Rico ROdriguez - whose birthday comes up this Friday (Oct 17) was 'tutored' by Drumkmond during the Alpha days and had this to say 10 years ago about the Wareika commune
"Y'know, once Don Cherry told me..."
He was giving me a story. If you don't know who Don Cherry is, he is one of the greatest trumpet players in history of Jazz and the father of Neneh Cherry. I hear from Rico that Don said, "How can you play like that... To play like you do, I had to go to Africa to learn." Don was mentioning that Rico's playing has got heavy African vibe.
"Mi learned dis from rasta commune, y'know, Wareika. People start drumming... When dem feel like playing, dem just play. "
It was true improvisation. There was no leader of a band as such. They just bang drums and when the air is right, one picks up an instrument and play. Perhaps one of its documents is the classic master-piece called "Grounation-- The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari" and I suppose Rico learned that thrilling playing through his experience of living there.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Background info 2
The next bit is from a site called Studio Won.com and is attributed to Gary Lewis. This contains some intersting inputs, including recollections from the late Tommy McCook, one Druoomd's illustrious cohorts in the SKATALITES.
Don 'D
Don Drummond, aka Don Cosmic, was born in 1943, Kingston, Jamaica. To state anything more than that, would be a travesty. Apart from the fact that like all legends, nothing seems to be known about his early days, men like Don D are just here for a short while, then gone…
Don Drummond was a part-time music teacher[?] at Alpha School, a rather strict Catholic school for boys who were nearly all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. The school, which was situated on South Camp Road, in West Kingston, was (and probably still is!) almost penal in its discipline, with beatings a regular occurrence.
Alpha veered towards the European musical tradition of marching and classical music. At the time Drummond attended Alpha, so were many other internationally known musicians, including: Wilton Gaynair, Owen Grey, Roy Harper and Herman Marquis. Don D graduated from being one of the schools top seniors, to its supreme tutor.
Amongst his influences stood such greats as Kai Winding and JJ Johnson, and Drummond was to influence many others himself. In his wake came such luminaries as Rico Rodriguez, Rupie Anderson, Vernon Muller, Carlos Malcolm, Carl Masters, Tommy McCook, Eric Clarke, Vincent Gordon, Joe Harriot and Bobby Ellis.
Scrap Iron
In 1940's Jamaica, big band swing and jazz ruled, and the starting place for musicians like Tommy McCook (1943) and Roland Alphonso (1948), was the Eric Dean Orchestra. Drummond joined them in 1955 having been voted Best Trombonist in 1954, and then formed The Don Drummond Four.
He was also cutting specials for sound systems before being spotted by Clement 'Coxone' Dodd, performing at the Majestic Theatre
Drummond had just completed one of his many short visits to one of the local mental hospitals, and didn’t even own a trombone, but Coxone was impressed enough to take Drummond on him as a solo artist and session player. In the meantime, the specials Drummond had previously cut were starting to be released commercially in Jamaica and England to critical acclaim. Drummond started his recording career sometime around 1956, with his first record being "On the Beach" with Owen Grey on vocals.
In 1962, Chris Blackwell started releasing recordings in England, and many of Drummond’s compositions first saw the light of day on the Island and Black Swan labels. Drummond recorded over 300 songs before he died at the age of just 27.
In 1964, under Coxsone's supervision, keyboardist and musical director Jackie Mittoo began to assemble the best musicians in Jamaica to create a sound that would dominate the music scene for years to come. The seeds for the Skatalites were sown while Mittoo played in the Sheiks, alongside Johnny Moore (trumpet) and Lloyd Knibbs on drums. After guitarist Lynn Taitt and Tommy McCook declined to join the band (though McCook later claimed it was his idea to form the band), Drummond was the man Mittoo turned to, and he quickly became the most prolific composer and musician in the band.
No mean feat when you consider the rest of the Skatalites later consisted of such names as Roland Alphonso &Tommy McCook on tenor saxes, Lester Sterling on alto sax, Leonard Dillon on trumpet, Lloyd Brevette on bass, Jah Jerry on guitar, Ernest Ranglin on guitar, Rico Rodriguez on trombone, Arkland 'Drumbago' Parks and Cluett Johnson on bass. These names would soon become legends, and the band is still playing today, although the fairly recent deaths of Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso have saddened events.
Drummond’s first solo single, "Don Cosmic" was followed by such timeless magnificence as "Confuscious", "Ringo", "Treasure Isle", "Eastern Standard Time", "Heavenless", "Occupation", "Meloncolly Baby", "Snowboy", "Elevation Rock", "Schooling the Duke", "Valley Princess", "The Reburial of Marcus Garvey", "Addis Ababa", "African Beat", and my own personal favorite, "Further East".
Sometime in 1964, "Man in the Street" entered the UK top 10, and later, in 1967 Drummond’s adaptation of the theme to the film "The Guns Of Navarone" gives him his second UK Top 10. These events confirm Drummond’s rise to the top and he is named by both George Shearing and Sarah Vaughan as one of the five top trombonists in the world. Vaughan came to this conclusion after seeing Drummond just once. Tommy McCook recalls;
“Don came on the scene initially about ’52. He became very popular and was playing with good bands at the time.
He was a member of the band that backed Sarah Vaughan when she came to Jamaica and performed at the Glass Bucket club. She heard him for the first time and told the Jamaican public that she figured that he was rated in the first five in the world. From then on Don lived up to what Sarah said – he was even thought of at one time as being the best in the world. His tone on the trombone, his approach, everything was so perfect. I considered him a genius on his instrument. Even other players of the instrument expressed this, and they should know.”
Man in the Street
Don Drummond was not just a genius. Drummond’s prestige among other musicians carried with it the hopes and dreams of all of Jamaica’s shantytown musicians. This was an incredible stress on a man whose life hovered between eccentricity and manic depression. His delicate mental condition was not helped by the amount of ganja he consumed, and the pressures of fame without gain simply helped to push Drummond completely over the edge.
The crunch came one early morning in January 1965, after his live-in lover returned home to the apartment they shared together at Rushden Road, Johnson Town in East Kingston.Rhumba dancer stabbed to death; Trombonist held on murder charge, screamed the January 2 1964 Gleaner Headline; 23 year old Anita Mahfood, (known as Margarita) and Jamaica’s leading exotic dancer, came home at 3.30 a.m. after a gig at the Baby Grand Club in Cross Roads. At approximately 4.30 a.m. Drummond walked into the Rockfort police station and told Constable Aston Pennycooke that;
“Ah woman in de yard stab herself with a knife and ah would like de police to come and see her.”
What the two police officers that accompanied Drummond to his home found, in a front room, laying on one of the two beds, was the body of Anita Mahfood. She had been stabbed many times, and the knife was still stuck in her breast, under a piece of chamois cloth laid over her chest. Drummond said of the cloth that;
“Dis is de cloth which she held the knife with a stabbed herself”.
In death though, Mahfood had sealed Drummonds guilt. Lying on the floor was Drummond ‘s trombone, and Anita Mahfoods hand was pushed right in the bell…Don Drummond was held on a murder charge.
During the subsequent trial at Kingston’s Sutton Street courthouse, which took place on Tuesday February 9 1965, neighbours of the couple testified that at 3.30 they heard a car door slam twice outside the gate, followed by footsteps going up the stairway to Drummond’s apartment. Mahfoods voice was heard to say;
“Junie, please open de door fe me”.
Drummond then replied “Nuh, it is not locked”.
Mahfood then knocked on the door twice before Drummond opened it.
Witness Enid Hibbert then recalled the following heated exchange taking place, which she recalled Mahfood saying:
“Imagine I teken’ a five-minute nap an’ when I wake up I see yuh sittin, beside me very serious. Wha’ happen mon?”
To which Drummond replied “Yuh don’ wan’ ta sleep. Go an’ sleep nuh, mon. Ain’t yuh just come in?”
Mahfood: “Ah cyan’t sleep under dose conditions fe yuh have a knife wrap in a chamois between yuh feet!”
According to Hibbert, Drummond then said the knife was in his pants behind the door.
Mahfood: “Nuh, de knife is not in yuh pants pocket, it is wrapped in a chamois between yuh feet”.
Drummond “Nuh!”
Mahfood: “Nuh, Junie, nuh, Junie, nuh, Junie – Help! Murder!”
The coroners report stated that: “All four wounds penetrated the chest wall”, and “the wounds were produced by four separate stabs and all four were inflicted with considerable force”.
In answer to the question from the court; “Doctor, do you think these four wounds could have been self-inflicted?”
The coroner concluded that: “No, they could not have been”.
Drummond was duly convicted and remanded to the Belle Vue Asylum where he died in 1969, but the story doesn’t end there. For even in death, Drummond’s tortured soul could find no rest, and soon after his demise conspiracy theories took hold. Supersonics drummer Hugh Malcolm theatrically tore up Drummond’s death certificate at his memorial service, refusing to believe its official position.
Like many people in Jamaica, Malcolm thought Drummond’s death was far more sinister in origin, and definitely not suicide. The theory is that Drummond was beaten to death by guards, with the governments blessing, and the fledgling democracy had indeed repressed the West Kingston musical scene for years, along with its rasta brethren. Another theory passed about includes plots by gangsters who mixed with Mahfood’s father.
The truth probably is a lot simpler, and is probably a combination of all the theories with some simple truths. Drummond was a sick man, and the pressures of stardom are not easily handled, especially if you live life right on the edge. The history of music is littered with casualties, and with genius often comes tragedy, and the great Don Cosmic is just another star who shines bright in heaven.
I shall leave the last words on Don Drummond to someone who knew and worked with the man himself, the late great Tommy McCook. He reminisces about the Skatalites;
“The line up included Don Drummond. He really was fantastic, both as a composer and as an instrumentalist. He knew no boundaries. He would take the simplest ska tune and make it into a gem…”
Gary Lewis
Don 'D
Don Drummond, aka Don Cosmic, was born in 1943, Kingston, Jamaica. To state anything more than that, would be a travesty. Apart from the fact that like all legends, nothing seems to be known about his early days, men like Don D are just here for a short while, then gone…
Don Drummond was a part-time music teacher[?] at Alpha School, a rather strict Catholic school for boys who were nearly all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. The school, which was situated on South Camp Road, in West Kingston, was (and probably still is!) almost penal in its discipline, with beatings a regular occurrence.
Alpha veered towards the European musical tradition of marching and classical music. At the time Drummond attended Alpha, so were many other internationally known musicians, including: Wilton Gaynair, Owen Grey, Roy Harper and Herman Marquis. Don D graduated from being one of the schools top seniors, to its supreme tutor.
Amongst his influences stood such greats as Kai Winding and JJ Johnson, and Drummond was to influence many others himself. In his wake came such luminaries as Rico Rodriguez, Rupie Anderson, Vernon Muller, Carlos Malcolm, Carl Masters, Tommy McCook, Eric Clarke, Vincent Gordon, Joe Harriot and Bobby Ellis.
Scrap Iron
In 1940's Jamaica, big band swing and jazz ruled, and the starting place for musicians like Tommy McCook (1943) and Roland Alphonso (1948), was the Eric Dean Orchestra. Drummond joined them in 1955 having been voted Best Trombonist in 1954, and then formed The Don Drummond Four.
He was also cutting specials for sound systems before being spotted by Clement 'Coxone' Dodd, performing at the Majestic Theatre
Drummond had just completed one of his many short visits to one of the local mental hospitals, and didn’t even own a trombone, but Coxone was impressed enough to take Drummond on him as a solo artist and session player. In the meantime, the specials Drummond had previously cut were starting to be released commercially in Jamaica and England to critical acclaim. Drummond started his recording career sometime around 1956, with his first record being "On the Beach" with Owen Grey on vocals.
In 1962, Chris Blackwell started releasing recordings in England, and many of Drummond’s compositions first saw the light of day on the Island and Black Swan labels. Drummond recorded over 300 songs before he died at the age of just 27.
In 1964, under Coxsone's supervision, keyboardist and musical director Jackie Mittoo began to assemble the best musicians in Jamaica to create a sound that would dominate the music scene for years to come. The seeds for the Skatalites were sown while Mittoo played in the Sheiks, alongside Johnny Moore (trumpet) and Lloyd Knibbs on drums. After guitarist Lynn Taitt and Tommy McCook declined to join the band (though McCook later claimed it was his idea to form the band), Drummond was the man Mittoo turned to, and he quickly became the most prolific composer and musician in the band.
No mean feat when you consider the rest of the Skatalites later consisted of such names as Roland Alphonso &Tommy McCook on tenor saxes, Lester Sterling on alto sax, Leonard Dillon on trumpet, Lloyd Brevette on bass, Jah Jerry on guitar, Ernest Ranglin on guitar, Rico Rodriguez on trombone, Arkland 'Drumbago' Parks and Cluett Johnson on bass. These names would soon become legends, and the band is still playing today, although the fairly recent deaths of Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso have saddened events.
Drummond’s first solo single, "Don Cosmic" was followed by such timeless magnificence as "Confuscious", "Ringo", "Treasure Isle", "Eastern Standard Time", "Heavenless", "Occupation", "Meloncolly Baby", "Snowboy", "Elevation Rock", "Schooling the Duke", "Valley Princess", "The Reburial of Marcus Garvey", "Addis Ababa", "African Beat", and my own personal favorite, "Further East".
Sometime in 1964, "Man in the Street" entered the UK top 10, and later, in 1967 Drummond’s adaptation of the theme to the film "The Guns Of Navarone" gives him his second UK Top 10. These events confirm Drummond’s rise to the top and he is named by both George Shearing and Sarah Vaughan as one of the five top trombonists in the world. Vaughan came to this conclusion after seeing Drummond just once. Tommy McCook recalls;
“Don came on the scene initially about ’52. He became very popular and was playing with good bands at the time.
He was a member of the band that backed Sarah Vaughan when she came to Jamaica and performed at the Glass Bucket club. She heard him for the first time and told the Jamaican public that she figured that he was rated in the first five in the world. From then on Don lived up to what Sarah said – he was even thought of at one time as being the best in the world. His tone on the trombone, his approach, everything was so perfect. I considered him a genius on his instrument. Even other players of the instrument expressed this, and they should know.”
Man in the Street
Don Drummond was not just a genius. Drummond’s prestige among other musicians carried with it the hopes and dreams of all of Jamaica’s shantytown musicians. This was an incredible stress on a man whose life hovered between eccentricity and manic depression. His delicate mental condition was not helped by the amount of ganja he consumed, and the pressures of fame without gain simply helped to push Drummond completely over the edge.
The crunch came one early morning in January 1965, after his live-in lover returned home to the apartment they shared together at Rushden Road, Johnson Town in East Kingston.Rhumba dancer stabbed to death; Trombonist held on murder charge, screamed the January 2 1964 Gleaner Headline; 23 year old Anita Mahfood, (known as Margarita) and Jamaica’s leading exotic dancer, came home at 3.30 a.m. after a gig at the Baby Grand Club in Cross Roads. At approximately 4.30 a.m. Drummond walked into the Rockfort police station and told Constable Aston Pennycooke that;
“Ah woman in de yard stab herself with a knife and ah would like de police to come and see her.”
What the two police officers that accompanied Drummond to his home found, in a front room, laying on one of the two beds, was the body of Anita Mahfood. She had been stabbed many times, and the knife was still stuck in her breast, under a piece of chamois cloth laid over her chest. Drummond said of the cloth that;
“Dis is de cloth which she held the knife with a stabbed herself”.
In death though, Mahfood had sealed Drummonds guilt. Lying on the floor was Drummond ‘s trombone, and Anita Mahfoods hand was pushed right in the bell…Don Drummond was held on a murder charge.
During the subsequent trial at Kingston’s Sutton Street courthouse, which took place on Tuesday February 9 1965, neighbours of the couple testified that at 3.30 they heard a car door slam twice outside the gate, followed by footsteps going up the stairway to Drummond’s apartment. Mahfoods voice was heard to say;
“Junie, please open de door fe me”.
Drummond then replied “Nuh, it is not locked”.
Mahfood then knocked on the door twice before Drummond opened it.
Witness Enid Hibbert then recalled the following heated exchange taking place, which she recalled Mahfood saying:
“Imagine I teken’ a five-minute nap an’ when I wake up I see yuh sittin, beside me very serious. Wha’ happen mon?”
To which Drummond replied “Yuh don’ wan’ ta sleep. Go an’ sleep nuh, mon. Ain’t yuh just come in?”
Mahfood: “Ah cyan’t sleep under dose conditions fe yuh have a knife wrap in a chamois between yuh feet!”
According to Hibbert, Drummond then said the knife was in his pants behind the door.
Mahfood: “Nuh, de knife is not in yuh pants pocket, it is wrapped in a chamois between yuh feet”.
Drummond “Nuh!”
Mahfood: “Nuh, Junie, nuh, Junie, nuh, Junie – Help! Murder!”
The coroners report stated that: “All four wounds penetrated the chest wall”, and “the wounds were produced by four separate stabs and all four were inflicted with considerable force”.
In answer to the question from the court; “Doctor, do you think these four wounds could have been self-inflicted?”
The coroner concluded that: “No, they could not have been”.
Drummond was duly convicted and remanded to the Belle Vue Asylum where he died in 1969, but the story doesn’t end there. For even in death, Drummond’s tortured soul could find no rest, and soon after his demise conspiracy theories took hold. Supersonics drummer Hugh Malcolm theatrically tore up Drummond’s death certificate at his memorial service, refusing to believe its official position.
Like many people in Jamaica, Malcolm thought Drummond’s death was far more sinister in origin, and definitely not suicide. The theory is that Drummond was beaten to death by guards, with the governments blessing, and the fledgling democracy had indeed repressed the West Kingston musical scene for years, along with its rasta brethren. Another theory passed about includes plots by gangsters who mixed with Mahfood’s father.
The truth probably is a lot simpler, and is probably a combination of all the theories with some simple truths. Drummond was a sick man, and the pressures of stardom are not easily handled, especially if you live life right on the edge. The history of music is littered with casualties, and with genius often comes tragedy, and the great Don Cosmic is just another star who shines bright in heaven.
I shall leave the last words on Don Drummond to someone who knew and worked with the man himself, the late great Tommy McCook. He reminisces about the Skatalites;
“The line up included Don Drummond. He really was fantastic, both as a composer and as an instrumentalist. He knew no boundaries. He would take the simplest ska tune and make it into a gem…”
Gary Lewis
background info 1
Some useful writings on the subject, the first from my friend, culural historian and music critic Herbie Miller, which appeared in the Jamaica Observer
Don Drummond's Mania: Myth or reality?
by Herbie Miller
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Don Drummond died 38 years ago on May 6, 1969, and was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the May Pen Cemetery days after the scheduled funeral. This resulted from conflicting stories surrounding the cause of his death in the Bellevue Mental Hospital, which led to the 'mashing up' of the planned interment, resulting in its secrecy.
Since his death, musicians, writers and poets have evoked the aura of this revered Jamaican trombonist and composer as creative muse. One of the most finely tuned poetic reflections calling to mind the mentally troubled master musician is Mervyn Morris' Valley Prince. It is a title befitting a Drummond song he never wrote, performed or recorded, nevertheless one attributed to him. In fact, Valley Princess is the title under which the song Morris referenced was released and is a cover version of Blame It on the Bossa Nova.
Blame It On The Bossa Nova is a composition by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, a husband and wife songwriting team. Its vocal rendition by Eydie Gorme was popular in Jamaica during the summer of 1963, and was covered by Drummond's disciple, Vin 'Don D Junior' Gordon around the time it was released on the 1968 LP, The Best of Don Drummond [SOL9008]. This is a period, which Drummond would have been incarcerated at the Bellevue Hospital. The attribution of Valley Princess to Don Drummond is therefore illusory.
This deceptive practice regarding Drummond's repertoire has been the modus operandi of wily record producers since his death. Names of songs have been altered and changed too, co-composers have been 'tacked-on' and overdubs added.
The trombonist's hit song, Occupation has become Music is my Occupation; Down Beat Burial was also marketed as Johnny Dark; and Festival was renamed Elevation Rock, to cite just three examples. The idea of attributing Valley Princess to Drummond recurs with his being falsely credited for Rico Rodriquez's Let George Do It, and two other recordings of Vin Gordon's Heavenless, [1968] and his cover of Bert Kamphaert's Afrikaan Beat as Elevator Rock [1968].
Drummond recorded prolifically between 1956 and 1964 for Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd's Studio One label [ironically, Dodd also passed on in the month of May - Editor]. The CD Studio One Scorcher [Soul Jazz-SJRCD 067], released in 2002, features Don Drummond with his trombone on the cover, therefore, obscuring the fact that it was a compilation of songs, none on which he even plays.
These marketing strategies are also misleading and confusing. But then much about Drummond's life as it is known tends to be wrapped in what social and cultural thinker Barry Chevannes prefers to call 'paradoxes and ambiguities'. Short of a great deal of facts, Drummond's personal story, so far, is based largely on anecdotes and myth; a great deal of the same information about the aloof musician tends to be recycled.
The Drummond myth can also be ascribed to the creative work of other artists that have immortalised him, adding to the cult status he enjoys today. In addition to painters, songwriters, musicians and singers, additional poets who have contemplated Drummond include Anthony McNeil who wrote Don: For the D (1975), Lorna Goodison For Don Drummond (1980) and Robin 'Bongo Jerry' Small, whose stream of consciousness tribute Roll On Sweet Don, which was published in the Abeng, a black radical weekly paper aimed at youth in 1969, the year Drummond died, achieved both poetic currency and an aura characteristic of the Drummond aesthetic.
Each poet in his or her own way presented Drummond's fractured connection to society, his indistinct relationship to a world of reality; connecting him at the same time to one that was other worldly, one of eccentricity, and thus adding to his mystique. In a section of Morris' poem, the voice given Drummond ruminates: Inside here, me one in the crowd again, and plenty people want me blow it straight.
But straight is not the way; my world don't go so; that is lie. Oonu gimme back me trombone, man: is time to blow me mind. In this short stanza, Morris' poetic reflection captures well both the musical enthusiasm and the personal oracles and demons that informed and possessed the incongruous trombonist 'in his world'.
This essay attempts to bring a cognitive reassessment of the acclaim accorded Drummond. It aims to incorporate the aura of Don Drummond with social reality, with information gained from people who also saw him perform, with the stories of others who knew him, and with the observations of studio personnel that witnessed his working habits.
My own perspectives, having observed first-hand the trombonist's performances on many occasions, also inform this article. Above all, my objective is to understand Drummond through the little material evidence I have been able to examine, through his music, through the opinions of musicians who were around and performed with him, and to connect their memory to his reality.
By all accounts, Don Drummond had an insatiable appetite for composing and performing music. Some reports are that he recorded over 300 of his own compositions, while appearances on sessions backing others exceed this count. Considering his relatively short recording career, one lasting just about five years during which it was interrupted by frequent bouts of mental illness, this is a remarkable achievement.
Unrecorded are scores of Drummond tunes, some written, others not, left to the memory of those fortunate to have been present at live sessions dropped at Count Ossie's camp site in the Wareika Hills, Bournemouth Club, Silver Slipper, the Ward and Carib Theatres.
Among the compositions from his jazz repertoire perennially mentioned are Gypsy, A Sound Is Born, Mr Magic, and The Message, a song I will discuss below, which has taken on its own legendary repute. Drummond's written arrangements for dozens of standards, ballads, tunes with a Latin lilt, and ska songs may still, hopefully, be uncovered. Until then, only by the stretch of one's imagination and with a sense of loss can one begin to appreciate Drummond's total body of work, many of which reflected a musician with a Pan-Africanist mindset.
Marcus Garvey's philosophy and the Rastafari community fortified Drummond's political ideal. Consequently, Black Nationalism was ideologically as important to him as the music he played. Therefore, Mervyn Morris, by privileging Drummond's voice with the line 'me one in the crowd again', also allows for the reading of the musician as leader, the lone leader in the crowd.
Well, it captures on the other hand the social isolation he endured. Meanwhile in Small's poetic meditation the trombonist symbolises the pied piper among Jamaica's black masses. Cedric Brooks, the tenor saxophonist, once described Drummond as 'intensely black'.
The guitarist Janet Enright, a member of Drummond's jazz quintet at Bournemouth Club during the mid 1950s, recalls that early in his career Drummond would sometimes stop playing on occasions when Caucasian women danced to his music - an unexplained emotional reaction, Enright said. Similar to other charismatic figures espousing freedom, leaders like Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle, Marcus Garvey, Alexander Bedward and Leonard Howell, Drummond found himself metaphorically as leader of the crowd, his music carrying the message of liberation, showing the way out of mental bondage and colonialism.
He was a musical prophet created by the people, not one imposing himself on them in pursuit of stardom, but having it thrust upon him. Drummond observed their tribulations and aspirations then reshaped them into a blues allegory reflected through his compositions and plaintive trombone tone.
Like those leaders, also in common, is the shared experience of jail and/or the 'mad house'. Drummond, in fact suffered a psychiatric disorder, later diagnosed as schizophrenia, which frequently rendered him a patient at the Bellevue Mental Hospital. All these traits shaped Don Drummond's personality, and are mania related.
Some argue that Don Drummond was a musical genius and that all geniuses are eccentric, which to the crowd means, 'mad'. While this is questionable conjecture, the fact is many artistes who have excelled at a degree beyond the accepted norm and above their peers, have displayed an eccentric personality. Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Miles Davis and other innovators of the jazz aesthetic have been labelled eccentrics, strange or odd. Don Drummond was such a creative person and is considered as such.
With that in mind, again Morris' lines suitably establish the persona or 'strange actions' attached to Drummond. Plenty people want me to play it straight. But straight is not the way; my world it don't go so; that is lie. Oonu gimme me back me trombone, man: is time to blow me mind. Within those lines also lie the personality of the mad genius, who in his world is neither willing to play it straight/safe, nor with a mind restricted by convention.
Simultaneously reflecting the world of madness he occupied, 'my world' also resembles the Bellevue mental institution in which Drummond, who blew minds with his dexterous handling of the trombone, spent much of his adult life, with a mind that was blown. Many veterans of the music fraternity recall, the trombonist's idiosyncratic behaviour bordered on insanity but they also cogently recall the outstanding jazz musicianship Drummond possessed.
To more accurately state the opinions of a few, Headley Jones and Sonny Bradshaw believe Drummond was the most promising musical mind since the internationally acclaimed Joe Harriott, the jazz visionary and alto saxophonist who, like Drummond, was also a past pupil of East Kingston's Alpha Boys Home. They argue, however, Drummond never realised his full potential and therefore is accorded undeserved accolades.
Skatalites trumpeter, and one as close to Drummond as any, 'Dizzy' Johnnie Moore, concurs. He maintains that what Drummond was doing during the ska period was a step below the high artistic standard he demonstrated as a jazz musician.
Don Drummond's Mania: Myth or reality?
by Herbie Miller
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Don Drummond died 38 years ago on May 6, 1969, and was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the May Pen Cemetery days after the scheduled funeral. This resulted from conflicting stories surrounding the cause of his death in the Bellevue Mental Hospital, which led to the 'mashing up' of the planned interment, resulting in its secrecy.
Since his death, musicians, writers and poets have evoked the aura of this revered Jamaican trombonist and composer as creative muse. One of the most finely tuned poetic reflections calling to mind the mentally troubled master musician is Mervyn Morris' Valley Prince. It is a title befitting a Drummond song he never wrote, performed or recorded, nevertheless one attributed to him. In fact, Valley Princess is the title under which the song Morris referenced was released and is a cover version of Blame It on the Bossa Nova.
Blame It On The Bossa Nova is a composition by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, a husband and wife songwriting team. Its vocal rendition by Eydie Gorme was popular in Jamaica during the summer of 1963, and was covered by Drummond's disciple, Vin 'Don D Junior' Gordon around the time it was released on the 1968 LP, The Best of Don Drummond [SOL9008]. This is a period, which Drummond would have been incarcerated at the Bellevue Hospital. The attribution of Valley Princess to Don Drummond is therefore illusory.
This deceptive practice regarding Drummond's repertoire has been the modus operandi of wily record producers since his death. Names of songs have been altered and changed too, co-composers have been 'tacked-on' and overdubs added.
The trombonist's hit song, Occupation has become Music is my Occupation; Down Beat Burial was also marketed as Johnny Dark; and Festival was renamed Elevation Rock, to cite just three examples. The idea of attributing Valley Princess to Drummond recurs with his being falsely credited for Rico Rodriquez's Let George Do It, and two other recordings of Vin Gordon's Heavenless, [1968] and his cover of Bert Kamphaert's Afrikaan Beat as Elevator Rock [1968].
Drummond recorded prolifically between 1956 and 1964 for Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd's Studio One label [ironically, Dodd also passed on in the month of May - Editor]. The CD Studio One Scorcher [Soul Jazz-SJRCD 067], released in 2002, features Don Drummond with his trombone on the cover, therefore, obscuring the fact that it was a compilation of songs, none on which he even plays.
These marketing strategies are also misleading and confusing. But then much about Drummond's life as it is known tends to be wrapped in what social and cultural thinker Barry Chevannes prefers to call 'paradoxes and ambiguities'. Short of a great deal of facts, Drummond's personal story, so far, is based largely on anecdotes and myth; a great deal of the same information about the aloof musician tends to be recycled.
The Drummond myth can also be ascribed to the creative work of other artists that have immortalised him, adding to the cult status he enjoys today. In addition to painters, songwriters, musicians and singers, additional poets who have contemplated Drummond include Anthony McNeil who wrote Don: For the D (1975), Lorna Goodison For Don Drummond (1980) and Robin 'Bongo Jerry' Small, whose stream of consciousness tribute Roll On Sweet Don, which was published in the Abeng, a black radical weekly paper aimed at youth in 1969, the year Drummond died, achieved both poetic currency and an aura characteristic of the Drummond aesthetic.
Each poet in his or her own way presented Drummond's fractured connection to society, his indistinct relationship to a world of reality; connecting him at the same time to one that was other worldly, one of eccentricity, and thus adding to his mystique. In a section of Morris' poem, the voice given Drummond ruminates: Inside here, me one in the crowd again, and plenty people want me blow it straight.
But straight is not the way; my world don't go so; that is lie. Oonu gimme back me trombone, man: is time to blow me mind. In this short stanza, Morris' poetic reflection captures well both the musical enthusiasm and the personal oracles and demons that informed and possessed the incongruous trombonist 'in his world'.
This essay attempts to bring a cognitive reassessment of the acclaim accorded Drummond. It aims to incorporate the aura of Don Drummond with social reality, with information gained from people who also saw him perform, with the stories of others who knew him, and with the observations of studio personnel that witnessed his working habits.
My own perspectives, having observed first-hand the trombonist's performances on many occasions, also inform this article. Above all, my objective is to understand Drummond through the little material evidence I have been able to examine, through his music, through the opinions of musicians who were around and performed with him, and to connect their memory to his reality.
By all accounts, Don Drummond had an insatiable appetite for composing and performing music. Some reports are that he recorded over 300 of his own compositions, while appearances on sessions backing others exceed this count. Considering his relatively short recording career, one lasting just about five years during which it was interrupted by frequent bouts of mental illness, this is a remarkable achievement.
Unrecorded are scores of Drummond tunes, some written, others not, left to the memory of those fortunate to have been present at live sessions dropped at Count Ossie's camp site in the Wareika Hills, Bournemouth Club, Silver Slipper, the Ward and Carib Theatres.
Among the compositions from his jazz repertoire perennially mentioned are Gypsy, A Sound Is Born, Mr Magic, and The Message, a song I will discuss below, which has taken on its own legendary repute. Drummond's written arrangements for dozens of standards, ballads, tunes with a Latin lilt, and ska songs may still, hopefully, be uncovered. Until then, only by the stretch of one's imagination and with a sense of loss can one begin to appreciate Drummond's total body of work, many of which reflected a musician with a Pan-Africanist mindset.
Marcus Garvey's philosophy and the Rastafari community fortified Drummond's political ideal. Consequently, Black Nationalism was ideologically as important to him as the music he played. Therefore, Mervyn Morris, by privileging Drummond's voice with the line 'me one in the crowd again', also allows for the reading of the musician as leader, the lone leader in the crowd.
Well, it captures on the other hand the social isolation he endured. Meanwhile in Small's poetic meditation the trombonist symbolises the pied piper among Jamaica's black masses. Cedric Brooks, the tenor saxophonist, once described Drummond as 'intensely black'.
The guitarist Janet Enright, a member of Drummond's jazz quintet at Bournemouth Club during the mid 1950s, recalls that early in his career Drummond would sometimes stop playing on occasions when Caucasian women danced to his music - an unexplained emotional reaction, Enright said. Similar to other charismatic figures espousing freedom, leaders like Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle, Marcus Garvey, Alexander Bedward and Leonard Howell, Drummond found himself metaphorically as leader of the crowd, his music carrying the message of liberation, showing the way out of mental bondage and colonialism.
He was a musical prophet created by the people, not one imposing himself on them in pursuit of stardom, but having it thrust upon him. Drummond observed their tribulations and aspirations then reshaped them into a blues allegory reflected through his compositions and plaintive trombone tone.
Like those leaders, also in common, is the shared experience of jail and/or the 'mad house'. Drummond, in fact suffered a psychiatric disorder, later diagnosed as schizophrenia, which frequently rendered him a patient at the Bellevue Mental Hospital. All these traits shaped Don Drummond's personality, and are mania related.
Some argue that Don Drummond was a musical genius and that all geniuses are eccentric, which to the crowd means, 'mad'. While this is questionable conjecture, the fact is many artistes who have excelled at a degree beyond the accepted norm and above their peers, have displayed an eccentric personality. Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Miles Davis and other innovators of the jazz aesthetic have been labelled eccentrics, strange or odd. Don Drummond was such a creative person and is considered as such.
With that in mind, again Morris' lines suitably establish the persona or 'strange actions' attached to Drummond. Plenty people want me to play it straight. But straight is not the way; my world it don't go so; that is lie. Oonu gimme me back me trombone, man: is time to blow me mind. Within those lines also lie the personality of the mad genius, who in his world is neither willing to play it straight/safe, nor with a mind restricted by convention.
Simultaneously reflecting the world of madness he occupied, 'my world' also resembles the Bellevue mental institution in which Drummond, who blew minds with his dexterous handling of the trombone, spent much of his adult life, with a mind that was blown. Many veterans of the music fraternity recall, the trombonist's idiosyncratic behaviour bordered on insanity but they also cogently recall the outstanding jazz musicianship Drummond possessed.
To more accurately state the opinions of a few, Headley Jones and Sonny Bradshaw believe Drummond was the most promising musical mind since the internationally acclaimed Joe Harriott, the jazz visionary and alto saxophonist who, like Drummond, was also a past pupil of East Kingston's Alpha Boys Home. They argue, however, Drummond never realised his full potential and therefore is accorded undeserved accolades.
Skatalites trumpeter, and one as close to Drummond as any, 'Dizzy' Johnnie Moore, concurs. He maintains that what Drummond was doing during the ska period was a step below the high artistic standard he demonstrated as a jazz musician.
The Beginning
Initially, I planned to include my work on a novel based on the life of Don Drummond
on Jazz First (jazzofonik1.blogspot.com), my principal blog. But then, the thought, why not create a blog just for the project?
So here it is
Keep checking back and follow my progress from though to book
and feel free to add your own inputs
Thanks
on Jazz First (jazzofonik1.blogspot.com), my principal blog. But then, the thought, why not create a blog just for the project?
So here it is
Keep checking back and follow my progress from though to book
and feel free to add your own inputs
Thanks
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