It's actually quite a nice tribute by Nate Chinen, hitting most of Don's career highlights:
Playing in Boston clubs by night, he met students from the Berklee School of Music, most notably the bassist Gene Perla.It was Mr. Perla who got Mr. Alias a job as a drummer with Ms. Simone, even though he had no experience with a full drum kit. He handled the challenge and eventually became Ms. Simone's musical director. In 1969, his work in her ensemble caught the attention of Miles Davis, who was then developing the hazy jazz-rock that would suffuse his album "Bitches Brew."
Hired as an auxiliary percussionist for the album, Mr. Alias ended up playing a trap-set part, along with Jack DeJohnette, on the track "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down." His lean and loosely syncopated beat, inspired by New Orleans parade music, is one of the album's most distinctive rhythms.
Mr. Alias played the role of trap drummer again on a 1979 concert tour with Joni Mitchell, in a band that included the saxophonist Michael Brecker, the guitarist Pat Metheny and the bassist Jaco Pastorius. A live recording from the tour, "Shadows and Light," is often cited as a favorite among musicians.
Also, I did not know about Kebekwa (cute), a percussion ensemble he founded while he was living in Montreal. Don talks more about that band here:
DI: In addition to Stone Alliance, you had another band, Kebekwa. Tell us about that.DA: That's a play on words. I was living in Canada at the time, in Montreal. The terminology for the people from Quebec was Quebecois. I took it, and spelled it in African intonation, and called it Kebekwa. If you said Kebekwa, it sounded like Quebecois, from the French people there. This was '85 to '87. At that time I thought that maybe I was going to settle down a bit and get off the road. Montreal had that European ambience to it, yet it was still near the States. I went up there and got a band together, a 10-piece band with five percussionists. It turned out to be one of the greatest bands up there.
Comments