Egads, we just love the drums. We covered Beware of Mr. Baker recently about legendary jazz and rock drummer Ginger Baker.

Even more recently, we’ve been watching the legendary Buddy Rich jazz it up a notch by beating the living daylights out of his kit. This led us to a few epic drum solo searches, during which we stumbled upon this from 1978.

Buddy Rich vs Ed Shaughnessy

In the 1960s, Buddy Rich did drum battles with Gene Krupa—they toured around on national television and all that.

In the 1970s, after Krupa died in 1973, Rich began taking on other jazz drummers such as Ed Shaughnessy.

We’ve no idea how you even say that surname (Rich is much easier), so maybe just watch these two battle it out and enjoy the nimble-fingered brilliance.

Rich is generally considered one of the best drummers ever. How does one transcend mere greatness and reach genius levels, then?

Kind of difficult to put into words, really, but you can watch the guy in action and it’s pretty obvious his speed, agility, and ingenuity put him at a level above the talented Shaughnessy.

Despite this, Buddy Rich was recently only voted 15th in Rolling Stone magazine’s Greatest Drummers of All Time list.

But then this is a publication which placed the mediocre Dave Grohl 27th and completely ignored the genius of Reni and other jazz/rock greats such as Can’s Jaki Liebezeit.

So, what do the dolts at Rolling Stone know? Nothing. In your face!

Drum Solos

For those interested, we ranted a great deal in Drum Solos: A Brief History about… drum solos and drumming.

Above it Keith Carlock, who’s a modern master behind the kit.

Why our keen interest? Mr. Wapojif used to play, although he lacked the skills necessary to do anything with it.

Now he drums up a storm on his keyboard, thrashing out articles at over 70wpms (that’s his touch typing speed too, thanks very much).

Which is, you know, the contemporary equivalent of running the London marathon wearing lead underpants. Not that Mr. Wapojif is showing off, he’s simply a rampaging narcissist. Indeed.