Rave: Jim Keltner

[no_bells]

Yeah man Keltner is a bad dude. I've been coming around to that fact only recently. I've been listening to his stuff with Bill Frisell, just real creative playing with great time feels. But what really blew me away is this track by Randy Newman called Naked Man. It sounds like he's playing a brush on the hi hat and a high pitched crosstick kinda sound for the backbeats. But the time feel is something else. He's just playing 8ths on the hats, 2&4 on the crosstick, and a random syncopated bass drum part (or could be a 24 bar part) but his pocket is generating so much forward motion that it really makes this decent song into a great song. I've gotta check some more of his playing.

I've been performing the Randy Newman tune with a singer-songwriter and he often says that something is missing when we play it. Yeah, Jim Keltner is what's missing! [img]eek.gif[/img]

[Riddim]

I suspect Jim is known to most of us as someone who'll just sit in on it and create a fat pocket, e.g., Kokomo, as opposed to someone playing a lot of blazing or mind-bending stuff. He plays the right stuff at the right time, and he works.

As I write this, I'm burning my LPs to hard drive, and listening to some older Ry Cooder - Borderline, Bop 'Til You Drop, etc., with Keltner on drums. This stuff is from the late 70's, and still holds up. Some of it sounds like it could have been recorded last week. It grooves, it's greasy, and it's slicker than a piglet in olive oil.

I knew at the time that Keltner's stuff was out there, I just didn't know where the heck it came from. Some years later, having had the opportunity to play a lot of Afro Cuban and Second Line music, it is obvious what wells he drank from. This was way back before most of us heard it, and he was from Tulsa, not renowned as a rhythmic hotbed (unlike, say, the East Coast). Clearly, he did a lot of listening.

If you have not heard this material, it's worth checking out. Nice music too. He has some other cool stuff on Attitudes, 2 Gabor Szabo albums, and a Delaney and Bonnie record, as well.

[Vdrummer]

Keltner is one of those guys with feel for days and days. That's why he's got such an incredible discography.

[Willy Brown]

To me, the definitive Keltner, old-school, is "Married Man's a Fool", from, I believe, Ry Cooder's album Paradise and Lunch. You'll hear the kind of rollicking feel, totally "in the cracks", that people have gone for ever since. Incidentally, when I talked to Jim at the time, I seem to remember he did the track on a 15" diameter snare drum. For a newer Jim, as it were, check out "Alone in the Dark", from John Hiatt's album Bring the Family. Some real gems are found on AJ Croce's self-titled album ("he's got a way with women and he just got away with mine"...beautiful drum accompaniment; true art) and also Doug Legacy's King Cake, which Jim Keltner produced. Phew is all I can say!
WB