Who Is The Best Drummer Of All Time?

Welcome to the latest edition of All the Music of All the World, our weekly series where we aim to share music worth being passionate about. Consider us a guide who can help you get the most out of your Victrola by giving you new music to listen to, or new ways to think about music you already know. 

Eventually, when you are obsessed with music, you wade into the great debates. Who’s the best band of all time? What about American band? Who’s better: Stones or Beatles? Blur or Oasis? Otis or Al? Which label is better? Motown or Stax? Blue Note or Impulse? Who’s the best guitarist? What about singer?

All of these have semi-predictable winners, and the terms of the debate(s) are pretty cemented by now, the same way the Jordan vs. Lebron debate is (Uncs say Jordan, youths say Lebron). The “Who is the best drummer” question, however, seems pretty wide open. The answers can be all over the place, depending on who you ask. And defining “best” is weird when it comes to drumming: You don’t want to praise over-playing. You could argue Al Jackson Jr., the drummer in Booker T. and the M.G.’s and the Stax house band, who basically defined R&B drumming, but his murder in the early ‘70s leaves him too small a body of work. Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich only played in one style. I could—and have, anywhere between 1/16 and 42/16 drunk—make the argument that Meg White is the most important drummer of all time, since the band she played in literally can never play again without her, and no one brought out the best in Jack White like she did. You could also make a similar argument about John Bonham of Led Zeppelin; the band has never played a meaningful gig without him, and no one would argue that any of the band’s members made their best music without him behind the skins.

Coincidentally it’s Bonham’s work on “Fool in the Rain” that provides the answer for the best drummer of all time. On that song, Bonham is doing his best drumming of his career, an ambling, stone-fisted shuffle that has more groove than many drummers have sought to imitate.

But here’s the truth: The beat isn’t Bonham’s. It belongs to the best drummer of all time: Bernard Purdie. Purdie invented the Purdie Shuffle, the most distinctive drumbeat ever laid down on wax, a beat worshipped by drummers (including Bonham, who revered Purdie over all other drummers) and often imitated. It’s so popular, you can find tons of videos on YouTube teaching drummers how to play it. Put simply—excuse me for some music theory—Purdie plays a shuffle (the swinging triplet pattern on his hi-hat) and fills in the background with what he calls “ghost notes” on the snare drum that make the beat sound like a train stumbling to a start. It's not hyperbolic to call this the best drum beat and technique of all time. It's so versatile. Bernard explaining it:

You can hear him do this shuffle on Steely Dan’s “Home at Last”:

And you can hear Toto’s drummer add extra beats on “Rosanna:”

And now, I suppose you’re thinking to yourself: “Yes, I hear it, but who is Bernard Purdie?” Purdie was born in Maryland in 1942, and after picking up drum lessons from a variety of drummers around Elkton, Maryland, moved to New York in the early ‘60s. When there, he was linked up with James Brown, playing on seminal songs like “Aint That a Groove.” He became Brown’s preferred studio drummer, playing on the legendary Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud LP. From there he became Aretha Franklin’s music director, playing drums for her and for King Curtis’ band at one of the best live concerts of all time, Aretha Franklin At Fillmore West. Listen to him drum the ever loving hell out of “Respect” like it’s a race off a cliff:

While working with Aretha, he’d lend the Purdie Shuffle to “Rock Steady,” one of the most sampled breaks and songs in hip-hop history.

Purdie’s drumming has its own life—he played with literally hundreds of artists; he says it’s something like 5,000 in total, a list that includes basically every band or pop artist you can think of—but it has a second life as the literal building block of much of hip-hop. His clear breaks and effortless style mean that he’s been sampled by everyone from OutKast to EPMD, Blackalicious to Wu-Tang. And electronic artists have taken his beats as their own too; Beck, Prodigy, and Massive Attack have all sampled him as well.

But I think the thing that makes Purdie the best drummer of all time, beyond all the stuff I’ve mentioned above, is that he’s kept the yeoman, everyman persona a good drummer needs. The drummer is never the star, and shouldn’t be: People don’t go to concerts to hear just drums, generally. A good drummer plays to give service to the song, to make it better, to add to it, to make it more than the sum of its parts. And Bernard Purdie has been doing that for longer than any other drummer. Do yourself a favor and spend some time poking around on his WhoSampled page, his Wikipedia, and his Discogs. Throw a dart and you’ll find an incredible record with unbelievable drumming. And in the meantime, listen to his best album as a bandleader, Purdie Good!:

As a bonus, here's Steely Dan talking about how much they love Purdie: