Lets all chip in... these days I work with a lot of newbies, it's a rare treat to get in someone great!

Simon Phillips - (passing drummer in the studio asked me, Jules? What's he playing the cowbell with? His d**k or what?) :eek:
I learned perhaps the most from the one week I was engineering for him, he made the studio owner I worked for, knock a hole in the pool table room wall, (to pass cables through) so he could do his drums in there..

Budgie - Astounding..His toms almost sound like timpani he has them tuned high... He has a HUGE collection of cool percussion, the Waterphone is my favorite - a metal urn with steel rods of different lengths welded to the side pointing upwards.. you fill it with water and scrape the rods with a violin bow.. it make an eerie noise like train brakes.... It gets used in a LOT of horror movies, like Dario Argento's SUSPERIA (awesome scary soundtrack and no doubt a strong influence on the Banshees) moving the water around makes the sound even MORE scary! It is disturbing to play!

Ray Weston - (Session Player, Works with Wishbone Ash now among many other jobs)

Steve Jackson (in a band called Wood, on Dawsons Creek album)

Drummer (??!) out of a new band called Ritalin (in a Disney movie soundtrack now)

Nick Van Gelder - first drummer for Jameroqui - Funky!

Kenny - Trevor - Karl Hussey - Keith Bloke

There is a little list

Hey! Salute the good drummers! They are few and far between.

:tu:

My short list would include:
David Hidalgo
Rick Marotta
Pete Thomas
Greg Morrow
Jeff Porcaro
Peter Erskine
and not necessarily in that order

"Mc" Rules!

:)

Peter Erskine is THE MAN! Jaco loved playing with him!

Ive got a friend that tells a story of Steve Gadd wreaking havoc on the tracking engineer by taking a bit of cellophane from a cigarette pack and crumpling it up right into an overhead...got a kick out of watching the engineer (did he hate this guy?) freak out as he tried to track down this "intermitent" noise in the rig. yikes.

Hehehehe!

I like it!

:)

In no particular order:

Anton Fig
Michael Cartellone
Lars Ulrich
Ken Mary
Tommy Lee

Working with Anton Fig was a hoot... but I wish the project had hired a "drum tech" as I really wasn't all that wild about the drum tunings.

Eric Parker is a fucking monster... I watched him turn a very mediocre bass player into a killer bass player (then the moron that was producing the album had Mr. Mediocre Bass Player redo his tracks in the control room... good bye killer bass groove, but Eric's tracks were still drop dead killer).

Mike Gage... he's from Dallas, his shit breathed really nicely. He would have me give him a click track at the beginning of the song, when he ended the 'count off', I muted the click track to his headphones... but recorded it anyway. The stuff he played felt so good it was stupid... and seeing as I recorded the click track for shits and giggles, brought it up a few times... he was on it like a fly on shit. Absolutely a magic week in the studio.

Joe Donnelly... he's just a great drummer and a fun guy to be around.

Probably my favorite drummer to record is George Recile. We've done a few projects together, most recently the project I'm working on at the moment [a band called Weed]. On this project he blew my mind... on two of the songs he decided that playing the kit would be inappropriate for the song... so the motherfucker goes out to his car and gets this cardboard box [no, I'm not kidding]... he played it with a pair of brushes then added some percussion stuff the next day. It took two really good songs and turned them into great recordings!! George is currently touring with Dylan, and while I didn't see any of the shows I've heard that Bob is actually moving and grooving on stage these days. If you saw Dylan's performance at the Grammys (tm), he had 101 fever (sick like a dog!!) and still went back and forth from a 'swing groove' to a 'funk groove'... as far as I was concerned it was the only part of the Grammys (tm) that was worth watching.

There have been a bunch of others over the years... but it's been a lot of miles and a lot of liquor so I can't really remember all the good ones... but these are some of the more special ones.

The shows I work are all live broadcasts, so I don't get to spend much "quality" time with the musicians.

But two drummers I've worked with stand out for their playing and understanding of the live medium:

Joe Morris, drumming for classical/flamenco guitarist Esteban. Joe's playing was absolutely fantastic.

Mike Baird, drumming for Kris Kristofferson. Mike has drummed for umpteen million bands and albums, and I instantly saw why Kristofferson wanted him. Impressive with either brushes or sticks.

Both Mike and Joe are two of the nicest musicians I've ever worked with, as well. :D

Most of the killer drummers I've worked with have been in SR settings. Dennis Chambers in a few settings, ditto Erskine & Adam Nussbaum. Al Foster, Art Blakey, Smitty Smith... hmmm pretty much a Jazz bunch eh? *l*

Some of you angelinos may know an Alsihad jockey named Mark Fuller who is a wonderful drummer in other realms, former student of Ustad Allah Rakah & Zakir Hussain who always brings a very thoughtful approach to arrangements.

Ustad Allah Rakah and Zakir Hussain are worth mentioning three times in a row!
Ted

Virgil Donatti

Joe Ascione

Peter Erskine
Louis Bellson
Mark Barrett--Las Vegas
And two local favorites.

Richard Ostheimer, who can play bongos with one hand, timbales or the kit with the other, and kick and hi hat with the feet all with different rhythms.

Ben Koostra who now lives in New York absolutely tasteful, with a complete command of music and sensitive to all styles.

My favorite studio drummers I worked with during my time with Merle Haggard were Jim Christy and George Recelli and of course the one time I tracked with John Robbinson was stellar as well although it was only on one tune... Biff Adams, Johnny Barber amd Jeff Ingraham were also very good in the studio with Merle. He used a lot of drummers over the years although my experiences were limited to my time with Haggard. There are so many great session drummers I hope to be able to continue to track with more greats now that Merle is no longer with us. I play keys and simple bass guitar with good feel, my favorite bassists are Lee Sklar, Willie Weeks, etc... Gary Lund, Dave Pomeroy... so many great rhythm sections out there!!

Hi Doug - that's great, although this thread has had no contributers until yours for over 15 years. Also, the original thread was about recording different drummers, and it's not clear from your post whether you were involved in that side of things.

If you were involved with the technical side of these recording sessions, what would be interesting for us are things like what microphone techniques you used, and how those varied with the different big-name drummers.