Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer, songwriter, conductor, and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.
Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He discovered his affinity for jazz music at a young age and began drumming at the age of two. He began playing jazz in 1937, working with acts such as Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James. From 1942 to 1944, Rich served in the U.S. Marines. From 1945 to 1948, he led the Buddy Rich Orchestra. In 1966, he recorded a big-band style arrangement of songs from West Side Story. He found lasting success in 1966 with the formation of the Buddy Rich Big Band, also billed as The Buddy Rich Band and The Big Band Machine.
Rich was known for his virtuoso technique, power, and speed. He was an advocate of the traditional grip, though he occasionally used matched grip when playing the toms. Despite his commercial success and musical talent, Rich never learned how to read sheet music, preferring to listen to the drum parts played in rehearsal by his drum roadie and rely on his memory.
Rich was born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents Bess Skolnik and Robert Rich who were both American vaudevillians. At 18 months old, he became part of his parents' vaudeville act, dressed in a sailor suit playing an arrangement of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" behind a large bass and snare drum – an act which concluded with him emerging from behind the drums tap-dancing to thunderous applause. By the age of four, he was headlining Broadway, billed as "Baby Traps the Drum Wonder". In his teens, he led a band and toured in the U.S. and Australia. By the age of 15, he was earning a weekly salary of $1,000 and was the second-highest-paid child entertainer during the 1930s, behind actor Jackie Coogan. Rich would sneak into jazz clubs at an age when he looked old enough to sit on the drum set, and fell in love with jazz.
His jazz career began in 1937 with clarinetist Joe Marsala. He became a member of the big bands led by Bunny Berigan and Artie Shaw. Rich considered himself a featured performer and disliked bandleaders. He claimed that the musicians "hardly look at the bandleader", and that the drummer is the real "quarterback" of the band. For Shaw's part, he felt that Rich did not follow direction and finally asked the drummer, "Who are you playing for? Me, yourself, who?" Rich admitted that he played for himself and his audience, whereupon Shaw suggested that Rich should accept the offer he had received from Tommy Dorsey: "I think you'd be happier there." Rich took Shaw's advice as a dismissal.
When Rich was home from touring with Shaw, he gave drum lessons to a 14-year-old Mel Brooks for six months. At 21, he participated in his first major recording with the Vic Schoen Orchestra who backed the Andrews Sisters.
In 1939, Rich joined the Dorsey band, leaving in 1942 to join the United States Marine Corps, in which he served as a Judo instructor and never saw combat. He was discharged in 1944 for medical reasons. After leaving the Marines, he returned to the Dorsey band. In 1946, with financial support from Frank Sinatra, he formed a band and continued to lead bands intermittently until the early 1950s.
Following the war, Rich formed his own big band, which often played at the Apollo Theater and featured backing vocals from Frank Sinatra.
In addition to playing with Tommy Dorsey (1939–1942, 1945, 1954–1955), Rich played with Benny Carter (1942), Harry James (1953–1962, 1964, 1965), Les Brown, Charlie Ventura, Jazz at the Philharmonic, and Charlie Parker (Bird and Diz, 1950).
In 1956, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich recorded the collaboration album titled Krupa and Rich, which featured the song "Bernie's Tune", in which they traded drum solos for a total of six minutes.
In 1959, Buddy Rich and Max Roach recorded Rich versus Roach with their respective bands of the time.
From 1966 until his death, he led successful big bands in an era when their popularity had waned. He continued to play clubs but stated in interviews that the majority of his band's performances were at high schools, colleges, and universities rather than clubs. He was a session drummer for many recordings, where his playing was often less prominent than in his big-band performances. Especially notable were sessions for Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and the Oscar Peterson trio with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis. In 1968, Rich collaborated with the Indian tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha on the album Rich à la Rakha.
He performed a big-band arrangement of a medley from West Side Story that was released on the 1966 album Swingin' New Big Band. The "West Side Story Medley", arranged by Bill Reddie, highlighted Rich's ability to blend his drumming into the band. Rich received the West Side Story arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's melodies from the musical in the mid-1960s; he found the music quite challenging and it took him almost a month of constant rehearsal to perfect. It later became a staple of his live performances. A six-minute performance of "Prologue/Jet Song" from the suite, performed during Frank Sinatra's portion of the Concert for the Americas on August 20, 1982, is on the DVD "Frank Sinatra: Concert for the Americas". In 2002, a DVD was released called The Lost West Side Story Tapes that captured a 1985 performance of this along with other numbers.
A live recording of the "Channel One Suite" is on the album Mercy, Mercy recorded at Caesars Palace in 1968. The album was acclaimed as the "finest all-round recording by Buddy Rich's big band".
In the 1950s, Rich was a frequent guest on The Steve Allen Show and other television variety shows, most notably on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Rich and Carson were lifelong friends, and Carson was himself a drum enthusiast.
In 1973, PBS broadcast and syndicated Rich's February 6, 1973, performance at the Top of the Plaza in Rochester, New York. It was the first time thousands of drummers were exposed to Buddy in a full-length concert setting, and many drummers continue to name this program as a prime influence on their own playing. One of his most widely seen television performances was in a 1981 episode of The Muppet Show in which he engaged Muppet drummer Animal (performed by Frank Oz, drums played by Ronnie Verrell) in a drum battle. Rich's famous televised drum battles also included Gene Krupa, Ed Shaughnessy and Louie Bellson. Perhaps his most viewed television appearance was on Here's Lucy in the 1970 episode "Lucy And The Drum Contest".
Influences, technique, and performances
Rich cited Gene Krupa, Jo Jones, Chick Webb, Ray McKinley, Ray Bauduc, and Sid Catlett as influences.