Bernard Purdie
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Bernard "Pretty" Purdie (born June 11, 1939) is an American drummer and session musician from Elkton, Maryland who has worked with various well-known soul, rock, pop, and jazz musicians.
He moved to New York in 1960 and started playing with Lonnie Youngblood before going on to work with King Curtis, and in 1970, Aretha Franklin, eventually becoming her musical director for five years. He has also toured with seminal bop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Hank Crawford, and performed in concert with seminal bop drummer Max Roach.
Purdie is considered an influential and innovative exponent of funk and is also noted for a "rolling" shuffle beat he calls "the Purdie shuffle". Two examples of "the Purdie shuffle" can be heard on Steely Dan's "Home at Last" and "Babylon Sisters". He is credited with being one of the inventors of the "Acid Jazz" genre in music. According to Drummerworld.com, "colleagues describe the drummer's style as the 'funkiest soul beat' in the business." According to Purdie, when he's hired by a new artist, he sets up two signs beside his drum kit. The first one reads "You done it!" The second one reads "You done hired the hit-maker! Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie."
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[edit] Musicians with whom Purdie has worked
The following list of musicians with whom Purdie has worked does not purport to be exhaustive:
- Louis Armstrong
- Gato Barbieri
- Michael Bolton
- James Brown
- Rusty Bryant
- Paul Butterfield
- Joe Cocker
- Larry Coryell
- Jeff Beck
- Jauqo III-X
- Hank Crawford
- King Curtis
- Miles Davis
- Roberta Flack
- Aretha Franklin
- Dizzy Gillespie
- Hall & Oates
- Isaac Hayes
- Ivan "Boogaloo Joe" Jones
- Tom Jones
- Quincy Jones
- B.B. King
- Al Kooper
- Charles Kynard
- Herbie Mann
- Jimmy McGriff
- Bucky Pizzarelli
- Max Roach
- Nina Simone
- Percy Sledge
- Gil Scott-Heron
- Jimmy Smith
- Steely Dan
- Cat Stevens
- Richard Tee
- The Rolling Stones
- Todd Rundgren
- Grover Washington, Jr.
- Jimmy Witherspoon
- Stevie Wonder
- Sonny Phillips
- Eddie Palmieri
[edit] Selected discography
[edit] As Bernard Purdie (leader):
- Soul Drums (1968)
- Soul Fingers (1968)
- Purdie Good (1971)
- Soul Is...Pretty Purdie (1972)
- Get It While You Can (1999)
[edit] Also appears on:
- You Never Know Who (1969) - Al Kooper
- Young, Gifted and Black (1972) - Aretha Franklin
- Coryell (1969) - Larry Coryell
- Completely Well (1970) - B.B. King
- Hoboken Saturday Night (1970) - Robert Palmer's Insect Trust
- Harlem River Drive (1970) with Eddie Palmieri in the band with the same name
- Aretha Live at Fillmore West (1971) - Aretha Franklin
- Live At Fillmore West (1971) - King Curtis
- Fairyland (1971) - Larry Coryell
- Push, Push (1971) - Herbie Mann
- Guess Who (1973) - B.B. King
- Foreigner (1973) - Cat Stevens
- Come Together (1974) - Jimmy McGriff
- I Can Stand A Little Rain (1974) - Joe Cocker
- Teasin' (1975) - Cornell Dupree
- The Royal Scam (1976) - Steely Dan
- Aja (1977) - Steely Dan
- Home In The Country (1977) - Pee Wee Ellis
- You Can't Make Love Alone (1977) - Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson
- Luxury You Can Afford (1978) - Joe Cocker
- Gaucho (1980) - Steely Dan
- Blue To The Bone (1988) - Jimmy McGriff
[edit] Trivia
[edit] Beatles recording controversy
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This section does not cite any references or sources. (September 2007) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
In the 1970s, Purdie made claims that Beatles manager Brian Epstein had, in the 1960s, enlisted him to overdub drum parts on twenty-one of "the first three" Beatles recordings. Purdie has also claimed, as reproduced in Max Weinberg's 1984 book The Big Beat, that "Ringo never played on anything...not the early stuff." This claim has never been substantiated by outside sources, at least in regard to his replacement of Starr drum parts on Beatles records of 1962 through 1964, approximately the time covered by the first three Beatles albums, depending on whether they are British or American releases. Sources, including Starr himself, have always identified Starr as the drummer on all Beatles records.[citation needed] There are well-documented exceptions when Ringo had been unavailable, as on the April 14, 1969 session for "The Ballad of John and Yoko" where Paul McCartney handles the drumming duties in Starr's absence, or on the one and only time that he had been replaced, by session drummer Andy White for the band's third visit to Abbey Road Studios on September 11, 1962. Purdie's claim is not helped by the fact that whereas Epstein handled business decisions, his musical initiatives were always rebuffed by the band, Epstein therefore was unlikely to interfere with the province of producer George Martin and the Beatles themselves for fear of backlash.[citation needed]
Some[who?] have speculated[citation needed]that Purdie was the drummer hired by Atlantic Records to overdub the drumming of Pete Best on several tracks that the Beatles had recorded circa 1961 for Polydor in Hamburg as back-up band for singer Tony Sheridan. Polydor made these tracks available once the Beatles had achieved fame. Atlantic felt the need to add drumming overdubs on three tracks: "Ain't She Sweet", "Take Out Some Insurance on Me Baby", and "Sweet Georgia Brown". Atlantic also added guitar overdubs to "Take Out Some Insurance" and "Sweet Georgia Brown". In the case of the latter, the guitar was added on top of John Lennon and George Harrison. The reasons for Atlantic overdubbing these instruments have never been explained.
[edit] Bibliography
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition, 2001, "Bernard Purdie".
