Drummin' up a Storm / Compelling Percussion

This two-fer assembles a pair of Sandy Nelson LPs from 1962 that rank among the influential drummer's finest hours. Drummin' Up a Storm continues Nelson's collaboration with producer and session ace Richie Podolor, co-writer of the drummer's smash "Let There Be Drums." While nothing here matched their previous commercial success, this is nevertheless a better-than-average entry in the vast Nelson catalog, achieving a fine balance between well-chosen covers and original material. While the former category establishes Nelson in contexts like New Orleans R&B (Fats Domino's "I'm in Love Again") and jazz (Duke Ellington's "C-Jam Blues"), everything here pales in the looming shadow of the Nelson original "All Around the World with Drums," a protean 12-minute epic that employs virtually every rhythm and studio effect known to man. Compelling Percussion is in many respects the definitive Sandy Nelson record. Eschewing the cover material and thematic conceits of earlier efforts, the album instead channels its energies into long, original compositions that serve solely to showcase Nelson's monster drumming, with an absolute minimum of frills. In a sense Compelling Percussion is more a primer on the savage art of rhythm than a conventional rock & roll LP, and it's easy to imagine a generation of aspiring drummers squirreled away in their parents' garages and basements with the album cranked up to full volume, bashing away at their own kits in emulation of Nelson's aggressive style and monolithic sound. Highlights include the dramatic opener "Civilization" and the climactic "Drums (For Drummers Only)," which distills the Nelson aesthetic into 12 minutes of absolute frenzy.