James Gadson via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from James Gadson:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: James Gadson
- City: Los Angeles
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri
My Life & Work
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Bio:
An American drummer and session musician ICON. James Gadson (born June 17, 1939) is the son of jazz drummer Harold Gadson. Beginning his career in the late 1960s, Gadson has since become one of the most-recorded (and sampled) drummers in the history of R&B music. At last count he has played on over 300 gold records.
Born in Kansas City, MO, Gadson played with the first line-up of Charles Wright's Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, and recorded 3 albums with them between 1968 and 1970. Along with other members of Wright's band he appeared on many hit records, including with Dyke & the Blazers. Gadson became well known as a drummer following the release of the album a Still Bill by Bill Withers, released by Sussex Records in 1972. That’s Gadson’s groove on “Use Me”.
He played on The Temptations album 1990, released on the Motown label in 1973. In 1975 he played with Freddie King on Larger Than Life and went on to record with Martha Reeves, Randy Crawford, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, BB King, Albert King, Rose Royce, Elkie Brooks and many more artists.
In 1975 he anchored the Motown classic double platinum album City Of Angels, recorded by Billy Griffin & The Miracles. Gadson was also the drummer on Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" in 1976, and appeared on two tracks, "At The Mercy" and "Riding To Vanity Fair", on the 2005 Paul McCartney album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
Gadson had a brief appearance in the Adam Sandler 2009 movie Funny People as a member of the jam band that Sandler's character hires to play with him.
In April 2009, Gadson joined Alex Dixon, grandson of Willie Dixon, on his 2009 release titled Rising From The Bushes, in which he appeared on two tracks, "Fantasy" and Willie Dixon's famous song "Spoonful". In June 2009, Gadson joined Beck, Wilco, Feist and Jamie Lidell covering Skip Spence's Oar as part of Beck's Record Club series, with videos appearing on Beck's website beginning November 2009. He has drummed on Beck's albums Sea Change, The Information and Morning Phase, as well as Jamie Lidell's 2010 album Compass.
Gadson played drums, as well as hambone (slapping his legs), on the D'Angelo song "Sugah Daddy", on the Black Messiah album (2014).
Contact Information
- Email: +1 323-252-7015
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Management/Booking:
Press Contact
gjym@aol.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCLlVF-NoEFuTZ_ZgxYrG6bQ
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/4XFMhHqk0Zz0KcmzOEqogA
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/3orA2HSO31pTj5FcdecJJ6
Clips (more may be added)
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
