Five drummers who think Buddy Rich was the greatest of all time

Posted On July 15, 2024July 15, 2024

Most people have a good idea of what a modern drummer is supposed to sound like in their head. It’s easy to call the percussionists meatheads if you want to, but the ability to keep time and play with the rhythm throughout a song is something that takes both a fair degree of strength as well as a creative mind that’s constantly looking to switch things up. Whereas most drummers can keep time well enough, Buddy Rich was a God-given talent that became a musical freak of nature of unrivalled flair.

Before rock had a proper name, Rich was flying up and down his drum kit as one of the premier figures of the American jazz scene. Regardless of how jazz is today viewed as lightweight music, Rich turned it into something that would take Olympian-athlete strength to accomplish, especially when he would take a solo in the middle of a tune.

Whereas Rich was usually a jazz purist throughout his career, that didn’t stop many different rock drummers from taking a few of his licks as well. After all, rock and roll was all about intensity, and where better to steal from when there’s a wild animal behind the kit doing the same thing artists like John Bonham would be doing in the 1960s?

As much as jazz is considered a boring genre today, the percussionists influenced by Buddy Rich are the ones who have truly done their homework and fine-tuned their craft to a tee. Most would try to get a basic rhythmic foundation under their belt, but when you start stepping into a Buddy Rich solo as a drummer, that’s what separates the professionals from the amateurs.

Five drummers who think Buddy Rich is the greatest of all time

5. Roger Taylor – Queen

Nothing was ever off the table when it came to Queen’s music. Throughout their time together, it was always about giving an eclectic bunch of songs on every record, with hopefully a few hit singles sprinkled into the mix to get the casual fans jamming along to tracks like ‘We Will Rock You’. That song may be rudimentary for drummers, but Roger Taylor knew that Buddy Rich was one of the greatest to pick up two sticks.

Whereas other rock drummers could keep time and play to the best of their ability whenever they could, Taylor thought that there was something inhuman about Rich’s playing, telling Express that he was “technically frightening” whenever he heard him play. It’s one thing for Rich to strike fear in the hearts of fans, but that was never his MO. It was about inspiring the next generation, and if Taylor walked away knowing more about how a drum fill was constructed, he had done his job.

4. Gene Krupa

There tended to be a certain hierarchy in the world of jazz back in the day. Although the music fades into the realm of coffee shops more often these days, there was a cutthroat need to play the best that you could whenever you threw down a solo, especially when the rest of the band was jamming as hard as they could. Gene Krupa was already a contemporary of Rich’s, but he knew that he wouldn’t come close to touching what he did when he started playing in his own jazz outfits.

For Krupa, there was a certain demographic for what a good drummer was supposed to be, but Rich shined above them all in terms of pure finesse. In fact, Krupa often avoided Rich’s playing for many years because he was too scared off by what he could do behind a drumkit, even on a slower tune. But if someone is dominating their instrument this well, it’s not really about being able to keep up. It’s about studying what a wild animal at work is capable of.

3. Charlie Watts – The Rolling Stones

Once jazz started giving way to the world of rock and roll, The Rolling Stones were a far cry from what Rich was doing. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had the blues as their foundation for rock and roll, and no amount of easy-listening music was going to get in the way of a great guitar riff. Charlie Watts could certainly lay down a groove, but his background in jazz led to him throwing on Rich at any opportunity.

Instead of looking to grandstand, Watts was more interested in the musical instincts Rich had, like when he played with Charlie Parker and wove together different percussive introductions for every song. While the usual Stones dictated that one of Richards’s riffs started the song, hearing Watts lay down an iconic drumline definitely came from listening to Rich. Because it’s not just about being technically proficient; it’s about sitting in the song and playing what feels right for it.

2. Phil Collins

In the context of rock music, progressive rock might be the closest thing to jazz as anyone has gotten. There were certainly fusion acts that would take jazz exercises to new heights with groups like UK, but the glory days of Yes and King Crimson were when artists dared to make something a bit more left-field than a traditional blues exercise. While Phil Collins normally gets the blame for watering down Genesis and making easy-listening music, he knew that Rich was still the gold standard to aim for.

Regardless of whether all you know is the drum fill from ‘In the Air Tonight’, Collins was listening to big-band jazz right alongside acts like The Beatles, and it wasn’t out of the question for him to marvel at Rich’s talents. Aside from calling him one of the greatest to ever do it, he considered Rich’s West Side Story medley to be one of the most important displays of his talent. Collins is certainly known more for his melodic sensibilities now, but that internal sense of rhythm is something that only comes from listening to Rich’s technique.

1. Neil Peart – Rush

There aren’t many rock drummers who dare try to tackle anything that Neil Peart has done. Throughout his time in Rush, Peart was unafraid of shaking things up behind the drumkit, usually playing as many fills as the song warranted and telling complex stories about mythology in his lyrics. That kind of mindset doesn’t exactly have Buddy Rich written all over it, but the jazz great was a key touchstone for Peart later in life.

Outside of being the biggest fan of drummers like Keith Moon, Peart always appreciated the challenge of Rich’s style, even sitting in on a handful of tribute shows to him over the years. When performing at one of them, though, Peart eventually got the incentive to deconstruct his entire approach to drums, working with technicians like Freddy Gruber to help fine-tune his sound after working with digital drums. Rich will remain a staple of jazz drumming forever, but not many can claim to dominate one genre and then shape the style of another genre giant.

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