It was all music to one of the great drummers
By:  Brian Moritz
06/02/2004
The Times Herald

The members of Our Lady Peace couldn’t stop apologizing. This is five or six years ago, and the Canadian rock band was in the studio making its album “Happiness ... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch.” Through friends of friends of acquaintances, the band had arranged for jazz drumming legend Elvin Jones to play on a few songs. Jones, who was once John Coltrane’s drummer, arrived at the studio to play along to the scratch (preliminary) recordings for two songs, “Waited” and “Stealing Babies.” “We tried to say in apologetic tones that this is more pedestrian than what you’re used to playing,” Mike Turner, who was then OLP’s guitarist, told me a few years back. “This is not ‘A Love Supreme.’” Jones, in his 70s, finally turned to the band. “Guys, stop apologizing,” he said. “It’s all music. You’ve got a beautiful little melody. What am I going to do, not play it?” That’s what Elvin Jones did. He played music. And he played it as well as anybody ever has. Jones died of heart failure last month, leaving behind a legacy as one of jazz’s best drummers. There’s no more challenging form of music to play than jazz, and there’s no more challenging form of drumming than jazz. It’s far more intricate, far more nuanced than rock drumming. And there weren’t many jazz drummers better than Elvin Jones. He played with Miles Davis and Charlie Mingus. He spent six years with Coltrane. His playing on “A Love Supreme” — one of the five best pieces of music ever written by an American — alone makes him a master. His drum solo at the beginning of third suite is a masterpiece, a impossibly beautiful tumbling, rolling romp that sounds like it was played by a guy with at least three arms. Those who saw him live remember an intense, impassioned musician, one who dripped sweat as he played. He was beloved and well known, but never really famous. There’s no more anonymous group than backup jazz musicians. The horn players and singers get the spotlights, the bassists and drummers relegated to the background. But musicians know. There’s a reason why Jones played along with Our Lady Peace’s scratch recordings instead of live with the band. “I would have been so out of my depth, I would have drowned,” Turner said a few years ago. “That was awesome, the high point of my music career.” Jones’ drumming appears at the end of “Stealing Babies,” the final track on the album. It’s an intense, airy backbeat to the song’s conclusion. In between takes, Jones regaled the band with stories from the old days. About how Coltrane would rehearse every day. No matter where the band was, even if they were traveling, they would stop somewhere and practice. “The best thing, aside from the huge musical respect because he’s obviously a legend,” Turner said, “is that I couldn’t be more impressed that he was utterly humble towards music. A lot of our fans wouldn’t understand why we wanted Elvin Jones to play our simple pop songs.” But Jones played. That’s what he did. “For someone of that stature to step back and put themselves below music, to say it’s all music, that has gained an enormous resonance,” Turner said. “Because it’s all music, it’s all important.”

(Brian Moritz, a sports writer for The Times Herald, writes a weekly column for the Commentary page. He can be reached at bmoritz@oleantimesherald.com