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.