Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers

 

“Jim Keltner was another. He came from Tulsa, which is how he knew Leon Russell, Hal’s old Wrecking Crew friend. Another early jazz obsessive, Keltner arrived in LA in the 1960s and learned the obvious: the money was in rock and roll. Then he learned the next most obvious: the kings of Hollywood, drum-wise, were Earl and Hal, so he lied or hid or did whatever he could to sneak into Sunset Sound Recorders whenever Hal had a session there, ”“just to sit near the guy who played on everything, and made it all sound stronger.

Keltner’s eventual credits read like a history of the album-rock era: Dylan, Neil Young, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and solo albums by multiple members of the Beatles and Stones. Ringo Starr employed him in the All-Starr Band and famously called Keltner his favorite drummer. Jim Keltner defined rock and roll drumming in his era as much as Earl Palmer did in his, and his north star was Hal Blaine. From him, Keltner learned “the discipline of going in, sitting down, and looking at a simple chart, maybe a chord chart, and playing a feeling on this song or that song, playing a shuffle one time, a heavy rock thing another time.” “The man had perfection and time and feeling and sound,” Keltner said. “And I just studied the shit out of it.”