Florida - Dreams – Sheiks – The Executives – East West Records
130 drummers
Florida - Dreams – Sheiks – The Executives – East West Records
After my road gigs and residency in West Palm Beach, Biloxi Mississippi and Little Rock Arkansas, I returned to Geneva, Florida. January 1971. It wasn’t long before I started playing at a nightclub called Sheiks, in Orlando. The group was Hammond organ, drums and vocals. I knew the organist and his vocalist wife from my earlier 1969-1970 Residency in West Palm Beach. They were very good. I don’t know why I didn’t continue with them. Maybe they were going out - On The Road.
The club I was playing, Sheiks, was in an isolated part of Orlando. It was what was known as a “Show Club” lounge. The main attraction was a “show band” called The Executives. They were a four-piece rhythm section and 3 horns. Their image was like their name, clean cut with Brooks Brothers suits. They were good musicians and the audience liked them. They had routines and did comedy. ‘Very-professional)
When I was with Vic Waters playing at Soul City in Fort Lauderdale, we drove to another club to catch the last set of The Mob. The Mob was a top-notch show band, very popular and highly paid for that kind of club entertainment. They were highly successful.
That nightclub scene, with different genres of entertainment was an interesting experience. There were dance bands and show bands that also played dance music. The clubs and rooms were different, as was the audience and venues payroll. Show clubs were known to pay more money for “Show Bands”
My worldly possessions in those days were frugal, still are. My main items were my drumset and record player. I wasn’t an audiophile collector. I bought albums for music entertainment and education. Over in Orlando, there was a record store called East - West. A great shop that I began to visit and buy albums. The husband and wife owners were very progressive with the music they sold. I bought a record by a group called Dreams (Columbia, 1970) without knowing anything about them.
I was a fan of Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago. There were a few horn groups with records in those days. Cold Blood and Chase. Groups with horns on their record include The Grass Roots---Ides of March---Spiral Staircase---The Outsiders. Maynard Ferguson and Don Ellis were in the jazz big band category.
When I began to listen to my Dreams record…I knew there was something different about the music and the quality of the musicians. Of coarse, my radar is always listening first to the drummer. The drum performance tuning and sound was quite different. I was still listening to Mitch Mitchell with Jimi Hendrix, Ginger Baker - Cream and John Bonham with the first Led Zeppelin record.
That period of time…the early 70s produced an abundance of new music from a variety of groups. Music became more experimental-drawing from different styles of jazz-blues-folk-county and rock. College and commercial FM Radio stations were also influencing the sound and production of music.
Jazz was beginning to be more accepted in popular music.
“Dreams” was an American Jazz-Rock group. Prominent members included John Abercrombie, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Don Grolnick and drummer Billy Cobham. The first record by Dreams is a very nice collection of tracks. It contains musical aspects that push the envelop of being non-commercial, saxophone and drum solos. Though Dreams was on Columbia Records, they would never achieve commercial success. I never heard them on the radio like Chicago or BS&T. That was the key.
I listened to that record many times. As I mentioned, I knew there was something different about the drumming. In 1971, I didn’t have access to Wikipedia to find out the history of a band or musician. I didn’t know that Billy Cobham was a real jazz drummer…recently leaving the band of Horace Silver. I’d never seen a Youtube video of him playing left handed ride cymbal – high hat and right feet. What the kids today call open-handed style.
It wouldn’t be till Mahavishnu Orchestra performed on a television show---I could visually see how unique Billy Cobham was. By then he was reinventing the art of playing the drumset