Drums | All About Blues Music

Cedric Burnside

Blues drummer Cedric Burnside couldn’t have gotten a better lineage of music richness if he’d requested it himself. The grandson of legendary bluesman R.L. Burnside and the son of blues drummer Calvin Jackson, this bright shinning light on the blues scene learned his craft early and has taken all the necessary steps toward an ascent…

JOE HILL LOUIS

There is a long tradition of one-man-bands playing Blues music on street-corners. Strumming a guitar, blowing a harp in a neck-rack and beating drums and crashing cymbals with some combination of feet, knees and elbows, a street entertainer could make a living from this talent for multi-tasking. Daddy Stovepipe was the first one-man-band to make…

KEEF HARTLEY

The Blues was a dying form of music in its heartlands in the early 60s, but when some British kids discovered the music and used it to talk to new generations, it came back to America re-invigorated. Bands like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles sold Blues and R&B back to its American roots, and…

EARL PALMER

The bedrock of New Orleans R&B in the late 40s and early 50s was that funky second-line backbeat that powered the records of Fats, Fess, Little Richard and the like, which got the whole world dancing. More often than not, the man behind the drumkit on those sessions was Earl Palmer. Like Fred Below‘s Blues…

MICKY WALLER

During the British Blues Boom of the 60s, a lot of music superstars got started in bands of young players who got together to explore American Blues and R&B with a distinctly local flavour. Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, John Mayall and The Stones rubbed shoulders with Rod Stewart and Elton John as they played in…

LEROY ‘Baby Face’ FOSTER

Leroy Foster was never exactly a Blues star, but he certainly made his mark in Chicago as one of ‘The Headhunters’, along with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers and Little Walter. They got that nick-name because they would meet up in some South-side club, then invade the stage when the band finished their set, proceeding to…

WYNONIE HARRIS

Wynonie’s Blues-belting, hip-swivelling, suggestive stage act in the late 40s made him a role model for many Rockers who followed him. He scored big hits with ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’, ‘Lollipop Mama’, and ‘All She Wants to Do is Rock’ all making the top of the R&B charts, but he could not ride the wave of…

FRED BELOW

‘Drums….Fred Below’ was one of those credits that seemed to turn up on almost every album sleeve on those classic days of Chicago Blues. His swinging shuffles could be heard behind the full roster of Blues Legends as he pulled off his special trick of keeping “a Blues beat with a Jazz feel”. Always in…

JOHNNY OTIS

Few people have contributed more to R&B than Johnny Otis. All round musician, bandleader, DJ, promoter, talent scout, song-writer, label owner and producer, he found time to become a TV host, preacher, politician, author and organic farmer. He also crossed the colour-line at a time when that was very rare. The ambitious Greek teenager from…