Drum Boogie on the Silver Screen

The passing of Ginger Baker on October 6 and the centenary of Art Blakey's birth last weekend gets this blogger thinking about percussionists.



On the topic of percussionists in the movies, the first thing that comes to mind is the running gag in the "rockumentary" This Is Spinal Tap about the unfortunate drummers in Spinal Tap, the penultimate lumbering 1970's style dinosaur prog rock-metal band, invariably meeting tragic and untimely ends.



If a Spinal Tap drummer became a rock star a la John Bonham or Keith Moon, he'd die - immediately!



Second but foremost, we are compelled to tip our bowler hats to Ringo Starr's contributions to the two Beatles feature films. He brings likability and genuine charm to the table in both A Hard Day's Night and Help. Like his drumming as well; it is perfect for the Fab 4's group concept and genre of music.





Although drummer/bandleaders, with the prominent exception of Chick Webb, would not be prevalent until the 1940's, popular jazz bands and recording artists started appearing on the Silver Screen practically as soon as the talkies began. The Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Jimmie "The Singing Brakeman" Rogers and Duke Ellington all appeared on the silver screen in 1930.



Ellington's cutting edge big band preceded the drummer/bandleader, but certainly laid the groundwork for the concept with showcases for the group's brilliant percussionist, Sonny Greer. No doubt Chick Webb was taking notes!



Watch Duke and the Cotton Club Orchestra tear it up in this number from the otherwise unmemorable RKO Radio Pictures feature Check and Double Check, starting at 2:40 in the following clip. Ellington's group demonstrates emphatically that they were, in 1930, the wave of the future.



Although drummers actually starring in movies, due to the double trouble of the Hays Office and the color line (as far as leading man roles were concerned, very rarely broken before Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte in the 1950's) remained few and far between, deep love of the percussion arts demonstrated on the silver screen was hardly unheard of. That is why the following "Drum Crazy" number is my favorite Fred Astaire sequence in the MGM musical Easter Parade, directed by Charles Walters. The linkage between dancers and drummers, the terpsichorean and musical, is clear whenever Fred performs his rhythmic and elegant tap routines.



Unquestionably, many of the artists who made animated cartoons loved drummers as well.



In the following Tom & Jerry cartoon, when the household's EXTREMELY stereotyped maid takes very rare time off for a Saturday night of bridge with the girls (note: by the time these cartoons made it to Saturday morning TV in the mid-1960's, scenes involving the housekeeper were either excised or re-opaqued and re-dubbed with an Irish maid voice), randy Tom and his feline buddies throw a wild party.



Jerry the Mouse cannot sleep through the partying cat ruckus, driven by hard-swinging late 1940's style jazz. Because of the jazz soundtrack, complete with Red Norvo style vibraphonist, this animation buff prefers this opus (the over-the-top maid characterization, already quite anachronistic at the time the cartoon was made notwithstanding) to those with not-bright Tom chasing wily Jerry. Clearly, Tom the Cat wants to be Gene Krupa, Jo Jones or Max Roach!



It was not uncommon for jazz drummers to appear, albeit briefly, in 1950's movies. Alexander Mackendrick's wonderfully corrosive Sweet Smell Of Success, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis as the most detestable of men, features drummer Chico Hamilton's Quintet. In this and other dark urban tales/noir thrillers, jazz, smoke and impending doom permeate the atmosphere.



The percussionist/bandleader who did not act in movies per se but made quite a contribution on the silver screen by playing his music without compromise, not watering it down for mass consumption, was the great Gene Krupa.



The epic Drum Boogie number in the Howard Hawks classic Ball Of Fire showcased Gene's skills as drummer and bandleader, while pointing towards the swing-to-bop future in jazz music. Gene and Jo Jones of the Count Basie Orchestra were gifted musicians whose innovative ideas and rhythmic sophistication pointed the way to the next generation: Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes and Art Blakey.



The showcase in Ball Of Fire was not Krupa's first movie appearance. Here he is as a member of Benny Goodman's groundbreaking band in the Warner Brothers musical Hollywood Hotel. It is not just astonishingly cool music, all these decades later, but the first time an integrated band appeared in a movie.



Here's Gene with fellow percussion powerhouse Big Sid Catlett, appearing in the 1947 vehicle for comedian Tim Moore, Boy! What A Girl, produced for African-American audiences. Catlett was also, along with Jo Jones, in the historic Warner Brothers musical short subject, Jammin' The Blues (1944), directed by Gjon Mili.



Krupa, like Robert Mitchum, had some difficulties offscreen - which would have gotten one accepted into a band 20 years later - and was portrayed in a movie, The Gene Krupa Story. Krupa was played in this biopic by the talented and incredibly unlucky actor Sal Mineo.





There was one percussionist who did star in a movie. He made his name as frequent collaborator of music innovator John Coltrane.



After spending five years as drummer in the John Coltrane Quartet/Quintet, he would go on to be a bandleader and a prolific recording artist for Blue Note, Enja and other labels.



That would be the intrepid drummer/bandleader Elvin Jones.



He is among the stars of Zachariah, termed as acid western at the time of its theatrical release in 1971. Elvin and Cleveland rockers The James Gang are among the featured performers in this unconventional western, written by the unconventional comedy writers otherwise known as The Firesign Theatre. Mr. Jones does quite well both delivering dialogue and musical brilliance.





Mr. Jones also would be the subject of a movie in another genre, music documentaries.





Don't know if an Elvin Jones Jazz Machine Live On Tour documentary, shot in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's, exists, but somebody certainly should have made that film!



Finishing today's post is a link to a documentary about Levon Helm, drummer and vocalist in the American roots music group The Band, noted for a stretch of outstanding records in the 1960's and 1970's. Have yet to see Ain't In It For My Health in its entirety, but it looks fantastic! The Band was far and away the greatest, most varied in repertoire and best-rehearsed rock group this blogger ever had the pleasure to hear in person.