Chico Hamilton

Dancing To A Different Drummer is a solo record by Chico Hamilton, made in New York in the spring of 1993 and released by Soul Note in 1994. There is no band: Hamilton plays drums, tympani, slapaphone, tambourine and gong, and adds his voice. He was then past seventy. His career ran from teenage Los Angeles bands with Charles Mingus and Dexter Gordon to the original Gerry Mulligan Quartet. From 1955 he led his own quintet with cello, flute and guitar, the band seen in Sweet Smell Of Success and Jazz On A Summer's Day. In his National Endowment for the Arts interview he describes taking the bottom heads off his drums and playing low on the kit, details that matter on a record where the drums are the only voice.

The sessions took place on March 27 and 28 and April 2, 1993 at Master Sound Astoria in Queens, recorded by David Merrill, with Hamilton as producer and Giovanni Bonandrini as executive producer. The ten pieces last about forty minutes, most between two and six, several of them named for a single part of the kit. Tap Drums, Cymbals Of Love, Waltz Of The Mallets and The Snare Drum say it in their titles, and Dance Of The Tympanies, the longest at over six minutes, turns to pitched drums. Mr. Jo Jones is named for the drummer Hamilton studied with during his army years, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Universal Language Of Man and In The Beginning frame the set.

This is the Soul Note CD 121291-2, first released in 1994.