You Can Leave Your Hat On: 5 Songs on the Hi-Hat
This week's songs are from Josephine Taylor, the Clash, George McRae, Goat Girl, and Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, & Hahn Rowe
RIP Sonny Curtis
Sonny Curtis was a friend and collaborator of Buddy Holly, and would go on to join The Crickets after Holly died. He’s best known, however as the songwriter of one of the greatest Rock & Roll songs of all time: “I Fought The Law.” Who did it better? The Clash? Or Dead Kennedys? Asked another way: One middle finger? Or two? I suppose it depends which way the wind is blowing…
Around the time I started taking drum lessons, a new movie theater opened at a nearby mall. The opening reel always included an concession-stand ad, where animated concession items play a song as a big-band jazz band. Soda was the drummer, and the song opened with a little hi-hat riff that I must’ve played every time I sat down at a drum kit over the next 15-or-so years. (Thanks, YouTube.)
Drummers that can make good use of the hi-hat have always stood out to me. Bryan Devendorf of the National is master on the hi-hat, as is —credit where credit’s due—Carter Beauford of Dave Matthews Band. Both make use of the the hi-hat with intricate time signatures and in fills; they use drop-beats, or use it in place of a snare. It can sound very natural in the logic of the music, but try and play it and it breaks your brain a little bit. Ringo Starr is amazing with the staggered beats, putting together very melodic drum parts to otherwise fairly straightforward songs. Charlie Watts famously skipped a beat on the hi-hat to make his snare pop a little more. There’s a funny video where Dave Grohl blows Pharrell’s mind by telling him he ripped off bands like Cameo and the Gap Band for most of his fills on Nevermind, including the iconic opening snare/kick/hat flams on “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” As Grohl puts it: “The big disco flam—it works every time.”
That flam relies on the hi-hat, which is an underappreciated and highly versatile piece of the kit.
Here are 5 songs that give you the hi-hat.
“We almost always put the drummer’s wallet on the snare drum. It would jump up when the drum was struck, providing a little sound, and then fall right back down, deadening it again so that the ring was not very long at all. Rarely were toms hit. Almost everything was the bass drum, snare and hat—which wasn’t miked.” - Terry Manning, Recording Engineer
Josephine Taylor - “For You My Love”
The sound of a hi-hat on a 60s-70s soul song is one of life’s great pleasures. Stax. Muscle Shoals. Hi Records. The drummers on those records define “being the pocket”, keeping the groove loose and the sound tight. There’s the songs, and the horns, and the organ, but when those labels, or artists on them, come to mind, I think of the drum sound and that hi-hat. It’s a tight tapping, but it’s still got a little looseness to it—just enough to seem cool. That sound is also present here.
Remember the running joke in That Thing You Do! when the Wonders first went by the “One-ders” and everyone mispronounced it? Well, in the 1960s, one of the few black-owned labels in Chicago was One-derful Records. Notably, the Jackson 5 recorded in their studios, and their biggest hit was The Five Du-Tones “Shake a Tail Feather,” which was memorably featured in The Blues Brothers. Mar-V-Lus was a subsidiary soul label which released a few singles from Evanston, IL native Josephine Taylor. Everything about “For You My Love” feels effortless, including the bounce of the hi-hat. The song would fit in among anything Stax or Atlantic put out in the early 60s, but was unreleased until Secret Stash put out this label compilation of old One-derful Records masters.
“Before I joined The Clash I was a good drummer, just average to good…I could play all different styles of music, but when I joined The Clash I readjusted my style so that I could do all these styles but – powerfully! I would have been an OK drummer all my life but joining The Clash made me push myself to become a great drummer.” - Topper Headon
The Clash - “Rudie Can’t Fail”
Topper Headon is an incredibly underrated drummer. Does he get overlooked because Stuart Copeland sucked all the air out of the space reserved for reggae-influenced punk-adjacent drummers? Copeland had to over-compensate for “the bass playing element,” whereas Headon could shape-shift with the band, flexing across genres—punk, reggae, disco, rockabilly, funk. Have a listen to “Supermarket” and “Driven to Tears” back-to-back. The rhythm sections for both songs are very similar. One sounds is very much working with the melody and energy being communicated—anxious underneath, calm on the surface. The other is three guys fighting for attention. Headon used the hi-hat so well I’m having trouble picking a single example. Anchoring the polyrhythm of “Straight to Hell,” slick disco of “Supermarket” and “Train in Vain,” the opening fill of “Death or Glory”, the teeter totter bounce in the verses of “(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais”—even the militant constancy of “London Calling” is spot on. But “Rudie Can’t Fail” is a showcase for all of that and then some. You feel the hi-hat within the first seconds of the song as he’s clamping it as soon as the song starts. From there, the guitar, vocals, horns—the party going on in this song—is all feeding off of Headon’s playing. And it’s full of joy. I can’t listen to this song and not be in a better mood than when it started.
George McRae - “I Get Lifted”
George McRae had a hit with the disco-soul “Rock Your Baby” in 1974, but it’s the funky “I Get Lifted” that hits a bit harder and stands the test of time. Alongside that killer up-on-the-neck bass groove, the hi-hat is practically the lead instrument on this track. Compare it to a version McRae recorded with KC & the Sunshine Band, where that amazing groove is buried and lost in the shuffle. Oddly enough, drumming on this version is Richard Finch of The Sunshine Band. That groove is so good it “got lifted” as a sample for a number hip hop songs, most notably Snoop Dogg’s “Gin & Juice.” While McRae might not be a household name, his musical legacy is vast. Other artists to sample his songs include RZA, 50 Cent, Method Man & Redman, and Notorious B.I.G.
“We’re not just one thing, so our music shouldn’t just be one thing if it’s really representing how we feel. We feel all these things all the time. We wanted to show that somehow.” - Lottie Pendlebury
Goat Girl - “Words Fell Out”
2024’s Goat Girl’s Below the Waste slipped below my radar (no pun intended) until this Spring. It’s a sonic mish-mash that’s hard to describe, but worth the time nonetheless. It’s got deep synths, fuzzed out bass, banjo, pump organs, strings, art pop, and a piano track or two that sounds like a Taylor Swift ballad. For a shorter description: it’s a good mix of Beach House and Mannequin Pussy. But that’s also a bit of a simplification that doesn’t do justice to the complexity of it. The London trio bring in soft, winding melodies, and then layer in of the different musical textures that feel much more organic than I’ve made it sound here. And yet, there is an uneasiness to what is a very polished album. “Words Fell Out” feels like it’s floating along a quiet river at night—and you have a growing unease that the speed might be getting a bit too fast. The stuttering hi-hat trickles along over the top of the verse, barely noticeable until it flutters up briefly, which provides that subtle uneasiness I’ve been getting at.
“I think at a certain point you are sort of seeing space in songs where you can fit in. At first everyone just throws their full force behind being heard above their band mates, or all playing the same thing, a la Ramones. But eventually you sort of start treating a band like its own instrument and composing for it as a whole. That's sort of where it's at.” - Brendan Canty
Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, & Hahn Rowe - “#6”
Brendan Canty’s hi-hat work sounds fierce. But everything about Fugazi sounds fierce. Canty’s playing has yet to lose the edge. A multi-faceted creative, the former Fugazi drummer has produced music documentaries (Burn to Shine, Sunken Treasure), albums (The Thermals, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists), and performed with former bandmates (the Messthetics), and other punk icons (Bob Mould). Here, alongside composer Hahn Rowe and sound artist Stephen Vitiello he offers a lesson in how narrow the gap is between post-punk and (some) jazz. The album is confrontational, but not abrasive—it sustains some beats and locks into a groove here and there. “#6” is an especially solid showcase for Canty’s drumming. It’s something you can either lock into it, or space out. Listener’s choice.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: