Decades after their respective deaths, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich are still synonymous with jazz drumming. There’s a new book on Krupa, reissues being released, YouTube videos packed with video and audio of the two. The 1966 Krupa/Rich drum battle, with footage from a Sammy Davis Jr. television show pulled from the Buddy Rich: Jazz Legend video, is among the most accessed clips on YouTube. And some people of a certain age still ask: Who was better, Gene or Buddy?
This “rivalry” was manufactured by impresario and Verve Records honcho Norman Granz, who wanted to bring something extra-special to his Jazz at the Philharmonic touring show of 1952. It worked. The faux rivalry raised the visibility quotient of both drummers, and the recorded duel, taken from a JATP concert of September 13 of that year, has been reissued in various forms dozens of times.
The duels continued through 1956 in live JATP shows across the nation, once in the New York club The Bandbox and in a studio session for Verve. The “winner” of these duels? Technically, Buddy Rich was unbeatable. Still, thanks to Gene’s natural talents as a showman, audiences’ eyes always went to him, much to Buddy’s frustration.
Behind the Curtain
Still, there were those who knew very well what they were hearing and seeing. Pianist/composer Bobby Scott, who played piano in Krupa’s quartet in the mid-1950s, was on the JATP scene and watched several of these drum duels.
“I often watched that pointless drum battle with Buddy Rich on every concert, and wondered what it was doing to his ego,” Scott wrote in the January 1984 issue of Gene Lees’ Jazzletter. “Buddy was like some great meat grinder, gobbling up Gene’s solos, cresting his triumph in traded fours and eights and ending with an unbelievable flourish. Gene took it in the finest of manners. He didn’t think music had a thing to do with competition. He had a way of carrying himself correctly when he walked on, and he used that strut of a sort to the fullest at the close of those demoralizing drum wars.”
The 1952 and 1956 recorded pairings are more hype than substance. The live 1952 duel is only several minutes long and the actual drumming can barely be heard over the din of the enthusiastic JATP audience.
On the 1956 Krupa and Rich LP, the two play together only on one cut, “Bernie’s Tune.” The album is notable more for the superb playing of saxophonists Flip Phillips and Illinois Jacquet and trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. The project received next to no attention in the jazz press, likely because other Verve recordings — and Verve’s Clef and Norgran imprints — flooded the marketplace in those days.
Norman Granz sold Verve to MGM in 1960. The following year, Creed Taylor was named producer for the “new” Verve, and it wasn’t long before he purged the label of many of its stars, from Ben Webster to Ella Fitzgerald. Krupa stayed until 1964, and though Rich had recorded a slew of sides for Verve throughout the 1950s, he was never really under contract to Granz.
Burnin’ Beat Sessions
Creed Taylor thought there was still some life in the Krupa-versus-Rich franchise, and because the “stereo percussion” fad was a big deal at that time, he made the decision to bring them together again on record on January 18-19, 1962 in New York. Ten titles were recorded but only eight were released. The 13-piece band featured trumpeter Joe Wilder, trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, pianist John Bunch and others, along with the guitars of Howard Collins and George Barnes.
The titles leave plenty of room for the two drum stars to play four- and eight-bar exchanges and full choruses, while two tracks — “Duet” and “Evolution” — find them going at it at length. Wisely, maybe at the suggestion of producer Taylor, it’s easy to tell the two apart by way of how differently the two drum sets were tuned: Buddy’s were high and tight, while Krupa’s were low and loose. Each drummer keeps time while the other solos, and the stereo separation between the two is quite obvious.
But wait. Something is off, what one perceptive but anonymous Amazon reviewer called “a lack of chemistry between the two drummers.” There’s a decidedly simple reason for that.
Reedman Eddie Wasserman, who played tenor saxophone on the session and had been a part of Krupa’s small group for about two years before this recording, was also a major contractor in New York and he contracted this date. In an interview I conducted with Wasserman in the mid-1980s that appeared in my book The World of Gene Krupa, he revealed that Gene and Buddy were not in the studio at the same time.
“Nobody believes it,” Wasserman told me. “But Gene recorded his parts with the full band, while Buddy came in later to overdub his parts.”
For those who have enjoyed Burnin’ Beat for the past 60-plus years, it certainly is hard to believe, but photos taken of the two in the studio show the drummers horsing around while Buddy sets up his Rogers drumkit. There are no Krupa drums anywhere in sight. While both were on hand for a photo shoot, the suspicion is that Gene was also there to guide Buddy through the overdubbing process.
The musical disconnect is most evident on “Wham!” and “Flyin’ Home,” two titles that were never released. Buddy’s timing is terribly off — there are uncomfortable spaces between the drum exchanges — meaning that Buddy was having a tough time playing with a click track or had no click at all. And because the two drummers’ concepts of time were slightly different, with Buddy being much more “on top” of the tempo than Gene, the results on those two sides were simply not usable.
Burnin’ Beat is still fun to listen to, if only for the cha-cha version of “Perdido,” where Rich exclaims at the end, “And they said Buddy Rich would never twist!”
Krupa recorded one more session for Creed Taylor at Verve in 1964. The Great New Gene Krupa Quartet featured longtime Krupa saxophonist Charlie Ventura. Those who bothered to review it deemed it “lackluster.” Buddy Rich’s final opus for Verve was recorded a year before Burnin’ Beat. This was Blues Caravan and it featured Rich’s small group at the time. Rich fans loved it, though there are intonation problems throughout — Rolf Ericson’s trumpet is badly out of tune with Mike Mainieri’s vibes.
There were rumors of other Krupa/Rich meetings after the 1966 television show, but the only one that has come to light occurred during a Canadian television special co-produced by Lionel Hampton in 1971. The grand finale, as introduced by host Mel Torme, featured Krupa, Hampton and the host himself at the traps, in what appeared to be a three-way drum battle. But at the last moment, Torme asks, “Is Buddy Rich in town?” The master then jogs out to another drum kit, and the four-way percussion foray begins. Gene and Buddy are clearly happy to see each other, and in this final meeting, Krupa acquits himself very well.
Around the same time, Rich was off the scene briefly due to back problems and asked Krupa to sub in his big band. Krupa begged off, offering no more than a night or two. Ultimately, Louie Bellson stepped in to lead the band in Buddy’s absence.
Gene and Buddy were in fact dear friends. Buddy’s wife, Marie, once dated Gene. Sidemen like pianists John Bunch, Marty Napoleon and Ronnie Ball, reedman Eddie Shu, bassist Jimmy Gannon and several others worked for both of them. And when word got out about what would be Krupa’s final illness in 1973, Buddy threw an enormous party for Gene to honor him while he was still alive. The two had plans to vacation together in Key West, “away from everything,” according to Buddy. Sadly, it never happened. JT