John Rossi 🥁 drummer 🥁Roomful of Blues (1942-2022) 🥁✨

Описание: Legendary Roomful of Blues drummer John Rossi passed away on April 9, 2022 at the age of 79. Rossi joined the jump blues band in the early 70s & was a mainstay for nearly 30 years, providing the big beat for over a generation.

Former Roomful manager Bob Bell’s eulogy of Rossi is worth your time.

Rip Mr Johnny Rossi 🥁



Bob Bell's Eulogy for a Drummer

As I and my friends go through our seventies and eighties, it should come as no surprise when one of us ‘shuffles off this mortal coil’. Such a happenstance as contemplated is a simple intellectual exercise, but when it does actually happen, as it surely must, it always comes as a surprise, jerking the mind and rousing the emotions.

What, death came a-knocking? Really?

Just such a thing occurred on Saturday, April the 9th. this year, when I got a 7.30 am call from Linda Rossi, wife of my old friend John.

‘Bob, Johnny passed away this morning’. It took a moment or two to fully comprehend this, to understand Linda’s words. John? Gone? ‘Yes, he had been poorly for a few days’, she said, ‘and this morning he slipped away’.

Just like that. After seventy-nine years John was off one another tour, he put on his traveling shoes and this time left for parts and venues unknown. No tour itinerary left on the kitchen table, and his drums and cymbals still in the closet.

I had first met John in the spring of 1980, when I walked through the door of the Downtown Cafe in Atlanta, Georgia. I had only been in Atlanta for a couple of nights. Indeed, I had only been in the states for a couple of months, and a long string of events that I won’t go into had brought me to this city.

Anyway, a band called Roomful of Blues was there that night. I had never heard of them. I guess they were about halfway through their first set when I walked in. It was both an amazing sight and an equally amazing sound. On the stage was an old baldheaded man playing a trombone, a pianist at an upright piano, a moustachioed young man slapping a double bass and a sweating muscular drummer behind a simple kit beating on a floor tom. The dance floor was packed, so packed that folks were dancing on the tables. Yeah, really, up on the tables. It was that sort of joint.

The tune came to an end and a guy, with a tenor sax slung from his neck, walked up to the mic and hollered, ‘Porky Cohen! Porky Cohen! The King! The King of the slide trombone’ and the crowd roared. The unlikely monikered Mr. Cohen blinked owlishly through thick-lensed spectacles, grinned and mouthed a thank you, and walked to the side of the stage, where he was joined by a trumpet player and two more sax players. A greasy-looking guitar player stepped up onto the other side of the stage, a cigarette in his mouth.

The band launched into a Guitar Slim tune, the horns churning out riffs like they came from a Specialty recording as the singer, who was also the tenor sax player, sobbed out the words to ‘Sufferin’ Mind’. The alto player took a long impassioned solo, traded a few bars with the guitar player who then took front stage and put out a blistering reverb-soaked statement of anguish. As the solo built and came to a close, the drummer emphasized the emotion with a relentless yet even pounding of the kick drum, building on the snare with an intensity that belied belief. Sweat poured down his face, his black hair matted, his arms a blur, and those horns churned and churned. My god, this was something else, this was the music I had grown up with, the music that I had never expected to hear in person, certainly not in 1980.

Tune followed tune, something from the Tiny Bradshaw book, something from Bobby Bland, another New Orleans-styled song, this time Lloyd Price’s ‘Where You At?’ with a gorgeously driving solo from the baritone player. Then they launched into a raucous tenor sax instrumental, with the singer playing the most straight-ahead rock and roll tenor sax you ever heard, full-toned, fat and sleazy, and that drummer, that mad drummer, swung the band with an intensity that had to be experienced to be believed.

The set ended, and laying down his sticks, the guy reached for a towel and wiped his face, got up from behind the kit, walked off the stage and headed to the bar. I approached him, and my words just came tumbling out - ‘Do you listen to Little Richard?’ He looked at me, face widening into a grin, a big incredulous grin, and he laughed. ‘Richard? Do I listen to Richard? Now right there, right there I gotta tell you, that guy is the man. That is rock ’n’ roll, I mean Little Richard? Shit - man you got the heart and soul of rock ’n’ roll right there’, and although we had never met before, there was an immediate understanding between the two of us, kind of like that transmission that happens between a zen master and a pupil…

Read more here - https://www.martinhespfoodandtravel.c...