Saturday, November 30, 2019

Flam Accent/Pataflafla Etude

Here's a little ditty I was fooling around with earlier today combining flam accents and pataflaflas.  I was almost immediately reminded of my drum corps days when any flam-based exercise would always be amped up a notch by adding drags and "cheeses".  At tempo this becomes a nice chop buster.


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Monday, November 04, 2019

Dig This - Jack Sperling playing brushes

I recently stumbled across this video of the great Jack Sperling playing some burnin' brushes with singer/guitarist Caterina Valente.  Jack spent the majority of his career as a sideman to some of the biggest singers in the biz; Tex Beneke, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Bobby Darin just to name a few.  He also did a fair amount of studio work, appearing on the soundtracks to big name films and TV like Peter Gunn, Rawhide, The Days of Wine and Roses, Bonanza, Charade, and Hogan's Heroes.

Caterina Valente was a lovely surprise for me.  I was not familiar with her before seeing this video.  She was born and raised in Paris, and at 88 years old it appears she still lives there.  Not only is she a killer guitarist and singer, but she does so in 11 different languages, and can actually speak six of them.  The interweb also tells me she's an actress and dancer, but I haven't checked that out as of yet.  What you should check out though is this video of her and Jack playing together on "That Old Black Magic".  Dig the big ol' Rogers kit, too.