Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Drummer Shelly Manne’s work as a leader and sideperson exhibits his refusal to be pigeonholed.
(Photo: Dave Pell/DownBeat Archives)A case can be made that no other drummer of his era had, in today’s parlance, a stronger “brand” than Shelly Manne. A consummate studio artist, he resisted the pyrotechnics of Buddy Rich, Max Roach and Elvin Jones, but when his name was attached to a project, listeners could bank on its inventiveness, quality and widespread appeal.
The head spins when reading through the discography of this astonishingly prolific artist, who was born in New York in 1920 and died in Los Angeles 64 years later. Manne played in the bands of Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie, and he was a key figure in the umbrella movement known as West Coast jazz, leading various groups.
Iconic recordings on which he played drums include Coleman Hawkins’ “The Man I Love” and Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West. He also recorded a series of trio albums with pianist André Previn, and wrote and recorded music for TV and films. Albums by Ella Fitzgerald, Art Pepper, Nancy Wilson and Tom Waits all benefited from Manne’s artistry.
For all his achievements—including his stewardship of a club he dubbed Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood—Manne still might be underappreciated today. But many of his leader albums—including The Three & The Two, a pairing of trio and duo performances from the early 1950s, and 2-3-4, a 1962 album featuring Hawkins—are keenly appreciated by modern players.
And though The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz figures that Manne was “opposed to ostentatious displays of technical skill,” his playing still can inspire awe today.
“He had a really amazing groove and cymbal beat,” said drummer Matt Wilson. “But it was the way he integrated his playing with the ensemble, making it part of the fabric of the song, that really made him special. And his imagination was boundless.
“I was recently listening to a Vic Damone recording of ‘Am I Blue,’ not knowing who the drummer was. He was playing in an orchestrated fashion with brushes and hands. And then I instantly knew it was Shelly, because who else could have created this beautiful moment by gently hitting the cymbal with his thumb?”
Though Manne spent most of his career in the middle lane of jazz, he always kept his ears open to possible new directions. His 1956 LP My Fair Lady is regarded as the first instrumental jazz album devoted to songs from a single Broadway show, and it was voted the top jazz LP in DownBeat’s Disc Jockey Poll.
Other mainstream artists wanted nothing to do with the “new” jazz, but Manne embraced it. He’s the drummer, lest we forget, on Ornette Coleman’s 1959 LP Tomorrow Is The Question!
“He refused to be pigeonholed, to be associated only with certain things,” Wilson said. “In remaining open, he had the same spirit as Coleman Hawkins.”
One of Manne’s boldest achievements was the unjustly obscure 1963 album My Son The Jazz Drummer!—Modern Jazz Versions Of Favorite Jewish And Israeli Songs, featuring trumpeter Shorty Rogers, saxophonist Teddy Edwards and other luminaries. Reissued on CD in 2004 under the title Steps To The Desert, the program anticipated the Jewish music adaptations of such modern artists as John Zorn, Uri Caine, Don Byron, Frank London and David Krakauer.
Manne pushed in yet another direction with his “vaguely African music” (as Steely Dan’s Walter Becker described it to Guitar Magazine) for the TV show Daktari, which ran from 1966 to 1969.
“Many years before the coining of the term ‘world music,’ Shelly was hip to its possibilities in jazz,” said pianist Bill Mays, whose 1983 album, Tha’s Delights, featured the drummer. “He played all kinds of percussion instruments including berimbau [a Brazilian musical bow]. It was really hip then and, like Shelly, it’s just as hip now.” DB
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
Butcher Brown, clockwise from top left: Marcus Tenney, DJ Harrison, Morgan Burrs, Corey Fonville and Andrew Randazzo. (Keyboardist Harrison couldn’t make the gig, so special guest Jacob Mann sat in with the band at the Reno Jazz Festival.)
Aug 19, 2025 12:41 PM
The band known as Butcher Brown has enjoyed the last half-decade basking in the glow from the twin engines of critical…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 1:31 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
