The Rick Marotta Interview

I knew how to play a shuffle because I listened to music and played what guys played in the shuffle. When I was playing in "Riverboat Soul Band" we had a couple of songs that were shuffles. It was a ten piece band so when I played the shuffle it felt fine. Charlie (Neville) pulled me aside and said, "you know your shuffle sounds great, but it would feel really good if you played it a little differently." I said, "what do you mean?" He said, "well I'll show you." Charles played alto in the band we were in. He sat down on the drums and played his hands and his feet all at the same time playing the shuffle. "Ta-Tat, Ta-Tat, Ta-Tat, Ta-Tat, Ta-Tat." It was so stripped down, so basic, then he said, "now take that shuffle and whatever you do you're always thinking of those notes when you play. You can play just quarter notes on the bass drum, you could play just backbeat on the snare drum but the shuffle is always inside. That was in its simplest form, that was a shuffle. I know that other guys who heard me play a shuffle like that would look at me and say, "what's he doing?" Pretty soon they'd be playing the same thing because it felt great and they couldn't figure out how it felt so great. I felt really comfortable with my pocket when I was playing the shuffle. I remember I went to a gig downtown (NYC) and Hugh McCracken was playing with "Corbett and Hersch." The drummer in that band was a guy named John Siomus. Siomus was the original drummer on "Frampton Comes Alive." He was an amazing player and an incredible human being. There was a problem after FCA because Siomus was promised some participation he didn't receive so he left that band. Peter had to replace him, I did a couple of months of that FCA tour, Newmark did some of it. I went to see John playing with Huey and John played the shuffle. On the second hit of the shuffle he would start his right hand. He would be playing "da-dat, da-dat, da-dat and on his right hand he'd be playing "da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da." The whole thing felt like it was a dotted triplet sixteenth, rolling feel and all he was doing was two different start times with the same rhythm, one with his left hand and one with his right hand and one with his left foot. It was all sort of unison but his right hand would go "da-da, da-da, da-da." When you take all these subdivisions of time apart in their simplest form that's the definition of how I approach playing. That's what I assume this conversation is about.