The next tune in the medley I mentioned the other day was Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds". The groove here is known as a "one drop". In fact, the drummer on this track, Carlton Barrett, is one of the drummers credited with creating the one drop beat. The groove is pretty consistent, so I didn't bother writing out the whole tune, but there is a lot of subtlety going on with each bar varying ever so slightly, particularly with regards to how many notes he's playing on the hi-hat. So, I went through and jotted down some of the different ways he phrases the groove. In the case of the this sheet, parentheses aren't ghost notes, but rather are optional. For example, the first bar on the sheet appears many times in the recording, but sometimes you'll hear 1e&a, while other times only 1&a. As the tune goes on there is a bit more variation and density.
Among other things, I noticed that the 16th notes don't swing as much as one might think they do. The tambourine adds a lot of the bouncy swing, and if you're playing without a percussionist perhaps you should take this into consideration, but you don't necessarily have to put as much shuffle on it may seem.
There are NO crashes. None. And I think this is an important part of the sound. The fills lead straight back to the groove with no cymbal punctuation. Resist the urge to play them. Use open hi-hats instead.
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