Back in college, one of my roommates got a live Chuck Mangione vinyl record as a gift from our other roommate (roommate A was the only one in the house with a turntable, while roommate B found the LP at Goodwill). The album is Tarantella, and when I looked at the credits on the sleeve, I saw that the drummer on the record is none other than Steve Gadd. He gets a pretty cool showcase on a tune called “The XIth Commandment.”
Don’t feel like a square if you’ve never heard of this album before, because it hasn’t made it onto any streaming sites and doesn’t seem to have even made it to CD, just vinyl and cassette (you can at least stream a vinyl rip on YouTube).
Some people have already transcribed parts of Steve’s playing on the Tarantella album, such as this video, as well as that famous Steve Gadd transcription book from the 80s. It’s very interesting how this now-obscure album seems to have a special place for many drummers from back in the day.
Anyhoo, the studio rendition of “The XIth Commandment” (from the album Feels So Good) still has a fun little drum feature at the end of the tune, courtesy of James Bradley, Jr. (on Discogs, James and another drummer named Dan D’Imperio are credited on the Tarantella album, but I never saw them listed on the actual jacket).
The transcription highlights the last 18 bars of the tune, where James plays some big fills around a few ensemble hits. The Charleston rhythm is a prominent motif (dotted 8th + 16th), as are different Latin-esque patterns (like the tresillo, or other dotted 8th licks). James shows off some fast hands, especially during the finale, which sees him doing a big 16th-note triplet run down the toms. There’s also this short but dense flam lick:
I’m pretty sure the flams are all played off of the same hand. (Is there a name for those? I.e., the opposite of hand-to-hand flams?)
Overall, the drumming here comes off as very hip, with a lot of busy funk playing that’s become pretty standard vocabulary for drummers these days.
