Eddie Gladden passes away

[Soul Stream]

I hadn't heard this elsewhere, but John Patton's wife Thelma just told me Eddie Gladden passed away last week.

Sad news.

[Dmitry]

He is on the soon to be released Larry Young's Mother Ship cd.

Excellent record!

Peace!

[sidewinder]

RIP, very sorry to hear this. Eddie's drumming has given me much pleasure on the Larry Young Mosaic and also the fine work with Dexter Gordon on Columbia and the nice sessions with Jimmy Ponder. Yet another very fine drummer leaves us ...

Edited September 7, 2003 by sidewinder

[mikeweil]

Saw him live with Dexter Gordon's quartet (Kirk Lightsey and Rufus Reid were in it) at an 11 a.m. outdoor gig in Frankfurt. Dexter had a little hangover from the night before and adressed the audience with mumblings about it being "unusual to play some mid-day bebop", but the second the rhythm section hit the first chord of the first tune, "Moment's Notice", the sun broke through the clouds and lighted the stage! Unforgettable!

Eddie was great that day, as always when I listened to him. His duos and general interplay with Larry Young was of the extraordinary.

One of his closest musical friends was Mickey Tucker, they recorded a few excellent albums together I highly recommend.

One of the many good musicians that go by unnoticed when they leave the general spotlight for some reason or other - didn't I read somewhere he was ill a few years ago? - and then are missed sorely when they pass away.

R.I.P. Eddie, and thanks for your inspiring playing.

[Soul Stream]

Hey man, Eddie Gladden passes away and gets half the board action as Warren Zevon (no disrespect to Warren)?

I thought this was a jazz board. B)

[Ron Thorne]

Eddie Gladden was a superb, inspired drummer, who received far less praise and attention than he deserved, in my view.

I'm greatly saddened by his passing, though his contributions are legendary and many were recorded, thankfully.

RIP, Eddie Gladden~

[DrJ]

Soul Stream Posted on Sep 8 2003, 08:11 PM

  Hey man, Eddie Gladden passes away and gets half the board action as Warren Zevon (no disrespect to Warren)?

I thought this was a jazz board. 

Well if Zevon was underappreciated, that was by pop music standards...Gladden was underappreciated by jazz standards, and that is REALLY underappreciated!

Gladden will be missed...I have recently been revisiting the MOTHER SHIP stuff in the Young Mosaic box, and enjoyed his work there a lot, and with Dexter as others mention. Another big loss.

[JSngry]

I've hesitated posting on this because Gladden meant a lot to me in a very non-specific way, and I'm just now finding the way to express my feelings about him.

I first got hip to him on Larry Young's HEAVEN ON EARTH, where that duet with Larry that he did, "The Cradle" just totally mesmerized me for hours on end. Next up was NEVER AGAIN, a James Moody Muse side that's STILL not out on CD (and that's just wrong). Good GOD does Gladden kick it along here, a nice loose feel with the kind of cymbal splashing that just sends me straight to Nirvana. Then came Dex's MANHATTAN SYMPHONIE, a perfect album made even more perfect by Gladden's hard, HARD swing and, again, those cymbals. By then, I was sold on Eddie Gladden big time. MOTHER SHIP was just icing on the cake.

Then in the summer of 1981, I got to hear him live. It was with Dexter, with the quartet that included Kirk Lightsey & the ill-fated David Eubanks. KILLER band, to my mind even a notch better than the one w/Cables & Reid, and that's saying something. The story of Dexter's late entrance and incredibly charismatic entrance that night is not releveant here, but what is relevant is that Eddie Gladden damn near literally lifted the bandstand that night. Everybody played loooonnngggg solos, and Dexter played these rubato codas that seemed to be even longer than the actual songs themselves. Gladden was just all up in everybody's ass every second of the way, playing with shadings and dynamics that were nothing but perfection. INTENSE perfection. I've never heard or played with a "straight ahead" drummer who used so much dynamics and took the group through so many changes. It was almost how I'd imagine Tony Williams would have developed if he had decided to be a "time" player - there really was that much variety and texture to Gladden's work that night.

What REALLY struck me though, was those cymbals - the recordings don't do them justice. SO many colors, SO many different shading of overtones, a never ending kaliedescope of sound all night long. I wondered why jazz records didn't sound like THIS, with the cymbals alive and in your face, louder than hell but still not covering anything up or drowning anybody out. Most don't you know. The cymbals are off in a place by themselves, and you never get that in-your-face sound like I got that night. I'm sure there's a good reason, but still... Anyway, I left out of there on a freakin' heavenly cloud of cymbals, and I can still hear and feel it today. Eddie Gladden had rocked my world, and the fact that Dex and everybody else were in TOP form jsut made it all the more better.

On the way out, I saw Eddie. An unassuming looking cat in a skull cap just hanging out in the crowd by himself. I walked over to him and simply said, "Thanks, man". He looked up, seemed not sure what to think at first, must have sensed my glow, grinned, and just said, "You're welcome". That was that.

Eddie Gladden was not an "innovator" or anything like that. There's no Eddie Gladden "school" of drumming. What he was was a bad motherfucker who didn't play like quite like anybody else, and who gave himself over fully to the music, with no ego, and with no bullshit. The cat just PLAYED, fully, totally, and beautifully. People like that are true treasures, blessings to us all, whether they get recognized as such or not.

I dug Eddie Gladden.