John Coltrane
Modern Drummer is the world’s most widely read drum magazine, is dedicated entirely to the art of drumming and caters to the needs of amateur, semi-pro, and professional drummers.
Billy Higgins: The Shape of Jazz
Billy Higgins, who would come to play on more than five hundred albums, including three of the biggest jazz crossover hits of the 1960s (Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man,” Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder,” and Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance”), was born…
Drummer/Teacher Nucleo Vega
My name is Nuc, and I’m a drummer, educator, and Mel Bay author in the Washington, D.C., area. I’m working on a project that involves drum melody. Like my heroes Max Roach, Jeff Hamilton, Joe Morello, and Ari Hoenig, I’m…
Jimmy Cobb: Kind Of Blue And Beyond
Jimmy Cobb was one of the most popular drummers of the late 1950s. He began playing at an early age and found his influences among the bop pioneers. “Max Roach was the hippest music going,” remembers Cobb. “I also listened…
Rashied Ali : Coltrane’s Free Thinker
Rashied Ali was one of the progenitors of “free jazz” drumming, a stylization in which the typical guidelines and expectations of time and meter are ignored in favor of a looser approach that seeks to incorporate ideas of rhythm, melody,…
Philly Joe Jones: One Of The Greatest Hard Boppers
Philly Joe Jones is one of the greatest of the hard boppers. His contributions to the art of jazz drumming are immeasurable. He was a virtuoso with a pair of brushes, and a genius at turning the rudiments into fluent…
