Steve Smith – Wilcoxon Rudimental Challenge – Solo 124

From the Charley Wilcoxon book The All-American Drummer, here are three interpretations of Solo 124. These are recorded for the Facebook page The Wilcoxon Rudimental Challenge hosted by Kevin Lehman. My approach is to play with Wilcoxon solos with “swing interpretation,” which is how I learned to play them as a teenager.

To truly inhabit a swinging feel, I like to play the solos along with jazz tunes at different tempos. I played the solo with brushes, at a slow tempo, to the Peter Erskine play-along track called “Autumnal Foliage” from his ERSKN JAZZ ESSENTIALS PLAY-ALONG Jazz 1. Then an up-tempo version played to “Four” from the Miles Davis album Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. And finally, there is a solo snare drum version played to a metronome set at 110BPM. To apply the Wilcoxon material to the drumset it’s good to play 2&4 on the Hi-Hat and catch written accents with the bass drum.

The “Buddy Rich” snare drum and music stand in the video will be on display at The Northup Collection in Oneonta, NY.   / northupdrums   The snare drum used on “Four” and the solo snare drum variation is my Sonor “Steve Smith 40th Anniversary” snare. The bass drum is an 18” Sonor bass drum from 1974 and the Hi-Hats are old 12” Ks that I found at the Istanbul bazaar many years ago. Thanks to Christian Grassart for the creative editing!

Steve Smith