Got the news that Louis Bellson and Joe Cuba have died.
I don’t know about the West Coast, but back in the 60’s Joe Cuba with hits like “Bang Bang” and “El Pito” rocked our dance clubs and high school gyms.

Louis Bellson? Well he should have been part of the conversation we had a few weeks back on “Drummers/Percussionists”.
Anyone interseted, see http://louiebellson.info/news.html.
Just thought I’d share

Wow, I didn’t know Bellson passed away. He was one of my top three
favorite drummers of all time. A huge influence on many other
drummers (like Billy Cobham and Lenny White). I still shake my
head in dibelief when hearing his extended solos. I always wondered
how a human being could play like that.

Amazingly, he had a new CD out last year. He just didn’t want to
stop playing music.

A true giant of percussion - he’ll be missed.

Not at all to be funny, but I was surprised that he was still alive! Of course I share my respect for his musical contributions and I wanted to share a memory with you all.
Back in the early eighties I took a class or two at the Eastman School Of Music. One night a bunch of us went to one of the great shows they have there. Check out the line-up we saw!:
Lionel Hampton on Vibes, Teddy Wilson on Piano, Ray Brown on Bass, and Louis Bellson-Drums. No letdown either! One thing I remember was at one point Ray Browns’ bass actually fell from his riser down to the one below and he just picked it back up on the lower riser and started bumping with Lionel without missing a beat. (well maybe a few beats).
R.I.P. Louis...................

[TheDukester] Louis Bellson? Well he should have been part of the conversation we had a few weeks back on “Drummers/Percussionists”.

Except that that discussion as I remember it was supposed to be about big bands.

[DavePolich] A huge influence on many other drummers (like Billy Cobham and Lenny White).

I’m guessing in respect to Billy Cobham at least that this has something to do with the double bass drums.

[slagthorb] Lionel Hampton on Vibes, Teddy Wilson on Piano, Ray Brown on Bass, and Louis Bellson-Drums.

I just watched some youtube video of him, great stuff. Early double bass drum user for sure, I wonder if there many others doing the same at that time. I could watch drum solos all day long, unfortunately its something todays culture quickly gets bored with.

Thanks for the thread, I didnt know of him until now.

Yeah Scotch, it was indeed a great show; and ridiculously cheap with a student I.D. card as I recall. We saw many shows that way: Spyro Gyra, Chuck Mangione, Renaissance (remember them?), and on and on..........

Renaissance (remember them?)

Not really. The name is registering faintly in a remote part of my brain, such as it remains, but that’s all. (Can’t pretend to think highly of Spyra Gyra, but I was pleasantly surprised with Chuck Mangione when I very belatedly saw him.)

Spyro Gyra was one of my favorite “Smooth Jazz” groups.  I first got to see them live when I was a summer intern at IBM in Raleigh, NC about 20 years ago.  Heck, they’ve been going strong for 30 years now.  Can’t think of many bands that have as long a discography as they…

We have a Chuck Mangione tune in our Big Band reportoire.  I only wish I could play soprano even remotely as good as the guy on his recording that was playing in the Altissimo for a good chunk of it…

The watering-down of fusion started very soon after Miles Davis’s forays into the genre and the formation of the original Mahavishnu Orchestra (whom I saw in the summer of 1973) and the original Weather Report (I saw a later version of Weather Report with Jaco Pastorius). Spyra Gyra was one of the worst offenders of their precise debut time, but not one of the earliest offenders over all. There’s no question that Jean-Luc Ponty was pandering when I saw him a few months before the (free) Teddy Wilson concert I mention above, and in that connection it’s not even worth mentioning Jeff Lorber (whom I saw maybe several months afterward). One (subjective) difference is that I’ve actually avoided a Spyra Gyra performance when I happened to be right there on the scene and attending wouldn’t have cost me a cent. (Of course it’s possible that I might have ended up with a higher opinion of the group if I hadn’t avoided their concert.)

Chuck Mangione cracked on “Feel So Good” when I saw him, and I wondered why he didn’t just take the thing down a step or so. My brother contends the audience would have noticed and subliminally objected. (I didn’t mind the cracking, by the way--makes it real.)