Who is the most recorded drummer of all time?
Most of the time, being a good drummer goes beyond mastering technical precision and relies heavily on pure feeling.
Nothing proves this more than when you listen to musicians talk about the drummers they regard as the best and why. Because most of the time, it isn’t about being capable of anything specific, it’s more that you either have the knack for it or you don’t. It’s like when Bruce Springsteen once said his drummer, Max Weinberg, was good simply because he “delivers for me night after night”.
Maybe words are cheap when it comes to discussing drummers because there really is no way to describe that delicate spot between precision and intuition. And even then, what people see as precision differs from person to person. Matt Helders recently put it eloquently when he replayed some of Arctic Monkeys’ best and most technically meticulous hits to date. Here, he reminded us all, not for the first time, why he’s one of the most accomplished drummers of our generation.
Most of their songs require a certain level of capability that most percussionists can only dream of. But on The Car in particular, Helders had to exercise a different part of his brain to get it all right. “It’s not technically the most difficult, but just like it has to be sort of really precise,” he said of ‘There’d Better Be a Mirrorball’. In short, it’s not always about getting the equation just right; it’s usually about feeling your way through in a way that takes that precision and juices it all up a bit.
Which is also why people constantly struggle when talking about the same circle of greats – John Bonham, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, Neil Peart…some things genuinely evade simple vernacular, and being a great percussion player is certainly one of them. And all of those names are ones we still talk about because barely any others even come close to their level of excellence. So, which were the most recorded?
So, who is the most recorded drummer ever?
Interestingly, none of them were. They are indisputable heroes, that much is true. But when it comes to the most prolific, we have to look at one of the most intense talent hotbeds of all time – the Wrecking Crew. Just like Carol Kaye became one of the most recorded bass players in history, drummer Hal Blaine also became one of the most recorded studio drummers ever.
Blaine was actually responsible for one of the most replicated rhythms of all time, from the Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’. He also had the kind of resume most would kill to have, having worked with the likes of Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, Simon and Garfunkel, and more. But what’s perhaps more impressive about Blaine’s streak and approach as a jazz-trained player isn’t just his accreditation but the way he epitomised that indescribable brilliance when it came to playing the drums.
The beat for ‘Be My Baby’, for instance, came by complete accident when Blaine unintentionally hit the snare on the fourth beat only, instead of the second and fourth. Phil Spector loved it so much he kept it in. Funnily enough, Weinberg later said Blaine could have only played on ‘Be My Baby’ and still be regarded as the hero he is today – his accident was so revolutionary that it changed the entire rulebook.
