During this past New Orleans Jazzfest, legendary New Orleans drummer Zigaboo Modeliste hosted “The Drummers Cometh” -an evening of great drummers live at the Howlin Wolf. Here is a clip I took of the band playing the Meters song “Africa” with Stanton Moore, Herman Ernest and Zigaboo Modeliste on drums. The show also featured New Orleans greats Johnny Vidacovich and Terence Higgins.
“Africa” – The Drummers Cometh – New Orleans – 2010 from Brian Griffin on Vimeo.
While on our last tour to New Orleans, Terence Higgins invited us over to his house for some tasty crawfish monica and taught me a few hybrid drum rudiments. Terence is a master New Orleans drummer who tours with many artists including the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and John Scofield, and is also the founder of the Louisiana Drumline Camp.
The first rudiment is called “Book Report” – and is a paradiddle (R L R R – L R L L) with some flams and doubles added as some spice: lRR L lR RR – rLL R rL LL
The second is called the “Cheeze” – and its a flam followed by a drag and played as triplets: lRR L R rLL R L. Terence also played this as “cheeze – diddles” – meaning that you cheese the first note of a regular paradiddle:
R L R R becomes lRR L R R etc.
I hope to post actual music notation for these in the near future. In the meantime…
me and Ben Mars with legendary bass player Jerry Jemmott
JMB with Gregg Allman
A solo drum improvisation: