Philly Joe Jones & Thelonious Monk

Some rare concert footage today of one of my favorite hard bop jazz drummers, "Philly Joe Jones", shown here with pianist Thelonious Monk and saxophonist Charlie Rouse from a 1969 date in France.

There is not a lot of footage out there of "Philly" playing the drums, so I relish any opportunity to catch the master in action. I'm also always impressed with the elegant motion he plays with and the huge sound he gets out of the drums. Jones was also a devout student of the Charlie Wilcoxin snare method "Rudimental Swing Solos for the Modern Drummer" and a lot of that snare drum vocabulary shows up in his playing.









Here's the drum solo portion of that last tune, "Nutty", isolated:
(for all the drum geeks out there !)



Swingin' stuff !