Advanced Funk Drumming

An essential force in the West Coast Jazz scene of the ’50s and ’60s, drummer/bandleader Chico Hamilton possessed a subtle yet immensely creative style that would come to define the cool jazz movement. After getting his start drumming for the likes of Charles Mingus while still in high school in Los Angeles (Hamilton’s hometown and the epicenter of cool jazz), he went on to work with legends like Count Basie, tour as Lena Horne’s drummer, and become a charter member of baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s highly influential quartet. In a rare move for a drummer in the ’50s, Hamilton founded his own quintet in 1955 and instantly achieved major success, with the Chico Hamilton Quintet quickly emerging as one of the most popular jazz groups of the time — and later gaining recognition as one of the last important West Coast Jazz bands in music history.

Increasingly, and especially in a day and age where music is so widely and readily available thanks to advanced technologies, when a company or act wants to make a good box set, it had better deliver. To its credit, Beggars Banquet did just that with Rare Cult, an astoundingly comprehensive and entertaining collection that packs in 90 tracks over the course of six discs…

During the final years of the 20th century, then Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy founded an instrumental prog rock supergroup with guitarist/bandmate John Petrucci, keyboardist Jordan Rudess (then of Dixie Dregs), and King Crimson bassist/Chapman Stick master Tony Levin. They issued two highly acclaimed studio outings and toured through 2008. Apparently, the mandatory downtime imposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic provided the individuals with the necessary scheduling space to write and record together for the first time in 22 years. Socially distanced in a New York studio, the band composed and recorded LTE3 in July 2020…