The Drum Suite - Manny Albam and Ernie Wilkins

Chant Of Witch Doctors

The Drum Suite
A Musical Portrait Of Eight Arms From Six Angles
Manny Albam - Ernie Wilkins and Their Orchestra
RCA Victor LPM-1279
1956

From the back cover: There has never before been anything like The Drum Suite. It is a composition written for four jazz drummers.

The key word is "written." This is no extended extemporaneous assault on the battery by four exhibitionistic virtuosi trying to out-frantic each other. It is, instead, a series of melodic, swinging, carefully constructed sketches in which the drums share with – but rarely supersede – the horns and reeds in carrying out the development of the composers' ideas. None of the four drummers has a solo lasting longer than eight bars.

The idea of trying to involve four drummers in a composition that is, first and last musical, originated with RCA Victor's Jack Lewis, who had been brooding about the use of drums ever since RCA Victor released Voodoo Suite with Perez Prado and Shorty Rodgers (RCA Victor LPM-1101) last year. He took rough sketches of his idea to Manny Albam and Ernie Wilkins, both outstanding composers and arrangers. Albam, a reformed baritone saxophonist, has written for Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. Wilkins, until recently an adornment of Count Basie's saxophone section, has contributed numerous arrangements to the current Basie book.

One of their first decisions was that all the drum parts had to be completely written out. This was the first time that anyone had attempted to integrate four drummers in a jazz composition and both Albam and Wilkins were convinced that they couldn't let them loose on their own without creating hopeless confusion.

This meant that the drummers who performed the Suite had to be much more than simply good jazz men. They had to combine superior reading ability with a fully developed jazz feeling. Even their personalities were an important element, for they had to work together as a section where no personality conflicts could be tolerated.

The drummers picked for this demanding assignment were – inevitably – four of the top stick men working today: Osie Johnson, Gus Johnson, Teddy Sommer and Don Lamond. Osie Johnson, an arranger and singer as well as a drummer, has played with Earl Hines and Illinois Jacquet and is one of the most widely recorded drummers in the East. He was assigned the first drum chair. Gus Johnson (no relation) was in the Jay McShann band that included Charlie Parker, and is best known for his work with Basie during the early Fifties. Teddy Sommer, an impressive newcomer, has been heard with Les Elgart and Neal Hefti. Don Lamond was one of the stars of the greatest of Woody Herman's Herds and has been consistently in demand as a free-lance since 1949.

During the course of The Drum Suite one drummer is always keeping time (usually Gus Johnson) while the other three give him a back beat on sock cymbals unless they are taking solos. Only rarely do all four drummers play patterns together – usually very brief at the opening or closing of a moment.

The six movements are designed to show the drummers in six different contexts, to spotlight the virtuosity of the drums within a variety of musical frameworks. 

The first movement, Dancers On Drums, brings the drummers on stage one at a time, stepping out solo and ensemble patterns between passages by the band. After a pickup in tempo, the dancing drummers are spelled by swinging solos by Hal McKusick on alto sax and Joe Newman on trumpets.

They switch to brushes on the second movement, Bristling, which features a quartet made up of Joe Newman, trumpet, Hal McKisick, alto sax, Al Cohn, tenor sax, and Jimmy O'Heigho, trombone. The drummers do most of their brushing technique behind the quartet's solos unto all eight – four drums, four horns – bite into a series of short, responsive solos.

For Chant Of The Witch Doctor, the third movement, and Cymbalisms, the fifth, Albam and Wilkins have created some fascinating tonal colors (Albam wrote Witch Doctors, Wilkins did Cymbalisms). Witch Doctors had been planned as an exercise for mallets but when the drummers tried it out in the studio they found that they got a better effect by using the backs of their sticks. Over two-bar patterns played in this manner, the woodwinds – introduced by Al Epstein's English horn – set the mood that is carried along later by the jungle cries of Conte Candoli and Joe Newman in a tight, squawling trumpet exchange. The movement reaches a climax when Ray Beckenstein's wild piccolo comes soaring out of a mad, churning passage by the full band.

Wilkins also uses woodwinds, along with French horns, to get many of his effects on Cymbalisms, aa gentle, bouncing movement in which Buddy Jones' strong walking bass plays an important propulsive role.

Skinning The Values, the fourth movement, juxtaposes the drums and the trumpets with each man in both sections getting solo space.

The finale, The Octopus, brings the drummers together in a more traditional format which is made untraditional by the multiplication of four of what is normally a single drummer role.

Coda: When the studio was being swept out after The Drum Suite had been recorded a significant object was found on the floor in a far corner – a broken drum stick, gashed with teeth marks.

– John S. Wilson

From Billboard - September 29, 1956: An interesting experiment in this composition for four drums and big band. Osie Johnson, Don Lamond, Teddy Sommer and Gus Johnson are the soloists, and they give an impressive display of drum technique. It is, actually, a series of melodic, swinging sketches in which each drum's part is completely written out, and contributes solidly to the work of horns and reeds. This is a real tour de force for composers Albam and Wilkins – and jazz customers ought to respond with little prodding.

First Movement: Dancers On Drums
Second Movement: Bristling
Third Movement: Chant Of The Witch Doctors
Fourth Movement: Skinning The Valves
Fifth Movement: Cymbalisms
Sixth Movement: The Octopus