Funky Superbeast : Gaylord Birch

Everyone who’s been in a band knows a good drummer joke. Drummers often get maligned for not knowing theory, beating on things with sticks, and not being able to fully appreciate the phallic nature of rock and roll. Guitar players get to run their long fingers across elongated, fretted erections to the glee of adoring fans; and drummers get to sit back and thump away like the lesser half of Steinbeck’s Mice and Men. It’s a thankless job, often filled with callouses and scornful glances from nervous lead singers. It takes a special kind of martyr to really make the drum kit sing in modern popular music. The Who’s Keith Moon did it with spastic antics and cymbal crashes that sounded like Istanbul during the Crusades. John Bonham did it with a washing machine sized bass drum and punishing pockets. His hulking presence made the kit seem like a children’s toy, rather than the engine for one of the greatest bands in rock and roll. There have been others - Stubblefield, Purdy, Jackson, Ward, Errico, but sometimes a gem rises from the musical coal dust like a funky Phoenix. Such a gem is Mr. Gaylord Birch.

Born in 1946 at the tail end of WWII, Birch became exposed to jazz and afro-Cuban music at an early age. The drummer first started playing the tubs at age 5, grooving along to Mongo Santamaria 45s on the jukebox in his father’s San Francisco night club. The joyful, improvisational nature of jazz permeated Birch’s playing. The dude had chops; huge, seasoned, marinated, and smoked chops. His playing expressed the sheer human joy in percussive rhythm. His sticks flam and roll without hesitation, in a way that seems almost too natural. Like John Bonham if he studied dance, like Keith Moon had he a modicum of self control, like Purdie had he been less unrelenting, Birch’s playing makes you want to play the drums. There are no jokes uttered when Birch smiles wide like a Texas cloud, grabs the microphone from a seductively flowered Pointer Sister and starts beat boxing, long legs bounding from the squeaky pedals, his arms keeping perfect time on the skins. He knew that a drummer’s job was to keep time, find the pocket and keep the party hype. He is one of the few drummers who truly owned his moments. He melted into the pocket, and made his rhythms seamless.

Birch played with Charles Brown, Bobby Hutcherson, Santana, The Pointer Sisters and Herbie Hancock, before cancer took his life in 1996. Gaylord Birch was a rare bird, a drummers drummer, and a complete force of nature. After watching him play, I can’t help but think of rephrasing a joke or two.

“What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? …Russell Simmons.”