Jimmy Cobb's Drum Solos In The Song 'No Blues'

This analysis will be on Jimmy Cobb’s drum solos in the song “No Blues” from Miles Davis’ In person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk. Jimmy Cobb was born in Washington D.C. on January 20th 1929; He is best known as the drummer from Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” and has also played on Someday My Prince will Come, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain and Live at Carnegie Hall. Cobb has performed with many famous musicians such as Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Joe Henderson, Wes Montgomery, Clark Terry to mention just a few (). In this transcription, Cobb is performing with a quintet with Miles Davis on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor sax, Wynton Kelly on piano and Paul Chambers on bass.
This solo follows on from solos by Davis, Kelly

His first solo is very semiquaver based with his use of rudiments. However, his second eight bar solo contains many recurring elements. The most recurring element throughout the transcription is his use of two semiquavers between the snare drum (sometimes the floor tom) and the bass drum. These are most evident in his second eight bar solo in bars thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, and twenty. Aside from the fact that five out of the eight bars contains this he only ever plays this on beat three. Cobb has created a pattern with this, aside from bar thirteen he plays this in all of the even numbered bars (14, 16, 18 and 20). This is not the only time Cobb phrases his solos like this in bars twenty four, thirty eight and forty four he still inserts this. Cobb takes this same phrasing idea he’s done with semiquavers but now with quavers. He does this in bars seventeen, forty three and forty the finals bars of the transcription. After Cobb’s two eight bar solo breaks he goes into a series of one bar trades with trumpeter Miles Davis from bar twenty one to the end. Upon examining it you can see some more recurring ideas in his solos. In bar twenty two, which is his first solo break while trading with Davis, he plays four semiquavers on beat one and a crotchet on beat two. In bar twenty six he takes the same idea with the semiquavers on beat

Cobb stated in an interview that some of his influences are Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey and Buddy Rich (Miriello, 2008). Bar thirty contains a few short snare drum roll bursts it could be possible he has taken Blakey’s use of rolls but rather to create tension throughout a bar like Blakey does he uses it to create interesting ideas with short roll bursts. Cobb once said in an anecdote that he could always recognise Art’s crescendo press rolls (Falzerano, 1995). As stated earlier in the analysis Cobb is very fond of crotchet triplets. In bar two he plays a set of them in an unusual spot, across beats two and three of the bar. The complexity of this idea could possibly mean that it was something he could have been working on, since he has performed it very accurately. A possibility with this idea is to practise it with a metronome to improve accuracy around the drums since it is odd for crochet triplets to go across the middle of a