Billy Cobham

[Milestones]

     Billy Cobham is someone I’d nearly forgotten about, which is a crying shame given how he totally floored me when I first heard him.  He was on The Inner Mounting Flame, the great first Mahavishnu record and one of the first jazz albums I ever owned.  It was, and has remained, a perfect record.  I was coming from rock music, and here was jazz-rock fusion at super high voltage.  As far as I was concerned, McLaughlin shredded every rock guitarist I’d ever heard, including Hendrix.  He’s an all-time virtuoso of the six-string (sometimes twelve-string back then), and I was glad to hear him return to the Mahavishnu style in 4^th Dimension decades later.  But Billy Cobham…man, he played ferociously.  He just had that total connection with McLaughlin. I can’t think of another guitarist/drummer who connected and played with that kind of fire that hits you right in the gut and in the soul.  Simply awesome.

    I have followed McLaughlin ever since, but Cobham  not so much. Of course, he’s brilliant with Miles on Jack Johnson (with McLaughlin!), and then there’s Coryell’s Spaces (with McLaughlin!).  I’m aware of some of Cobham’s early fusion records as a leader, usually with Abercrombie in his early years before becoming a leader. They sound pretty good (through some sampling), and I am most intrigued by Total Eclipse. 

    But it’s interesting to hear  Cobham on some Horace Silver albums, on several CTI records, on Tyner’s Fly With The Wind, and much later with Donald Harrison (sounding like a different and certainly more subtle drummer).  Some real pleasure on all of these records.

    Early in my love of jazz, I put a lot of attention on the drummers: Tony Williams, Elvin, Jack DeJohnette, Max Roach, Art Blakey. While Billy Cobham is not really a leader like those drummers have been, he’s right up there as a player.  I will be listening to his work a LOT!

 

 

 

 

Edited September 4, 2022 by Milestones

[mjzee]

I saw Billy up close with Mahavishnu in 1972 and 1973.  He may have been the most astonishing drummer I ever saw (or heard).  Listen to the live Mahavishnu record "Between Nothingness And Eternity."  I was there for one of the concerts that make up that record.  It's exactly the way it went down, no overdubs.

Perhaps what's most amazing is that he was self-taught.

One interesting album that Cobham plays on is Louis Bellson's Matterhorn:

Cobham's name appears nowhere on the record, but you'll notice there are two drum sets on the cover (and one of them is Tama, Cobham's preferred company).  Apparently, Cobham and Bellson had a relationship that stretched back years, and the Matterhorn Suite was written specifically with Cobham in mind as the second drummer.  Contractual reasons were given for why he isn't credited.

[sgcim]

He was also another house drummer for CTI. He's on one of those Turrentine records mentioned in the Creed Taylor thread.

[danasgoodstuff]

Billy Cobham - Spectrum (Full album) - YouTube

I loved this, his first (?) leader date with Tommy Bolin, but never any of his other sessions under his own name. He could do all sorts of things, the version of Wave with stanley Turrentine is lovely and miles away from this.

[Milestones]

I had not known Cobham was on Easy Walker--I guess just the bonus tracks.  

It's interesting that his early work seemed to in essentially straight-ahead jazz settings, Silver being another case.  But there doesn't seem to be a lot of it.

 

 

[BillF]

  On 9/4/2022 at 12:44 PM, Milestones said:

I had not known Cobham was on Easy Walker--I guess just the bonus tracks.  

It's interesting that his early work seemed to in essentially straight-ahead jazz settings, Silver being another case.  But there doesn't seem to be a lot of it.

 

 

Expand  

I saw Billy Cobham at Ronnie Scott's in 1969 in a Horace Silver quintet that never recorded an album. The front line was the Brecker brothers. There was a sensational rapport between Billy and Horace.

[Rabshakeh]

I like his 80s records like Warning a fair bit. Some plodding stuff, but still 2/3s good, and with some well-written tunes.

Also, an important drummer for the evolution of Hip Hop, of course. 

[Milestones]

I'm a bit intrigued by the Ron Carter connection.  Cobham was on quite a few of Carter's albums in the 70s, and they appeared together on several CTI section.  More recently, they can be found on several Donald Harrison records.  

[Larry Kart]

Carter speaks of his appreciation of Cobham in the liner notes of the "Sunflower/Goodbye" coupling.

He also talks positively there about Steve Gadd.

[JSngry]

This right here is a really good record.

[medjuck]

I saw him in Amsterdam in 1975 with (I guess) his band of the time.  I've always appreciated that he was involved in producing a Gil Evans concert video in 1983 as well as playing drums on it.