Bob Bell's Eulogy for a Drummer
As I and my friends go through our seventies and eighties, it should come as no surprise when one of us ‘shuffles off this mortal coil’. Such a happenstance as contemplated is a simple intellectual exercise, but when it does actually happen, as it surely must, it always comes as a surprise, jerking the mind and rousing the emotions.
What, death came a-knocking? Really?
Just such a thing occurred on Saturday, April the 9th. this year, when I got a 7.30 am call from Linda Rossi, wife of my old friend John.
‘Bob, Johnny passed away this morning’. It took a moment or two to fully comprehend this, to understand Linda’s words. John? Gone? ‘Yes, he had been poorly for a few days’, she said, ‘and this morning he slipped away’.
Just like that. After seventy-nine years John was off one another tour, he put on his traveling shoes and this time left for parts and venues unknown. No tour itinerary left on the kitchen table, and his drums and cymbals still in the closet.
I had first met John in the spring of 1980, when I walked through the door of the Downtown Cafe in Atlanta, Georgia. I had only been in Atlanta for a couple of nights. Indeed, I had only been in the states for a couple of months, and a long string of events that I won’t go into had brought me to this city.
Anyway, a band called Roomful of Blues was there that night. I had never heard of them. I guess they were about halfway through their first set when I walked in. It was both an amazing sight and an equally amazing sound. On the stage was an old baldheaded man playing a trombone, a pianist at an upright piano, a moustachioed young man slapping a double bass and a sweating muscular drummer behind a simple kit beating on a floor tom. The dance floor was packed, so packed that folks were dancing on the tables. Yeah, really, up on the tables. It was that sort of joint.
The tune came to an end and a guy, with a tenor sax slung from his neck, walked up to the mic and hollered, ‘Porky Cohen! Porky Cohen! The King! The King of the slide trombone’ and the crowd roared. The unlikely monikered Mr. Cohen blinked owlishly through thick-lensed spectacles, grinned and mouthed a thank you, and walked to the side of the stage, where he was joined by a trumpet player and two more sax players. A greasy-looking guitar player stepped up onto the other side of the stage, a cigarette in his mouth.
The band launched into a Guitar Slim tune, the horns churning out riffs like they came from a Specialty recording as the singer, who was also the tenor sax player, sobbed out the words to ‘Sufferin’ Mind’. The alto player took a long impassioned solo, traded a few bars with the guitar player who then took front stage and put out a blistering reverb-soaked statement of anguish. As the solo built and came to a close, the drummer emphasized the emotion with a relentless yet even pounding of the kick drum, building on the snare with an intensity that belied belief. Sweat poured down his face, his black hair matted, his arms a blur, and those horns churned and churned. My god, this was something else, this was the music I had grown up with, the music that I had never expected to hear in person, certainly not in 1980.
Tune followed tune, something from the Tiny Bradshaw book, something from Bobby Bland, another New Orleans-styled song, this time Lloyd Price’s ‘Where You At?’ with a gorgeously driving solo from the baritone player. Then they launched into a raucous tenor sax instrumental, with the singer playing the most straight-ahead rock and roll tenor sax you ever heard, full-toned, fat and sleazy, and that drummer, that mad drummer, swung the band with an intensity that had to be experienced to be believed.
The set ended, and laying down his sticks, the guy reached for a towel and wiped his face, got up from behind the kit, walked off the stage and headed to the bar. I approached him, and my words just came tumbling out - ‘Do you listen to Little Richard?’ He looked at me, face widening into a grin, a big incredulous grin, and he laughed. ‘Richard? Do I listen to Richard? Now right there, right there I gotta tell you, that guy is the man. That is rock ’n’ roll, I mean Little Richard? Shit - man you got the heart and soul of rock ’n’ roll right there’, and although we had never met before, there was an immediate understanding between the two of us, kind of like that transmission that happens between a zen master and a pupil, a communication, a meshing of souls if you like, and we sat down and yakked away about New Orleans rhythm and blues like we’d known each other all our lives. His name was John Rossi, and he was the heartbeat of this astonishing band.
Turned out Roomful was playing the club for three nights, and I went back each night. From Atlanta I followed them to New Orleans, yes, New Orleans, that Crescent City peopled by the ghosts of musicians long gone and the spirits and souls of current inhabitants and no doubt of those still to come, invisible harbingers of the future. The city just oozed funk and good times.
After the show there, Roomful drove off into the Louisiana night, headed for Texas. I stayed in town for a while.
As the summer went on, I stayed in touch with the band and by September I was in Rhode Island, the band’s base, and by winter’s end I had permanently moved from the UK to the states and joined Roomful, as publicist, driver, sound engineer, and ultimately became the band’s manager.
And so I was privileged to hear this amazing band every night. I mean just imagine, what a job!
And so I got to know John Rossi very well. I got to help him set up his drums every night, set his monitor, and learnt how to read his signals from the stage if there was a problem with his equipment. I found this to be quite amazing, sort of a lesson in applied schizophrenia, in that I’d get a nod from him, and I’d creep up to the drum riser, and with a glance he’d indicate a dangling mic or or a failing cymbal stand, all the while concentrating on whatever tune it was the band was playing, so he’s got his right foot pumping the bass drum pedal, the left one on the high hat pedal, he’s hitting the snare with his left hand, and shimmying the ride cymbal with his right hand in between playing accents on the other cymbals with the same hand - all these rhythms, counter rhythms, cross rhythms, each hand and foot keeping different time, and then after I had accomplished whatever task it was, he’d motion for me to come close and at the same time he was executing a press roll or a fill he’d mutter, ‘Get me some cognac, Bob, I’ve run out’ and all the while he’s never miss a beat, those muscular arms pumping, him holding the sticks by the tips, hitting the drums with the thick handled end - ‘you get more sound that way’ - his eyes bloodshot, red with sweat, one foot pumping the bass drum pedal, the other working the hi-hat, then shutting his eyes, surrendering to the power of the tune, the shuddering intensity of the moment, that point in time at which the heavens open and the gods smile, for ’tis true, these are the moments when the purpose of life is revealed, when the soul is bared, the eyes opened and the heart is gladdened.
John was the quintessential Rhode Islander. Born in Providence in 1942 to Italian American parents, he immersed himself in Italian culture, the streets of Federal Hill - the section that he grew up in - the cuisine, the language, the slang, the gestures. He could, and would, talk for hours about local characters, the gang life of local and national mafioso, the correct ingredients for the gravy - sauce to anyone non-Italian - appropriate to certain pastas, but in the end, the conversation would return to music. He’d grown up in the rock ’n’ roll era, the time when popular American culture had birthed what came to be known as rock ’n’ roll from jump blues, which in turn had come from swing, and so he instinctively understood the connection between swing and rock ’n’ roll and the way the drumming techniques had evolved over the decades, still with the emphasis on the shuffle. It was that sense of swing that put the roll into rock ’n’ roll. And it was that that had drawn me to his drumming that night in Atlanta, the way he played a shuffle. A shuffle with a backbeat. I hadn’t heard such authentic drumming in person in years, he played those tunes the exact way they were supposed to be played, and it was from there that everything else flowed. Truly, he really was the heartbeat of the band.
Turned out he had played on local bands during the later fifties, recorded with the Del-Rays in 1961. You can find their recording of ‘Scootertown’ on YouTube, the sound of nineteen-year-old Rossi is unmistakable. Local sax player Louie Camp hired him to join his band The Rockin’ Savoys, who were the best game in town in the early sixties, and John got a taste of what it was like to be a local celebrity. He hooked up with then rising young tenor sax titan Scott Hamilton in the Hamilton - Bates Blue Flames, playing swing, with local legend Fred Bates on guitar, and Preston Hubbard on bass. The band became something of a sensation in New England, breathing new life into a style that had been overlooked or forgotten for a while.
And then he got the call from Duke Robillard to join Roomful of Blues. Duke had started Roomful in the late sixties, first as a Chicago-styled band, and then, after hearing Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, had added horns and started to go in a more jump direction, a la Buddy Johnson, Tiny Bradshaw groove. Drummer Fran Christina had left Roomful and Duke needed to replace him.
In Roomful John found his home. He was in his natural habitat, the perfect environment. Playing the music he truly loved, with a three-piece horn section. What could beat that? Only the addition of trumpet and trombone, and in the manner of the happy endings that are destined to end all fairy tales, that happened later in the decade. The story of Roomful’s rise, from local to regional to national to international attraction need not be repeated again here, but let it be said that the band’s success was a team effort, led by the indomitable Duke on guitar and vocals, the triple threat sax section of Greg Piccolo, (who also sang), Doug James and Rich Lataille, Al Copley on piano, Eddie Parnigoni on bass and John in the engine room, giving out with that powerhouse sound. He played a vintage set of Slingerland Radio Kings, made in the thirties, with huge cymbals - a 24” ride and 22” crash - that were inspired by seeing fifties tenor sax star Red Prysock during a club appearance in Providence when John was a teenager. Prysock’s drummer was using a similar setup, and John was never able to get that mad wash of sound out of his head.
The thing with Roomful was that not just that they were all great musicians who played with feeling and a kind of elegant finesse, but that they were great to dance to. I mean, really great. The sixties and seventies had seen the advent of many different dances, mainly of the type that involved a personal reaction to the music, ‘interpreting’ the sounds the dancer heard, rather than contact dancing such as Lindy-hopping or swing dancing. This solo type of dancing came to be referred to by many as idiot dancing, and while I am not going to get into the accuracy of such terminology, let alone the ethics, there is no doubt that listing to Roomful encouraged dancing with a partner, and at the same time, showed how much fun that was. And who was the man that drove the band, who ultimately put those dancers out there on the floor?
Rossi, of course. His motto was ‘aim the beat at their feet’ and that was what he did. In doing that, he swung the band, he swung the floor, he swung the room, heck, with a big enough PA he would have swung the fucking nation. He was relentless.
Over the years, as we crisscrossed the nation over and over again, he influenced countless drummers. During the eighties and nineties, there was a huge blues revival taking place, fuelled by bands and small reissue record companies in Europe, and by emerging bands in the USA, who were bringing back erstwhile forgotten heroes from previous eras. Roomful had started hiring people like Helen Humes, Red Prysock, Big Joe Turner, Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson during the seventies, and continued to do so. Old-timers like Roy Brown reappeared, and Roomful’s shows with these truly legendary characters became legendary in themselves. Wherever Roomful played, local musicians would come out to catch the band, and marvel at the musicianship - and it was invariably Rossi that caught the real accolades. Sure, by the end of the seventies, Duke’s replacement Ronnie Earl had the guitar hero thing down, cigarette and pink suit and a tone to cry for, and the horns made the crowds shout for joy, but it was Rossi who was the not so secret sauce among the cognoscenti, it was Rossi who dominated the post-show critiques, it was Rossi who was responsible for the exhausted stagger of the sweat-drenched crowds as they made their way towards the exits after the last notes of the last encore echoed around the room and faded away.
You can go elsewhere and read about his influences. Earl Palmer, Panama Francis, Charles ‘Hungry’ William, Jimmy Crawford, Gene Krupa, and all the people he played with when with Roomful, such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Los Lobos, Robert Cray, B. B. King, Albert Collins … just think of a name from the blues world and it’s a good bet that at one time or another that musician sat in when John was putting down the beat.
I remember Albert Collins coming up to me in Houston one night after getting off the stand with Roomful. “Man’, he said, ‘if I had that band, I’d be a millionaire. And that drummer!’ His voice trailed off and he shook his head. ‘Man, that’s the real shit …’
And so John Rossi, I’ll always remember you, lying on your battered blue seat in that tired old bookmobile, that seat salvaged from the even more tired Chevy Suburban that we drove into the ground before graduating to the comparatively luxurious bookmobile, lying on that seat, not really long enough to properly stretch out on, a Rhode Island type tuna salad sandwich in one hand, a half pint of VO in the other, conversing with Porky about Jack Teagarden in that thick Federal Hill accent, so dense and impenetrable that I remember my son Andrew, after meeting with you the first time when he was fourteen, just off the plane from England and straight from the airport in NYC to a gig in New Haven, CT, listening to you, and then turning to me after you split for the stage, saying ‘Dad, I didn’t understand a word of what that man was saying’ … yes, John, I’ll remember you lying on that seat, your wig a little askew, eyes closed, trying to sleep, knees up in the air as we hurtled through the American night down that endless highway going god knows where, past truck stop neon signs flickering under the moon, the whizz and roar of anonymous cars passing us in the dark … yes John, I’ll remember you talking about the Lionel Hampton band, and how it was Hampton who really started rock ’n’ roll … yes John, I’ll remember driving home with you, just the two of us in the bookmobile, from Newport after a gig, with Fats Domino on the tape player, playing ‘La La’ over and over again, you beating out time on the dashboard, grinning, mad and excited … yes John, I’ll remember the way you’d grab your cymbals case, that huge 30” square road case, heavy and awkward as hell, and your snare, and stumble off the bookmobile, hunched up, into the morning gloom after an all night drive home, and wearily unlock your front door, home at last … and John, I’ll remember the night you got so hammered in Atlanta at the hotel bar on the day off before a long drive when the happy hour drinks never seemed to run out and we had to carry you onto the bookmobile, and yes, John, I remember us talking about Jimmie Vaughan and Stevie, and their comparative merits, and us saying, yeah, they are both great, but with Jimmie less is more, and so that is better, and then that same night we’d stand at the side of the stage watching Stevie, and we’d look at one another, and say, ‘you know what I was saying about Stevie a couple hours ago? Well forget it, he’s fucking great, no doubt at all, man what a sound’, … and yes John, I’ll remember you and I sitting up talking all night long in that motel in Berkeley, CA, that motel on University Ave, the one that Little Milton was staying at, and how we spent the entire night putting the world to rights, finally blinked into the morning light and the world was still as it was the day before, and yes John, I’ll remember you and your passion for music, your passion for the band, your passion, your passion.
I’ll never forget you, John Rossi. Thanks for the beat, thanks for being my friend, and thanks for the passion.
And thanks for the fun ... it was a great time. It really really was.
