazine interview.

"At five years old she was almost killed when the family Volkswagen was hit by a drunk driver, giving her not only her bewitching scar but a continual sense of dread. - I was looking out the window when the van smashed into us, my chin hit the smashed window and just popped open” she says. “I totally could’ve been killed, I was face-on. I think about this all the time because I have this huge scar on my chin. I’ve had to deal with a lot of fear in my life. This anxiety that something can just come out of nowhere and ruin everything. I was five years old and suddenly I’m in an ambulance and there’s glass getting sucked out of my teeth. I’m so little. I’m stitched up.-”

Inspired by the many “as described by cats” posts circulating in the music part of tumblr. I’ve been meaning to make this for awhile, but never got around to it. So here, I give you, in no particular order:

Brahms Cat:

Elgar Cat:

Liszt Cat:

Haydn and Mozart cats, respectively:

(that other guy must be Salieri)

Beethoven Cat:

angsty, of course

Mahler Cat: 

so serious

Wagner cat:

Berlioz Cat:

And last but not least, Philip Glass cat:

Billy Higgins Memorial Roundtable: Drummers Speak

Ted Panken posted this transcription of 2001 memorial roundtable for Billy Higgins, with Ralph Peterson, Lewis Nash, Leroy Williams, Jeff Watts and Andrew Cyrille, with taped interviews with Billy Hart and Louis Hayes added. It’s long, but it’s fascinating, and takes one deep into the art of drumming. Billy Higgins was one of the best, though least flashiest. When he sat down at the drums, he lifted the music ten feet off the ground.