Jesse Sailes

While many listeners might be flabbergasted that Elmore James and Doris Day shared the same drummer, those knowledgeable about the ways of studio session men wouldn't be surprised at all. Nonetheless, the career of Jesse Sailes is hardly that of the typical studio hack. Most drummers aspire to be adept at a range of styles -- including jazz, blues, soul, and rock -- and if they're lucky get chances to play such styles with virtuosity. Sailes, whose name sounds like a shorthand description of how Jesse down at the lake is spending his weekends, really did do all the styles extremely well. The results included many impressed musicians and many more brilliant records. In every case he is simply, or not so simply, the drummer in the band, but he did record on his own at least once. Recognizing the importance of making the same sort of pun that spoiled the previous paragraph, he assembled a group in the late '50s called Jesse Sailes & the Waves and cut "I'm in Love With the Drummer Man" for the Felsted label. The song has been reissued on a series of volumes documenting the label's history. Although it is an enjoyable record, expressing an admirable sentiment, it is not really what this artist is known for. His reputation was made on the Los Angeles music scene, the details of the story cloaked in the kind of versatility that seems to be the standard cloth for Sailes. He was at first known as that great Dixieland drummer from Denver, as the context he was first widely heard in upon arrival in California was Teddy Buckner's New Orleans jazz band, holding forth at Disneyland. He became an essential part of the recording scene for blues and R&B on the West Coast, and it is not only impossible but no fun at all to have a collection of this genre without hoisting the Sailes. A...