It has recently come to my attention that someone has taken the time to scan and bootleg a long-lost, out-of-print drum book, Joe Morello — Off the Record, written largely by Marvin Dahlgren, and published in 1966. If you’re reading this, looking for a download, here ya go.

I found Off the Record while writing about Joe Morello’s Master Studies — while that text is a technique book, Off the Record is billed as a collection of Joe Morello drum solos, transcribed by Dahlgren, and proofread by Joe himself. I’ve only known about this book for about a year, and for some time, it looked like we would only get to look at some excerpts that were floating around the internet. But now we have the full thing!

I got inspired to recreate one of the (previously) lost transcriptions, but I had some trouble figuring out which exact records were included in this book. I finally have the info:

• “Swanee River” — Gone With The Wind
• “Fatha Time” and “Mother Time” — It’s About Time
• “Sounds of the Loop” — Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A.
• “Shortnin’ Bread” — Gone With The Wind
• “Shim Wha” — Time Changes
• “Far More Drums” — Time Further Out
• “Watusi Drums” — Dave Brubeck Quartet in Europe

These are all Dave Brubeck Quartet records, except for “Fatha Time” and “Mother Time,” which are from the Joe Morello solo LP It’s About Time. It was at this moment that I realized you would need to buy six albums to follow along with the book!

There are a number of interesting things to discuss about Off the Record. For one, the book surprisingly has a lot of content outside of the transcriptions, and the first sections have basic reading drills à la Syncopation:

There are also preparatory exercises for some of the solos:

Times like these make me wonder what the exact audience for this sort of thing is. I treat transcriptions as a study guide, and not really something to be learned like an etude.

I remain uneasy about the long-term benefit of such practice, as I think most drummers need to work on either raw technique or their own vocabulary and improvisation. But there is a large number of drummers who like to learn other people’s drum parts note-for-note, and as this ~60-year-old book shows, it’s been an enduring desire.  

The notation in Off the Record is a bit clunky, the way older drum books tend to be. The cymbal parts (both ride and hi-hat pedal) are written on separate staffs — combined with the staff that’s for the rest of the kit (which, interestingly, includes the kick drum), things are a bit messy:

It also feels like the notation is stretched to its limit, and there are frequent annotations to make sense of the score:

The ride cymbal is written using the dotted 8th + 16th phrasing, but the rest of the score bounces back and forth between swung 8ths and swung patterns written out as triplets, which makes some of the sheet music a bit rough on the eyes. There are also some odd beaming choices and a few moments where 8th notes are written as 16ths (or vice versa), giving a measure the wrong number of notes. 

Nonetheless, this is still a very ambitious project for the time, and it’s disturbing to think about the amount of work this would have taken, especially knowing Dahlgren would have been listening to the songs on vinyl. I get irritated enough when my computer can’t jump back five seconds on recording quickly enough for me, so I can’t imagine having to continuously pick up and drop a turntable stylus. 

As far as the songs go, we’ll start with “Swanee River,” the transcription I recreated. Off the Record does indeed transcribe the studio cut, despite my suspicion that it may have been from some obscure live record. Have a look at Dahlgren’s transcription:

It looks like there are a few mistakes, the most severe being that the left-handed snare roll is written on the third solo instead of the fifth. The rhythms in the first bar of the seventh solo are also wrong — the second ground of 16th note triplets should end on the “&” after beat 3, not beat 4. And lastly, the eighth solo is missing. But hey, no biggie.

Much like “Swanee River,” both “Fatha Time” and “Mother Time” document Joe trading 4s, while “Fatha Time” also includes the intro/head, with Joe filling around band hits. This album is not easy to find; while vinyl copies are still out there, it isn’t on the streaming sites, and it seems to have made it to CD in Japan only. It at least seems to be easy to find on YouTube. (Improbably, another Morello album called Percussive Jazz is available to stream.)

“Sounds of the Loop” is the first real monster: a four-minute unaccompanied Joe Morello solo in its entirety (which starts around 3:15 on the recording). I think this is a pretty overlooked and underrated solo amongst those obsessed with very flashy, technically demanding drumming. As Dahlgren points out in the forward, Joe’s left-hand comping is so inhuman that it sounds like the ride cymbal must have been overdubbed (tempo is around 220):

“Shortnin’ Bread” (or “Short’nin’ Bread” as it is sometimes written) has the main chunk of the drum solo starting around 0:25 when the band drops out after playing the head. I think there are some mistakes as to what exact drum Joe is hitting — he has his snares off for this track, creating some confusion. The rhythms seem pretty solid. 

The waltzing “Shim Wha” is a (relatively) short but sweet performance, while “Far More Drums” has another look at Joe’s ability to solo in 5/4. 

“Watusi Drums” is the last monster, but this track had me raising my eyebrows at how this book is subtitled “A Collection of Famous Drum Solos.” The exact performance that Off the Record dissects is from a 1958 concert in Copenhagen, as documented on Dave Brubeck Quartet in Europe. Let me tell you, tracking this recording down was quite a chore.

First of all, this album (also known as Jazz Goes to Europe or simply In Europe) is available to stream, but not in the US (as if this country weren’t depressing me enough lately).* By setting my location to the titular continent, I was able to find some recordings on YouTube (the kind that get automatically uploaded by distributors). I found both mono and stereo versions of this LP, and quite bewilderingly, there seem to be two different recordings of  “Watusi Drums” tied to this live album.

The one that’s actually in Off the Record is the mono version, which is about eight minutes long. The stereo mix, on the other hand, uses a completely different performance, about 10½ minutes in length. Aside from the stereo version having a bit more applause between songs (and an obvious improvement in fidelity), the two mixes/masters seem to be the same concert, except for the “Watusi Drums” finale.

Try as I might, I don’t have a clue what’s happening — the only acknowledgment of this mystery comes from an Amazon review of a 2013 CD release from UK(?) label Phoenix Records.† Maybe something happened to the original tape of “Watusi Drums” that was not salvageable, and when it came time to remaster In Europe, an alternate performance had to be used with the hope that no one would be the wiser.

That’s my theory anyway — a European vinyl pressing from 2017 has the longer version of “Watusi Drums,” but the original vinyl sleeves from the 50s don’t have track lengths, so I can’t know for sure where the 8‑minute cut came from. It’s anyone’s guess as to when and where the stereo version was recorded.

It’s a shame because it’s a great, rhythmically interesting performance that has become about as deep a cut as you can get. The stereo remaster sounds pretty stellar if you have the energy to track down a CD or bootleg it — it’s too bad the original “Watusi Drums” take couldn’t get the same treatment (aside from being in mono, the original has a lot of noise and some nasty saturation).

I actually got hold of this 2013 CD, and the included booklet claims that “Watusi Drums” was only ever recorded twice: first in Copenhagen, and then for the Time In record. That’s clearly not true; the booklet simply makes no mention of the subterfuge.

Anyhoo, it’s great that this piece of drumming history can now survive in its entirety, even if the accompanying music cannot! A big thanks to whoever took the time to get a copy of the book, scan it, and share it with the world. If only we could all be so motivated…

(I guess now I just need to track down the It’s About Time album. I wonder if it will be any easier than finding a physical copy of this book…)

* ^ Some of the songs on this live record made it onto the more widely available (and very sloppily edited) 1988 compilation The Great Concerts. Naturally, “Watusi Drums” isn’t one of them.

† ^ I think this CD was available a few years earlier from Spanish label Lone Hill. Funny enough, it seems to be in mono, but the track length for “Watusi Drums” is still 10½ minutes.