Beat That #?!* Drum

My first encounter with Sandy Nelson’s instrumentals was probably through his "Let There Be Drums" which I got as a 45 rpm record from my uncle. Later I managed to get some more singles and albums but the quality was uneven at times, not that the playing was bad, but rather bland to be polite… However there were always a few instrumentals that stood out and consequently were played a lot!

Earlier this month Stinky shared one of his new compilations with Jonder and me, Sidemen In The Spotlight Vol. 1, which featured "Let There Be Drums”. I was a bit confused to see Sandy included as a ’sideman’ and asked Stinky for the reason, as I only knew him as a solo performer. Stinky gave me a few links to further my musical education and that was quite surprising to say the least. Besides being an active session drummer, I also learned about his playing in bands such as Kip Tyler & The Flips and later The Renegades.

After gaining respect as a session drummer, Nelson played on several hit singles including The Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is To Love Him" (1958), The Hollywood Argyles' "Alley Oop" (1960) and Kathy Young and the Innocents' "A Thousand Stars" (1960). He also played on Gene Vincent’s album Crazy Time as well as various lesser known artists/groups such as Johnny Crawford’s “Daydreams”, Joel Hill’s “Little Lover”, and others by The Vibrations, Little Caesar & The Romans, and Sonny Knight. 

Interestingly enough his musical heroes were Gene Krupa and Earl Palmer, Sandy never considered himself a ‘real’ rock ’n’ roll pounder, but more a kind of swing drummer!
The enormous amount of albums recorded were pushed by his record bosses, something he didn’t like much as he had to record covers of hits of the day which he didn’t really want to do. Taking lots of painkillers because of the pain in his leg, serious drinking, and having almost no creative input made it only worse. Between 1965 and 1975 Nelson added a further 21 albums to his catalogue…
Luckily in 1976 he stopped drinking and got his life (sort of) back on track again, but the huge number of recordings was definitely finished.
He died in Las Vegas on February 14, 2022, at the age of 83 from complications of a stroke he had in 2017.

I guess we’re all familiar here with the expression ‘All Killer, No Filler’  but with Sandy it unfortunately looks more like ‘Shitloads Of Filler, Some Killer’!
There are a huge number of compilations of Sandy’s work on the market, but most of these contain plenty of filler, although the ACE compilations (Big Sixties Frat Party!!!, Rock ’N’ Roll Drum Beat) are pretty good with great liner notes as well!
Even so, there’s no overview which includes his early session work, singles, some deep album cuts, and later tracks, which seemed like a good reason for another JOKONKY compilation!