Dannie Richmond - Drummer
Dannie Richmond with Charlie Mingus
If you and Charles Mingus are going to team up as the rhythm section in his band, it's really going to help you, if you happen to be Dannie Richmond.
Amazingly, Dannie Richmond was originally a tenor sax player and had been playing drums only six months, when he first recorded with Mingus!
Should you buy anything from this page, you'll automatically make a donation...
to The Acumen Fund.
You'll be helping to solve the problem of global poverty and helping us all to imagine a brighter future.
Now, doesn't that sound good?
Great Dannie Richmond stuff on Amazon!
A match made in music heaven?
When you hear how Charlie and Dannie work together though, you appreciate what Charlie must have heard from the start.
Charlie had a tendency to do the unexpected, a quality you don't generally look for in a drummer, but you'll find it in Dannie. The way they stuck together through complex changes, sometimes at lightning speed, makes one think of birds following each other's movements in flight!
Dannie was on most Mingus sessions from 1955-1978. He also played behind Chet Baker, Joe Cocker, the Mark-Almond Group and Elton John.
After Charlie's passing, he was a member of Mingus Dynasty. He was also with the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet and led his own bands.
More than with any other drummer I've ever heard, I often find that I'm listening to ONLY the drums, when I've got something on where Dannie is doing the stick-work.