Gene Krupa

Drummer-bandleader Butch Miles (1944-2023) has died. Butch and his drumming were loved and admired all over the world. Butch Miles was best known for his tenure in the Count Basie Orchestra from 1975 to 1979 and then making a ten-year return to the band from 1997 to 2007. In the 1980s …

Seven All-Star Drummers Including Peter Erskine, Dennis Chambers, Russ Miller and Steve Smith will Perform October 20 and 21 HITKOR (www.hitkor.com) today announced its first-ever charity event which will take place over two days in mid-October. “A Salute to the Big Band Greats” will feature performances from all-star drummers Peter …

Drummer Viola Smith, one of the first female drummers of note, has passed away. She was an astounding 107 years old. Modern Drummer profiled Smith in the April 2003 issue; we’re sharing that piece in honor of her remarkable career. It’s well known that during the Second World War, when …

“My passion in continuing Quiet Riot has everything to do with the fact that drumming is what I’ve always wanted to do,” Quiet Riot’s Frankie Banali told Modern Drummer in a 2015 interview. “I worked very hard and struggled a lot to get to the point that we did with …

On Sunday, July 19, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, world-renowned drummer and educator Billy Hart will conduct a free Zoom presentation, “The Evolution of Contemporary Jazz Drummers.” Hart has recorded over six hundred albums, including seminal dates with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Stan Getz, Joe Zawinul, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, …

Clementine of all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band Zepparella. Step One Love Led Zeppelin. How did John Bonham become one of a handful of drummers who are celebrated as much as any of the other guys in the band? Chalk it up to feel. Chalk it up to love. There is …

Drum Workshop, Inc. (DW) recently announced the acquisition of the Slingerland drum brand from the Nashville-headquartered Gibson Musical Instruments.

Hello, my fellow drummers! When I’m not playing with the Hooters (next year will be our fortieth anniversary), I have my own band called David Uosikkinen’s In The Pocket.

Hey, hey MD readers! Let me introduce myself. My name is Gayelynn McKinney. I recorded with a ground breaking, all-female jazz group called Straight Ahead for Atlantic Records. While touring with that group, I had the opportunity to be featured in Modern Drummer’s Bonzo Twentieth Anniversary edition. (January, 1996).

Hello everyone at MD! Albert here. I was a founding member of Blue Oyster Cult and lately you can see me out with my brother Joe and Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway in our power trio Blue Coupe.

Reverb.com, the online marketplace for buying, selling, and learning about music gear, will launch the Official Bill Ward Reverb Shop on Wednesday, June 28. The shop will feature drumkits, drumheads, cymbals, and more gear used on tour and in the studio throughout the iconic heavy metal drummer’s career.

The June issue of Modern Drummer magazine features an interview with three-time Grammy Award–winning producer Russ Titelman who in his long career has worked with musical giants including Little Feat, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Brian Wilson, Cyndi Lauper, Graham Central Station, Rickie Lee Jones, George Harrison, Chaka Khan, the Bee …

Hello MD! Bobby Rydell? Yeah, that’s me! I was that teen idol guy in the early ’60s who sang all those pop hits like “Wild One,??? “Volare,??? and “Forget Him.??? You know, the one with the huge pompadour haircut who was always on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, and then got …

Hi MD drummer dudes and girls! This is a fun time in my career. After forty-nine years in the music business and touring the world many times playing arenas, stadiums, theaters, etc., I’ve reached a point where I can sit back and review my life of drumming and music….

Hi MD drummer dudes and girls! This is a fun time in my career. After forty-nine years in the music business and touring the world many times playing arenas, stadiums, theaters, etc., I’ve reached a point where I can sit back and review my life of drumming and music….

Here the on-the-move drummer talks with MD Online about his new record and shares his wisdom on swing mastery….

Over the course of his forty-year career traveling the globe to teach, perform, and conduct clinics, Dom Famularo has interacted with some of the finest drummers and drum instructors in the world. The following list contains many of those names, organized by country/continent. If you’re looking for top-notch drum instruction, …

Last Friday, March 20, longtime Twisted Sister drummer AJ Pero died in Poughkeepsie, New York, from an apparent heart attack while on the road with Adrenaline Mob.

The World’s Greatest Drummer Concert returns on Tuesday, May 26, 2015, at the Derngate Theatre in Northampton, UK. Since the first concert in 2007, the event has featured some of the finest drummers alive….

The 25th Annual Chicago Drum Show is shaping up to be another world-class percussion event. Organizer Rob Cook reports that every aspect of the show is on track to maintain the show’s status as a premier educational and entertainment event….

My name is Alex Mascarin, and I am a drummer in the band We Outspoken from Toronto, Canada. In this blog I would like share with you some of my drum setups and inspirations….

On Sunday, March 30th, some of the biggest names in drumming will come together for an afternoon you won’t forget. Russ Miller joins Ray Luzier, Mike Johnston, Greg Hutchinson and John Riley for the Drum Daze line-up.

Bombast. Explosions. Harnessing the energy of Bonham in a…reggae band? Hi, I’m Ian “Meat??? Miller, drummer for Spiritual Rez, a volcanic reggae/rock group out of Boston that brings the dance party like you’ve never seen.

In this video, drummer/actor Michael Chiklis takes Modern Drummer into his state-of-the art recording studio and performance space, which will be the hub for all his musical projects in the future. MD sat down for a two-part series with Chiklis at his home studio in Los Angeles, CA. Actress/drummer Pam …

anny Seraphine fueled a long list of classic tracks in his twenty-three years as a member of Chicago, inspiring generations of drummers in the process. Since returning in 2006 from a long performing hiatus, he has been grooving in peak form with his current band, CTA, as heard on its …

We asked the members of the MD Education Team to share their thoughts on how they prefer to tune their drums. Here’s what they had to say….

Hello, Modern Drummer readers, this is Frankie Anthony. I’m currently touring, writing, and rehearsing with my band mates in the Stick People….

Click here to check out a new Jazz Drummer’s Workshop article on the stick shot.

We asked the members of the MD Education Team if they think it’s important for their students to study jazz. Here’s what they had to say….

Question: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians? Answer: A drummer! With the prospect of being the butt of such drummer jokes, I have to ask myself the question, “Why did I choose to play drums????

Hey, all, Russell Simins from the one and only Blues Explosion here. I play drums and write music with bandmates Jon Spencer and Judah Bauer, two of the greatest guitarists I know, and I know a lot of them.

Hello, Modern Drummer readers. I last spoke to you in January. At that time, I was just beginning this Buddy Rich odyssey. We’re now getting ready to do our first extended tour, starting in mid-August.

We asked the members of the MD Education Team if they think that reading skills are crucial. Here’s what they had to say….

As Jane’s Addiction continues its successful Theatre of the Escapists tour, a new generation of fans is being hipped to the ecstatic tribal glam event that is a Jane’s show—and to the uniquely galloping drumming approach of Stephen Perkins. In the latest installment of Modern Drummer magazine’s Influences series, we …

Watch a drum battle between Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich from The Sammy Davis Show in 1966 in this video.

Noted jazz drummer, educator, and MD Advisory Board member Sonny Igoe has passed away, at age eighty-eight…

Need help getting a swinging hi-hat sound? Click to learn how.

Two drummers working it out, face to face—trading licks, contributing to a massive groove, spurring each other on—it’s one of the great musical traditions, and surely it goes back to the very invention of the drumkit at the beginning of the last century. This group of tunes focuses on tracks …

The father of modern drumming kept his bag of tricks safely hidden. Thank goodness his playing spoke for itself.

An interview with post-bop master Paul Motian, which ran in the April 2005 issue of Modern Drummer magazine.

Right up until his passing on October 11, Freddie Gruber was a source of deep and important knowledge for many top drummers.

MD Pro Panelist Daniel Glass on the magic of Deep Purple’s Ian Paice.

Shawn “Clown??? Crahan is best known as one of the percussionists in the metal-megalith that is Slipknot. But Crahan carries a rich drumming background into his new project, the Black Dots of Death.

More with the world-renowned right-hand man to rock’s singer-songwriter royalty, who is featured in the Different View column of this month’s issue of MD.

Read an excerpt from Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley’s brand-new book, Best Seat in the House: Drumming in the ’70s With Marriott, Frampton and Humble Pie.

My name is Joao Lencastre and I was born in Lisbon, Portugal. I started to play the drums at the age of thirteen. Since I started playing I’ve been collaborating with many different groups in all styles of music, including metal, reggae, Afrobeat, electronic, big band, alternative rock, and all …

Welcome once again to the MD Readers Poll, where the greatest drummers on the planet are honored by the most educated drum fans around. Let’s get right to it: the envelope, please….

Modern Drummer’s 2011 Readers Poll Hall of Fame inductee is the late drummer/educator Jim Chapin, who passed away in 2009.

Slingerland’s Radio King snare was revolutionary in that it made double-headed, tunable toms available to drummers for the first time.

by Bob GirouardIt seems that since Danny Seraphine made a comeback of sorts of the 2006 Modern Drummer Festival, he’s kicked the current phase of his drumming career into high gear, appearing at events like Drummers for Jesus, the 2009 Chicago Drum Show, and a Terry Kath tribute, and making …

Drumming pioneer, music retailer, author, and teacher Henry Alder was born in New York on June 28, 1915. His first professional playing job took place when he was fifteen years old at the Belmar Hotel in New Jersey. He subsequently worked in several pit orchestras in theaters, as well as …

Before Buddy Harman, there was no drumset on country music recordings. A true groundbreaker in the annals of drumming, after opeing up Nashville to the concept, Harmon went on to make nearly 20,000 records, including a plethora of hits with nearly every major artist of the genre. Harman grew up …

Jimmy Bralower was born to make records. The drummer started playing at a very young age, and by the time he was in his early teens, his first band, the Young Ones, had signed a deal with a major label. In the ensuing years Bralower worked his way from clubs …

Hello, my name is Jamie Miller. Like the rest of the entries on the site, I will begin by saying I have been a huge fan of Modern Drummer magazine for a very long time and am pretty stoked to be writing this! With that said, I will give a …

John Riley, one of the most respected drummer/educators of the past thirty years, was born in 1954, and began playing drums at the age of eight. At twelve Riley began playing in rock bands and was first exposed to jazz via the soundtrack to The Gene Krupa Story and Max …

I was born in Cuba, and at an early age I was mesmerized by the rhythms of the comparsa on the streets. After seeing the movie Don’t Knock The Rock, featuring Little Richard and Bill Haley & the Comets, I knew drumming would be my lifelong ambition and goal….

Though Barrett Deems was known as “the world’s fastest drummer”—resulting in his earning premier billing at Chicago’s Randolph Square in the 1940s and accolades from Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich—Deems’ effortless swing, solid time, and propulsive drive were the traits that enabled him to maintain a career over seven decades. …

Photo by Robert Alford Hello, fellow noise-makers! Well, we’ve just finished a new album that’s particularly close to my heart, Last Train Home. We had a couple of extra musos giving us a helping hand on this one. My older brother Colin is playing piano, and we don’t always get …

I don’t care so much about difficulty or technicality. I like style, passion, creativity, and all that kind of stuff. Here are some videos that always challenge and inspire me no matter how many times I watch them….

Hey everyone in Modern Drummer land! My name is Jason Hartless, and I come from The Motor City. I am fifteen years old and have been a drummer for all of my life. I have been fortunate enough to, by the age of fourteen, have already toured or performed with …

Bobby Rosengarden was a well-traveled and well-recorded drummer whose career spanned the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s and included work with musical giants such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Tony Bennett, Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, and Astrud Gilberto….

George Wettling was one of the leading proponents of the early “Chicago style??? of jazz drumming. A tasteful, imaginative, unobtrusive player, Wettling quickly built a reputation as the ultimate band drummer.

Chick Webb simultaneously defined drumming during the swing era, while also paving the way for the “modern??? jazz movement of the 1940s…

Cozy Cole, an incredibly adept player, was strongly rooted in the rudimental style, but he contributed much to jazz drumming…

During his illustrious career he worked with Steve Louis, The Tuxedo Jazz Band, Louis Nelson, The Maple Leaf Band, and the popular Fate Marable…

After leaving Oliver, Dodds worked with Freddie Keppard, Johnny Dodds, and Lil Armstrong, and later recorded with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Seven…

If anyone can be considered the founding father of modern drumset playing, it’s Gene Krupa. Krupa legitimized a collection of instruments known as the “traps??? at a time when both the instrument and its players were barely tolerated.

Buddy Rich has been called the greatest jazz drummer of all time—a statement that few would argue with.

The venerable drum teacher passed away this July 4, leaving behind thousands of acolytes–and a million great stories. In this companion to the In Memoriam in the October issue of MD, we hear from some of Chapin’s many friends and drumming disciples.

Talking with Perkins, you get the vibe that the L.A.–based rocker’s life is way more than hitting the skins for the duration of a show or recording session….

I am currently drumming for the band Nova, out of San Francisco. I'm gonna have to admit that I have an obsession with drums; all I do is think about drumming.

Decades after helping Fleetwood Mac become the biggest pop phenomenon of the ’70s, Mick is still keeping time like only he can.

The March issue of MD (out now) features Billy Ward’s fascinating conversation with Simon Phillips, Doane Perry, Marco Minnemann, Thomas Lang, and Jerry Marotta about the grooves that inspired them to play drums early on, and that continue to today. It seemed to make perfect sense for MD’s editors to …

My name is Nick Gimiliano and I have been the house drummer on PBS’s American Soundtrack series and most recently on the My Music series…

My name is Richard Hoak, and I’ve been playing drums since 1992. Currently I’m playing with Total F**king Destruction and with Brutal Truth.

My name is Richard Hoak, and I’ve been playing drums since 1992. Currently I’m playing with Total F**king Destruction and with Brutal Truth.

Just wanted to throw a couple things out there. I'm about to find myself back on television again, playing in the house band on The Bonnie Hunt Show.

The well-known drummer/teacher Dick DiCenso reflects on his sixty-year love affair with the drums…

While many only know Billy Bob Thornton as an Academy Award–winning actor, he’s in fact been a musician far longer, ever since growing up in Arkansas…

I, as you can read above, am Donnie Yale. I play drums in the NC band The Sammies. (NC is better b/c we are on top for all of you reading this in SC). Our sophomore album, Sandwich, is set for release on September 23….

As with most people around my age, my heroes were Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa (who both seemed to turn up regularly on variety television shows), Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, Mitch Mitchell…

The Dave Brubeck Quartet was the most popular jazz group of that time. “Take Five,” featuring a drum solo by Joe Morello, was a million-seller. This group toured the world playing concerts instead of location club gigs. I can’t think of one jazz group today that approaches the level of …

Prairie Prince was born on May 7, 1950 in Charlotte, North Carolina and has been a founding member of art-rock band The Tubes since 1969. He was also a major player in getting the band Journey off the ground, and over the years he’s worked with Brian Eno, Jefferson Airplane, …

Paving the way for some of the great studio musicians of our time, like Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, Jeff Porcaro, and John JR Robinson, were Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine. MD recently sat down with the jovial drummer to walk a bit down memory lane.

Over the years many have claimed the title “The Fifth Beatle.” When you think about it, original Beatle drummer Pete Best deserves the tag as much as anyone. The Beatles: The True Beginnings (St. Martins Press), Pete’s new book written with his brothers Roag and Rory, makes the case as …

The drumming legend gives his most revealing interview.

For more than fifty years, Tommy Perkins has devoted himself to performing as a full-time working drummer. At age fifteen he made his first recording as a Texas Playboy. That was the 1950 hit single “Faded Love” by Bob Wills.