We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
This is one of those LPs that nobody in Central Wisconsin heard at the time. No one was really playing jazz records here. Even ones as funky as this.
You may not know the name Bernard “Pretty” Purdie but I guarantee you have heard him play. He was Aretha’s bandleader and a couple of tunes on here are tributes to the Queen of Soul.
He may be the most recorded drummer in history, inventing what became known as the “Purdie Shuffle” which you can hear on all kinds of songs. Plus other drummers picked it up too.
Here’s a couple of tunes from Steely Dan that he played on…..
He recorded with so many great artists…Wilson Pickett, John Lee Hooker, Herbie Hancock, Larry Coryell, Les McCann & Eddie Harris, Herbie Mann, Gil-Scott Heron, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Roberta Flack, BB King, Cat Stevens, Bette Midler, Joe Cocker, Todd Rundgren and on and on.
Plus he did lots of albums, like this one,as a bandleader as well.
For those of you who are drummers, here is how his style is described on Wikipedia…
Purdie is known as a groove drummer with immaculate timing who makes use of precision half note, backbeats, and grooves.[2] Purdie’s signature sixteenth note hi-hat lick pish-ship, pish-ship, pish-ship is distinct.[6] He often employs a straight eight groove sometimes fusing several influences such as swing, blues and funk. He created the now well-known drum pattern Purdie Half-Time Shuffle that is a blues shuffle variation with the addition of syncopated ghost notes on the snare drum.[19] Variations on this shuffle can be heard on songs such as Led Zeppelin‘s “Fool in the Rain“, the Police‘s “Walking on the Moon“, and Toto‘s “Rosanna” (Rosanna shuffle).[19][20] Purdie plays the shuffle on Steely Dan‘s “Babylon Sisters”[21] and “Home At Last”.[19]
The 1972 album Soul is…Pretty Purdie had some reallg great tracks, many featuring the soulful sax of Charlie Brown. In fact, my favorite tracks on the album all feature Brown’s sax work. “Good Livin, Good Lovin”, “Heavy Soul Slinger” and covers of Aretha’s “Day Dreaming”, a melding of Whats Goin On and Aint No Sunshine, and a fantastic cover of “Put It Where You Want” (A Joe Sample song that the Crusaders had recorded in 1971).
Put it on a check it out and learn all about “the Purdie Shuffle”
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