Philly Joe-Ism

In today's post we are going to be talking about learning and applying a great four-bar phrase from Philly Joe.  You can hear this phrase twice starting at 3:51 in the recording above, which incidentally is from the album "Kelly At Midnite" that I recommend everyone check out.

Two elements that make this "Philly Joe-ism" so great

This elegant phrase has two elements that make it particularly ear-catching.  The first and most obvious is the left-handed triplet that Philly Joe builds an exciting tom melody on top of.  The second is the way he paces the phrase so that it starts out relatively uncluttered before building to a climax in the sextuplets of the fourth bar.  Here is what it looks like on the page:

Philly Joe-Ism #1 (Skating)

The Philly Joe Beat

The Miles Davis Quintet

Miles Davis' first great band with Philly Joe on drums has become the standard for hard bop drumming.  Given the central role that this band plays in the history of jazz, it is important for every drummer to spend time listening and learning from the great Philly Joe.  If you haven't checked this group already, the epochal prestige recordings and the album "Milestones" are the best place to start. 

The Philly Joe Beat

In today's post we are going to be exploring one particular element of Philly Joe's playing that he popularized during his tenure with Miles, the Philly Joe beat.  This beat is a thick sounding cross-stick played on beat four that replaces the usual snare drum chatter, typically used during a piano solo.  In the example below from "Billy Boy" on the album "Milestones", Philly Joe starts playing the beat around 2:00.

Philly Joe: Conversation with the melody

For todays post I want to talk about another one of my favorite drummers and a way that he found to interact with the melody in a tasteful way.  Philly Joe is most famous for his playing with Miles Davis's first great group.  One of the things that made this group so influential was Philly Joe's ability to create a rhythmic dialogue with the melody instruments.  The following exercise from my forthcoming book "Melodic Syncopation" is designed to help you develop the ability to comp in the spaces of the melody or "in the cracks".

  
Suggested Recording
Sonny Rollins, “Tenor Madness”

Exercise #8:  Playing Time with Comping “In the Cracks”


    Step 1:  In this exercise we are going to explore a concept called playing “in the cracks” that is another central element of Philly Joe’s highly influential comping style.  Playing in the cracks means to play comping patterns only when a soloist leaves space in their solo.  This technique allows the soloist to play uncluttered lines, and lends itself to conversational back and forth between the soloist and the drummer.  This conversation often takes on the form and characteristics of call and response .  To develop this technique, you will practice singing the melody (the call), and only playing comping patterns (the response) during rests or notes held longer than a quarter note.