http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151008-six-neglected-drummers-who-deserve-recognition

By Greg Kot

8 October 2015

“Give the drummer some!” James Brown once demanded, but drummers often don’t get enough attention and acclaim.

Though singers and lead guitarists are celebrated by the hundreds in rock annals, drummers are often turned into punch lines (‘How do you get a drummer off your porch? Pay him for the pizza’). The ‘name’ drummers are few: John Bonham, Keith Moon, Charlie Watts, Dave Grohl, Ringo Starr, maybe Levon Helm of the Band and Questlove from the Roots.

Heed the words of noted sage Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, who once said, “A band is only as good as its drummer”. Keith Richards agrees. He’s said many times that The Rolling Stones exist only so long as Watts is playing drums. And Led Zeppelin broke up rather than carry on after Bonham’s death in 1980.

It’s only fitting that from 16-18 October, the Stax Museum in Memphis will pay tribute to one of these relatively unsung heroes with a weekend-long celebration of Al Jackson Jr’s career. Jackson, who was murdered by a home invader 40 years ago on 1 October at the age of 39, left behind a huge legacy with his work in Booker T and the MG’s at Stax and on many of Al Green’s greatest hits. Yet even for many music fans, he’s just a name in the liner notes.

Jackson’s style – playing slightly behind the beat and bringing a jazzy sense of swing – didn’t call attention to itself, but it defined countless Southern soul classics, from Sam and Dave’s Soul Man to Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness. At Hi Records in Memphis in the ’70s, he was producer Willie Mitchell’s collaborator on landmark Green albums such as Call Me and Let’s Stay Together.

“I always ride the drums and the bass,” Mitchell told Rolling Stone in describing the essence of his hit-making sound. “They're like the wheels of the car; the rest of the instruments are secondary."

Jackson’s lack of widespread fame, despite playing an indelible role on countless hits spanning two decades was due in part to his efficiency in the studio. He was simply too busy working recording sessions to tour frequently. Unlike the singers he supported, Jackson didn’t have his face on album covers and rarely showed up on stage. Yet when Redding played the biggest gig of his life, at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, he insisted that Jackson and the rest of the MG’s back him up. Redding ratcheted up the energy as he vamped on Jackson’s machine-gun rolls during I’ve Been Loving You too Long (to Stop Now), a show-stopping moment that galvanized the ‘love crowd’ that was seeing Otis for the first time.

Jackson is far from the only drummer who played a crucial, if largely anonymous role in shaping music history in the last half-century. Here a half-dozen brilliant drummers who played on countless classic recordings but remain in the shadows of stardom:

Benny Benjamin: Funk Brother No 1 was the special sauce in so many of Motown’s classic recordings. Benjamin served the song rather than his ego, an extension of his training in big-band jazz. His explosive fills lifted tracks such as the Temptations’ Get Ready to ecstatic heights.

Roger Hawkins: The rhythm section at the Muscle Shoals studio in northern Alabama was a hit factory in the ’60s and ’70s, and Hawkins was the drummer on singles by Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon and Rod Stewart, among countless others. He turned his trap kit into an orchestra of groove on the Staple Singers’ Respect Yourself.

Jim Keltner: The Oklahoma-born session pro’s reputation was cemented in the ’70s when John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr all called upon him to work on their post-Beatles albums. His inventiveness was framed by an economical precision that provided a foundation for key recordings by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Steely Dan and the Traveling Wilburys, where he was dubbed Buster Sidebury.

Joseph Zigaboo Modeliste: A founding member of the Meters and the Wild Tchoupitoulas, Ziggy was the heartbeat of New Orleans music. He may not have invented the art of syncopation, but he certainly perfected it, as the myriad hip-hop artists who sampled him will attest.

Bernard Purdie: He provided a bridge between R&B and rock ‘n’ roll on a string of New Orleans classics in the ’50s with Fats Domino, Little Richard and Lloyd Price. Then he moved to Los Angeles where he collaborated with Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman and Phil Spector, for whom he blew open Ike and Tina Turner’s majestic River Deep, Mountain High.

Clyde Stubblefield: The virtuoso shouted out by James Brown in Funky Drummer played one of the most sampled drum breaks ever, and contributed to countless funk masterpieces, from Cold Sweat to Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud. His sticks laid the foundation of hip-hop.