James Gadson
Whereas I love some drummers for their rambunctiousness and unpredictability, I (and probably every drummer you’ve ever heard) love Gadson for his simple steadfastness. Absolute unflappable coolness. This clip from Old Grey Whistle Test in 1972 epitomizes that. (I gotta mention the original recording was Al Jackson Jr., but Gadson made it his own when he joined Bill’s band.) No flash (except on his tooth), absolutely connected to Bill and to the groove, to what feels good in our bones.
I got to meet Gadson in 2009 when I was a teenager. Wilco was covering Skip Spence’s Oar for Beck’s Record Club, and Beck worked a lot with Gadson back then. He had his drums at Sunset Sound, the same drums that Jeff Parker just mentioned in his eulogy and which Gadson had had for decades. [Actually, they were his pre- “disco kit” drums, but you can see both in Jeff’s post.] The heads were covered in blood, no doubt from gigs and sessions stretching back longer than I’d been alive. He was so kind to me, including up until a few weeks ago, when the Tweedy band invited him to our show in LA and he told us he’d love to come but he’d hurt his back. He had the time of day for us and for young ’uns who wanted to record with him like Kelly Hogan, D’Angelo, and the Vulfpeck people.
I think the biggest thing he contributed to the life of musicians and music lovers all over the world is Charles Wright’s Express Yourself (on which he plays on all but a few songs). There’s the title track that people have sampled over and over again, and that groove matters a lot—it’s one of the funnest, highest-energy things ever put down to record. But I think the last track, “Comment (If All Men Are Truly Brothers),” matters even more to me.
The moment where Gadson SMACKS the snare, leading into that chorus (“somebody please second my emotion”), startles me every time. The song makes me cry, not just because of the message of love (which we need right now, as much as at the time it was written), but also because Gadson made that love piercing.
I hate to think he was looking forward to getting better and getting back to work. Doing more sessions, lending himself to artists in LA like he’d done since the early seventies. But I know so many people will carry his records forward, and his feel will be a part of anyone who ever hears American music.
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