I bought myself a Christmas present (to me, with love, from me) called
Compact Jazz: Chick Corea In The Seventies.
It's GREAT - it features amazing drumming by Steve Gadd, Lenny White, Airto Moriera, and Grady Tate. It reminds me why I'm glad I learned to play in the 70's (and also why I'm so underwhelmed by a couple of "drum gods" that many people who were not exposed to any fusion music think are so impressive these days.)
I basically bought the CD for one song:
Humpty Dumpty - a burning jazz tune off an out-of-print CD called
Mad Hatter. It's some of the most brutal drumming Steve Gadd has ever done. Ever.
But the disc has some of my OTHER favorite Gadd stuff;
Night Sprite and
Lenore from the
Leprechaun CD (the latter of which has one of the coolest linear grooves ever devised), and
The One Step - my favorite swing-oriented Gadd tune of all time - from the
Friends CD.
Lenny White kills on this CD, too, on a few
Return to Forever tracks. And Grady Tate plays more intensely than I've ever heard him. Airto brings his unmistakable style to one cut from the
Light as a Feather album.
All in all, this is an awesome find. Badass drumming out the yingyang, and only one or two tunes that don't totally kill me.
You can find this at half.com or through one of the Amazon-affiliated stores - you'll probably only find used copies, but because it's not a real popular disc, it'll probably be CHEAP!
Check it out!
