Levon Helm: King of the Singing Drummers

A recent tribute to Levon Helm on rollingstone.com noted the interesting fact that Helm was not only a world-class hellraiser, but was also one of the first singing drummers in rock history.

I would add that while there have been many singing drummers since, Levon is the only one whose singing and drumming were both Hall of Fame-worthy.



Ringo Starr, of course, was a singing drummer, but his role was more of comic relief in a Beatles concert. But when you are in a band with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, pretty much anyone else is going to seem like a lightweight. Nevertheless, Ringo drove the beat and sang more or less in key, which is more than most of us can do.



Next up is Don Henley, who in addition to being one of the most self-important and humorless rock stars of all time, and one of the reasons why the invention of punk was necessary, was also the Eagles' drummer. He's a fine singer, but as a drummer, he holds down the beat and that's about it. There's plenty of room at the Hotel California, but not much in the way of drums.



Before he became known for singing the most syrupy ballads the world has ever heard, Phil Collins was known as one of prog-rock's ace drummers. In addition to his work with Genesis, Phil played on one of my all-time favorite records, Brian Eno's Another Green World. It was only after singer Peter Gabriel left Genesis that Collins began singing. Here's Phil singing and drumming to one of my favorite early-80s Genesis tunes, "Abacab," which I believe is named for the song's chord progression.



Peter Criss was hired to be in Kiss because he could sing in addition to playing drums. He even came out from behind the kit to sing the band's biggest hit, the power ballad "Beth," but to me he really kicks some ass here singing and playing "Black Diamond." More cowbell!



But the greatest singing drummer of all time might be Karen Carpenter, because she is surely the most unlikely. Who would guess that the woman with the one-in-a-million voice of melancholy would also rock the traps like Tommy Freaking Lee?



Who is your favorite singing drummer of all time? Vote in the RT Poll at the top of this page.

R.I.P. Levon Helm: They Should Never Have Taken the Very Best

Hearing of the death of the great Levon Helm today, all I could think about was my favorite verse from The Band's “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down”:

Now I don’t mind choppin’ wood
And I don’t care if the money’s no good
You take what you need
And you leave the rest
But they should never
Have taken the very best

Levon autographed my Miller High Life hat
back in the 1980s

I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Helm at the University of Connecticut when the Levon Helm Band played the field house in the 1980s. 


I was just 18, proud and brave, and served on the school's concert committee. After the show, Levon took the time to shake my hand and autograph the free Miller High Life hats they were giving away.

I was familiar with the Band’s big hits at the time but their haunting, wholly original sound hadn’t penetrated my soul the way it would a few years later, with their first two records, The Last Waltz film and soundtrack and the Basement Tapes they recorded with Bob Dylan at Big Pink.

Helm was a triple threat:  one of the best drummers in rock, with tiny sticks but a fierce, precise attack. He also played mandolin, perhaps most memorably on "Rag Mama Rag" from The Band's eponymous second album. 

And of course there were those vocals. Levon somehow could conjure up the entire history of this great land of ours just by singin' a tune. 

Though The Band basically invented the sound known as Americana, a fiery gumbo of blues, cajun, country, gospel and old time rock & roll, Arkansas native Helm was the only American in the group. (The four others were Canadian.). Their chemistry and the even distribution of talent within the group was one of a kind, as evidenced by this live-in-the-studio take of "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)":

Despite a decade-long battle with cancer and a temporary loss of his voice, Levon kept on playing right to the end, hosting his now-legendary Midnight Rambles at his barn in Woodstock, NY, where local and world-class musicians would drop by to play for the sake of playing. 


He also released two acclaimed records in recent years, Electric Dirt and Dirt Farmer and which contains a great tune called "Poor Old Dirt Farmer," which conjures up all the things that made Levon so magical.

R.I.P. Levon. Take a load off and put the load right on us.

Get your Levon on iTunes:

The Band

Levon Helm

"Sixteen Saltines": Jack White's Mouth-Watering Blunderbuss Appetizer

Rock Turtleneck is gearing up for the release of Jack White III's first solo album Blunderbuss, which comes out next Tuesday, April 24.

To get yourself in the mood, start by reading this fine profile in the New York Times Magazine from a couple weeks ago, which aptly proclaims "Jack White is the coolest, weirdest, savviest rock star of our time." The piece gives a true sense of the man behind the music and is filled with many interesting facts including:

• Jack is the youngest of ten children, and as he says in the White Stripes' best song "Ball and Biscuit," "it's a fact that I'm the seventh son."
• He has taken up welding, on the recommendation of Bob Dylan, who suggested it while the two were sitting on the porch of White's Nashville estate.
• When pre-fame Jack owned an upholstery company in Detroit, the slogan was "Your furniture's not dead." The slogan of his all-vinyl record label Third Man is "Your turntable's not dead." Both companies also have a yellow-and-black color scheme.
• The color scheme of The White Stripes was famously red, white and black, but for Blunderbuss, it's blue and black.  

A few weeks back, Rock Turtleneck previewed the first song from Bluderbuss, "Love Interruption," a dry-rubbed slice of Memphis soul.

The follow-up  is "Sixteen Saltines," a monolithic slab of riff-rock that masters like White, Jimmy Page, Kurt Cobain or Keith Richards churn out effortlessly yet elude mortal mankind.



I'm not sure what the theme of the "Sixteen Saltines" video is, beyond "disturbing, perhaps even trauma-inducing imagery." But hey, sometimes that's enough.

Pre-order Jack White's Blunderbuss on iTunes here