This year is the 40th Anniversary of one of the best drum books ever written, Joe Franco’s Double Bass Drumming. In 1964 Colin Bailey published Bass Drum Control. That was the first book that dealt with the subject of playing the bass drum, bass drum control, and speed. It is a legendary book written by a legendary teacher. By 1982 a musical change was happening. Jazz drummers like Louie Bellson, Ed Shaugnessy and Dave Black, and rock drummers like Ginger Baker, Carmine Appice, and Aynsley Dunbar had all started to utilize two bass drums and had started to create a new vocabulary for what was being called “double bass drumming.” At the time, drummers were using Bailey’s book for developing their double bass drumming. Louie Bellson had written a book on double bass drums, but there were no books that dealt specifically with the powerful sound of double bass drums […]

September 2022 Issue