Perspectives: Greg Osby

David hears the iconic saxophonist's thoughts on drummers, groove and feel.

". . . Jeff [Watts] and other drummers like him, of course you know I'm very fond of Terri Lyn [Carrington], my favourite drummers are like that because they don't have any preference or any allegiances to any one groove, you know. All grooves are of equal importance; Terri Lyn can play funk, they play reggae, they play swing, they can play latin, they can okay New Orleans second line, they shuffle and they've studied all of the major important components of those types of styles and those directions. This gives you a distinct advantage over drummers who only work on swing playing or only grove-based playing.

"Terri Lyn Carrington is kind of the equal parts of the best characterises of the people she's studied with, as well as the people she admires. She studied with Keith Copland and Alan Dawson and got a great deal of technical approach from them, and was very close with 'Papa' Jo Jones and 'Philly' Joe Jones an Art Blakey and Max Roach in particular. They were like grandfathers to her and they instilled in her a sense of pride and a sense of perfection and daring.

"From my observation, the drummers that have the best feel are the drummers who play in some sort of popular music because those musics are largely folk musics. They're very basic and they also aren't very complicated, so have to have strong sense of groove in order to make people want to dance. And so that's the under-pinning of all jazz: blues, groove and feel and soul and swing. These elements made people want to dance before they got really technical, and that's why Art Blakey's shuffle feels so good, or why Elvin Jones' 6/8 or 12/8 feels so good, or why Max Roach's swing is so strong, or Roy Haynes, or any of the great drummers. They all probably played some sort of soul music or blues or something like that, and that's why their music has that real down-home, grass roots element. Jeff Watts, he played funk; he played in a marching band; he did all those kinds of things that are about the feel. Terri Lyn, she was weaned on the blues; her father was a blues musician; her grandfather played drums too. And so that was very important, and you'll find that players that stand out have a serous pocket. Sometime around the late sixties, or early seventies, when fusion came, the conception changed from feeling good to more technical elements. Fusion became more virtuosic and about chops, with Billy Cobham with his super-huge drum kit, and that kind of thing, and Tony Williams' Lifetime. . . There was less emphasis on feel and more of an emphasis on a display of dazzling technique. So a lot the drummers coming up now, they're a by-product of the post-fusion era. They may, if they're responsible, go back and find who the real masters are, you know, Buddy Rich and, you know, all these people who really had something strong to say and something profound to lend to the language. But they're also more affected by these drummers who have their cymbals up high, who have these super-huge kits, you know. Tony Williams' double bass [drum]; they're after Dennis Chambers and you know all those kinds of cats.

"I'm looking at how the drummer interacts with the bass pulse. A lot of people make the mistake in ensembles of focusing too much on the drums and the drummers sometimes make the mistake of reducing themselves to mere time-keepers. But the drummer, in my estimation, is a composer just as much as the lead instrument. The drummer is using multiple limbs to colour and stylise the music, when meanwhile embellishing on the heartbeat that the bass player sets up. Really the bass is the centre. . . If the bass player has bad time then the groove is gonna be messed up. There's nothing that a group can do to save itself if the bass player isn't happening. The bass sound has to be happening sonically; it has to have a certain core and it has to really address certain frequencies. . . If it sounds too mid-range and it has too much core then there's no bottom for the band. It's like a building that's built on a poor foundation: it may stand up a while but in the strong wind it's gonna move; time's gonna fluctuate and things aren't going to be steady. So I mean the bass player, that's the most important element in the band. If he's weak or too consumed with chops, or too consumed with soloing or his sound is really mid-range because he wants you to hear every little note, then the band is gonna sound really small. . . That's the first thing I look out for. I look at how the drummer takes the bass information and uses that inspiration to colour around it and to push it and propel it and make it stronger and make it more befitting, and create the illusion of a larger ensemble. OK you may have five people but it should sound like more than that. Especially if the drummer really knows how to address all of his limbs, and not solo all the time but give enough motion that just sounds like its four different percussionists.

"The traditional jazz feel is . . . kind of behind the beat. Players are trying to simulate this feeling, I don't want to say of drunkenness, or people that are like high on drugs, but that's become the acceptable sound for jazz. It's very behind the beat, the whole approach to time, and it feels better than people who rush or people who push the beat. But that's kind of what I look for.

"The younger players are much more influenced by, they're informed by different types of music: hip hop, soul and R&B. . . All these things inform how you hear music, your experiences and things that you like. Eric Harland, his family is very religious. He grew up in church listening to kind that of beat, that real gospel, soul. They have a different kind of shuffle; it's very strong, especially in the south. He's from the south and that's why his playing sounds that like that. Rodney Green, his father was a pastor, so he grew up playing in church. A lot of these people they have these kind of experiences and that's why their playing sounds so different. Nasheet Waits, his father was Freddie Waits . . . He was self-taught; he couldn't read music but he had a very, very personal way of playing drums, especially his cymbal beat and the way he played with his cymbals. He really loved those frequencies and Nasheet is playing some of those same cymbals, and he has the same exact feel as his father. So we can dig a little deeper into the history of a lot of players and we find out exactly why they hear and interpret music the way they do. It's usually no accident. It's usually no accident at all. . .

"When we came to town in the early eighties there was like this return to swing and to the traditional values and stuff. So therefore Tain was really coming out of Elvin, and Ralph Peterson was coming up out of Art Blakey. Terri Lyn coming out of Jack DeJohnette and Papa Jo Jones. A lot of these drummers, they were still around; you could see them. You could see Ed Blackwell all the time; Dannie Richmond, and Art Blakey would play . . . 'Philly' Jo Jones had a big band, I played in his big band. Charli Persip had a big band. Jaki Byard had a big band. There was a lot of activity and there were a lot of people playing and you could be affected by that. So by this time, hip hop started to change and then a lot of the younger people who were coming to New York after, they had been seriously affected by that, by those deep grooves and sampling of all this stuff, and so this affected their playing, most definitely. You can hear it  in the way that Eric Harland and Nasheet Waits  . . . Tommy Crane [play]. All of them, they're informed by that as well as a universal culture, you know. The internet has changed music because now you can anything on a global level, immediately.

"[I like] His [Jeff 'Tain' Watts'] sense of colour. He studied classical percussion so he knows how to get the sound orchestrally. And he knows how to effectively changes his touch when plays with brushes or mallets. He knows how to get around the drums in a more compositional approach rather than just playing time. . . [His time-feel] identifies him; I can tell who he is, and that's very important, either to be identified by your sound or by your playing.

"Ralph Peterson is a direct descendant of Art Blakey of course. But you know Ralph is also a trumpet player and composer so he knows the placement of things. . . He has impeccable time. He also loves Tony Williams, but he's interpreted that in a different way. It's not as blatant. That's what I dig about him. He's assimilated and synthesised them into what sounds like Ralph. You know this takes a great deal of ingenuity on behalf of the musician. They'll say, 'I'm heavily influenced by somebody but I'm willing to take that information and make it my own.' This is the real challenge. The challenge isn't having the best chops or the fastest technique or the fastest hands or you know all that kind of stuff. The challenge is how you're gonna sound like yourself so that in a very short time somebody listening . . . they'll know who you are. . . That's the real mission.

"Kenny [Washington] is like a walking encyclopaedia. He's a walking encyclopaedia of music and jazz history, and so he assumes his role. There are things that he wants to be emphasising in his playing; there's the capacity to do other things, but he knows historically what certain music calls for. So he'll do that and nothing more, even though he has as many chops as any of the greatest drummers. . . And that's fine because there's room for everyone."

For more information on Greg Osby visit www.gregosby.com.