Since I’ve talked about Joe Morello the author, today, let’s talk about Joe Morello the drummer, with the track “Swanee River.” Joe and Dave Brubeck played a big role in getting me into jazz, and as honky as that feels to say, it’s still about time.
While doing some research for Master Studies, I came across another Joe Morello book called Off the Record. It’s a collection of Joe Morello drum solos, transcribed by Marvin Dahlgren (one of the authors behind 4‑Way Coordination).
According to Drum Book History, Off the Record has eight songs:
- “Swanee River”
- “Fatha Time”
- “Mother Time”
- “Sounds of the Loop”
- “Short’nin’ Bread”
- “Shim Wha”
- “Far More Drums”
- “Watusi Drums”
Unfortunately, it looks like the book has been out of print for decades and is somewhat of a collector’s item, but I found three of the songs (“Sounds of the Loop,” “Far More Drums,” and “Watusi Drums”) on this website. I went ahead and combined these scans into a single PDF for posterity.
Edit (June 2025): Off The Record is now available in its entirety — I wrote about the book here, with a PDF for your convenience.
It seemed like recreating one of the lost transcriptions would be a fun project, but despite the fact that the book is subtitled “A Collection of Famous Drum Solos,” some of the songs here are pretty damn obscure.
The transcriptions for “Sounds of the Loop” and “Far More Drums” appear to be from their respective studio recordings (Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. and Time Further Out), but “Watusi Drums” seems to be from a live recording called The Dave Brubeck Quartet In Europe.
That makes sense since the studio take from Time In is quite short, about 2 ½ minutes, while the solo in Off the Record is seven pages long. Unfortunately, you can’t stream this live album in the US, although I don’t know to what extent you can stream it anywhere.
The songs “Fatha Time” and “Mother Time” are from an equally rare Joe Morello solo album called It’s About Time (this one is at least on YouTube). Since I can’t look at the rest of the book, there’s no telling what exact recordings the other transcriptions come from.*
Anyway, today I decided to do “Swanee River” from the recording Gone With the Wind. Unsurprisingly, the whole album pays tribute to the South. I guess the band was ready to track Time Out (the LP that would have “Take Five”), but the record label wanted to make some money on a more traditional jazz release first, so the quartet whipped this one together in two days.
(Funny enough, the subsequent Time Out would become a far more successful album in pretty much every category.)
Looking into the song after completing my transcription, I found out that “Swanee River” (originally titled “Old Folks at Home”) was first written in 1851 for a goddamn minstrel show. It gets worse: the tune is the official state song of Florida, and the lyrics weren’t sanitized until 2008.
No further comment!
I’m not worried about Dave being on the right side of history, and I guess the best way to… appreciate a number such as this one is to just scrap the lyrics.
Alright, let’s get to the bloody drum solo. Here we have a classic example of trading 4s, with Joe and Dave exchanging 4‑bar breaks, starting with the piano. I decided to include 4 bars of slashes for the piano solos to make following along easier. And just like last time, the drums on this tune are played with wire brushes.
In total, there are eight solos to enjoy. The first solo is actually played straight and features a cool polymeter thing with a 6‑note accent pattern on the snare.
The most intense moment probably comes in the fifth solo, where Joe again plays straight 8ths, using his right hand to move around the kit while his left–hand stays on the snare to play a sweeping roll:
It’s a challenging thing to play, and I tried my best with notating it.
My favorite solo is the penultimate one:
It might not look like much on paper, but I find it endearingly disorienting, and it feels like a lifetime passes during the second measure.
One last thing: there are a lot of dynamic changes on this one, so pay close attention to the sheet music.
* ^ To that end, today’s subject, “Swanee River,” also shows up on a live album called Live From Vienna, and I am tempted to say that’s where the book gets its transcription from. But I can’t know for sure…
