Skin Beating (Or What I Learned From Buddy Rich)

By the time my cartoons were interrupted by some old guy saying President Kennedy was shot in Dallas on the black and white TV, my fascination with percussion was already well-established. I was pounding on upside-down coffee cans with pencils, pissed that death interfered with my fun.

So when I learned that my high school hero, Buddy Rich, would be playing at a club on Route 35, there was no way in hell I was going to miss seeing him in person. Other people had pictures of cars or older women on their bedroom walls. I had a picture of Buddy Rich.  Don’t judge me.

buddy rich

Somehow, I managed to wend my way up front to the low stage, where his bass drum was perched at the very edge. I was inches from him, watching in utter amazement as his hands did things no other human hands had done since Gene Krupa got caught smoking dope.

As Buddy (we were on a first name basis in my head) was doing a solo, I uttered aloud the words, “how do you do that?”  And then a miracle happened. Without missing a beat, he looked at me, straight in the eye, and said these words:

Do something hard and make it look easy, or do something easy and make it look hard.

He then tilted his ride cymbal just enough to let me see that what looked like an impossible feat of moving his right hand faster than humanly possible, was an illusion. Beneath the cymbal, where no one could see, he was using his left hand as well, doubling the beat.  It was brilliant. And, lest one think he wasn’t legit, even with both hands working he was still doing better than any other drummer ever.

After the song ended, Buddy handed me his sticks. I, a teenaged drummer of no particular repute, had Buddy Rich’s drum sticks. Sex would not have been better, which tells you how much of a drum nerd I was back then.  Of course, they meant less to my mother, who threw them away when she cleaned my room after I went to college.

But the words he told me that day have stuck with me ever since.  Not that they have any particular application to the practice of law, but more as a life lesson.

Any endeavor that involves conveying an impression to others is, to some extent, a performance.  When we stand before the jury, we perform. When we have an initial interview with a client, we perform.  Marketers will describe this as selling oneself, but that’s only because they are obsessed with what they have to offer. Hammer/nail sort of thing.  But this trivializes the point.

Buddy Rich wasn’t just a guy with a drum set. That would have been me. No, he was a guy who could play that drum set better than anyone else, including Ginger Baker.  Had Buddy Rich been a phony, a fraud, the message would have been meaningless.  It would have been a lesson in how to lie your way to prominence from someone who didn’t have the chops to back up the mouth.

Buddy Rich had the chops.

It all starts with having the chops.  Without them, the advice meant nothing.  I pounded the skins, having had the good fortune to have a drum set by high school in place of Maxwell House cans.  I practiced. Hard. A lot. And practiced some more.  After a while, I got pretty good at it, enough so that I harbored a delusion that I might actually have a future playing drums. My particular flavor was timpani, aspiring to play Beethoven for Von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic. But I kept busy with our garage band, as well, because chicks digged drummers.

One day, it occurred to me that there was one thing I was not: Buddy Rich. I had the will, but not the way. So I went on to become a lawyer, a role to which my chops were better suited.

And the lesson offered at that club on Route 35 began to make sense to me, after about a dozen years, though the part that Buddy left to me to figure out was that there was no way I could put it to use until I had developed the skills to be capable of putting on a performance in the first place.  After that, it was up to me to make it happen.

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25 thoughts on “Skin Beating (Or What I Learned From Buddy Rich)”

      1. losingtrader

        Good thing you explained the story, because from the title alone I was wondering if CPS should have been called.

  3. Jake DiMare

    I played the drums for a popular big band in Boston as a teenager. When it came to that over the top style I was always been more of a Louie Bellson fan but I think he was BR’s teacher?

    For my money it was all about Gene Krupa and his performance of Sing Sing Sing at Carnegie hall in 38 or 39. I got the opportunity to recreate this moment while driving an 18 piece on a packed summer booze cruise on Boston Harbor when I was about 16 years old and it was one of the most memorable moments of my life.

    Ultimately, my grandfather convinced me life as a musician would be planning for poverty and drug addiction. So I learned to program computers.

    -Jake

    1. SHG Post author

      Bellson was never Buddy Rich’s teacher. That’s heresy. They were contemporaries, and nothing personal, but Buddy drummed circles around Bellson.

        1. SHG Post author

          Of course. Anyone who would think Bellson taught Buddy Rich would naturally favor Mitchell over Baker.

          1. Grum

            Well, I thought Michael Shrieve beat Baker & co back in the 60’s, but Rich was brilliant and the OP stands. I loved the “quote” is his obits where, on one of his hospital admissions, he was asked if he was allergic to anything, and he answered, “yeah, country and western music”. A man after my own heart.
            Lovely stuff Scott – this is why I follow this blog.

            1. Grum

              And a mile away from fireworks, there is some guy padding away on the brushes – look up “Django’s Dream” on youtoob; transcendent man!

  5. Wrongway

    “After a while, I got pretty good at it, enough so that I harbored a delusion that I might actually have a future playing drums. My particular flavor was timpani, aspiring to play Beethoven for Von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic. But I kept busy with our garage band, as well, because chicks digged drummers.”

    As a Guitarist I have a Question: If chicks ‘dig’ drummers, & you figured that out in a garage.. did ya think they’d still ‘luv’ ya in a Bow Tie & a Cummerbund after you’d just performed the Beethoven for Von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic??

    ” Wow!! This is how Paul & Ringo must’ve felt after the show.. “

  6. Fubar

    Do something hard and make it look easy, or do something easy and make it look hard.

    [I was never a drummer except for one unfortunate incident that became fortunate immediately. One night I substituted on bass drum in a junior high school marching band. I played woodwinds, but one football game night they needed a bass drummer for the halftime show. I could count, so I got elected. In its own way, it was a rich learning experience, even without benefit of Rich’s excellent advice at the time.

    The bass drum was almost as tall as I was, strapped on shoulders the usual way, skins to sides, for marching. I tripped while marching onto the field in ordinary column formation. Somehow I executed a complete face first roll over the drum, and back on my feet, in step and in time with marching cadence alongside the snares. Didn’t even lose my hat. Good thing it wasn’t a Shako.

    Spectators thought it was part of the halftime show. I suppose it was, post facto. Thus began and ended my drumming career.

    But I am surprised that Sam Woodyard didn’t even get honorable mention here. Recording of his performance with Ellington at Newport, 1957 sure got my attention at the time.
    ]

  7. the other rob

    Any love for Bill Buford here? I’m not particularly a drum aficionado, but he’s the only reason that I’ve ever gone to a jazz gig.

      1. the other rob

        Would that change if I spelled Bill Bruford’s name correctly? Apologies for the stupid error.

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