Why I don't hear bass drums on Jazz LPs?

@czarivey My bad. It should be "powered by" 😂

Here’s why:

In Jazz, drummers tune their bass drum to a higher pitch than in Rock/Pop music, and leave it undamped, so it rings. Rock drummers often removed the front bass drum head (or cut a hole in it) so as to make the attack of the bass drum pedal beater (typically made of hard felt) hitting the batter head more audible. Jazz drummers like their bass drum to sound like their toms, but lower in pitch

Jazz drummers play the bass drum in a manner known as "feathering". That means instead of pounding the bass drum pedal so that the beater slams into the bass drum head, then leaving it against the head (known as "burying the beater"), Jazz drummers "tap" the beater against the head and then let it rebound.

In Jazz the bass drum is played so as to be part of a musical instrument (the complete drumset), not as a separate big, loud "thud". A classic example of a drummer who "buried the beater" was John Bonham. If you listen with a "certain musical sensibility", burying the beater tends to chop the music into separate sections, rather than letting the music flow like a stream, uninterrupted. The bass drum"thud" tends to make the music feel as if it is constantly stopping and starting again with every bass drum note played (in 4/4 time on the "1" and "3"---the "downbeat". The snare drum plays the "2" and "4"---the "backbeat").

What Bdp24 said and that traditionally most recording engineers put a mic on pop/rock bass drums and don't individually mic a jazz bass drum.

@bdp24 

Wow. Thanks. That is really interesting.

I joined a Jump Blues/Swing band in 1973, and had to learn to play in the style heard on the 1940’s-50’s recordings of that music. Those drummers played "4 on the floor", a term meaning playing the bass drum with 4 quarter notes per bar (on the "1", "2", "3", and "4"). Doing so gives the music a feel of forward momentum. It works whether you’re playing "straight" feel or "swing" (known as shuffle in Blues). Charlie Watts was fond of 4 on the floor.

I studied the playing of the master---Earl Palmer, who is heard on the 1950’s recordings of the likes of Little Richard. John Bonham copped Earl’s intro to Richard’s "Keep A-Knockin’" for his intro to Zeppelin’s song "Rock And Roll". And I mean a direct imitation, though with a sluggishness (playing just slightly behind the "pocket" of the song) not heard in Earl’s great "leading the charge" feel.

In the late-90’s I played a gig backing Little Richard’s 1950’s label mates at Specialty Records, the duo of Don & Dewey (Don is Sugarcane Harris, better known to you younger guys for his violin playing in Frank Zappa’s band). I had no rehearsal with the guys, just got to the club (The Continental in Los Angeles), played an opening set with the instrumental trio I was working with at the time (we also recorded the album Moontan with a guitarist/songwriter/singer you are probably not aware of---Evan Johns, R.I.P.. Drank himself to death, making it to only 61 years of age), and got a beer while Don, Dewey, and their bassist (a great player with a beautiful old sunburst Fender P-Bass and Ampeg SVT amp) mounted the stage and got plugged in and ready to go (it took Don quite a while. He was higher than a kite 😁). So the bassist comes over to me at the beginning of each song, just telling me the feel of the song (straight or shuffle) and then counting it off: 1, 2, 3, here we go 4! Believe it or not the set went well, and afterwards Dewey came over to me and said "I like your style." This from a guy who had Earl Palmer on his recordings! Well thank you, sir. My pa (a flaming racist) would not have been happy seeing me on stage with three nig---oh, never mind.

When I was out in Austin in 2008 I met with a bandleader (Cornell Hurd) whose first question to me was "Do you play half notes or quarter notes on your bass drum." I already knew he had started out as a garage band drummer around the same time as I (early-’65), and that question told me he knew what he wanted in a drummer. I ended up not moving to Austin, but I knew a great Telecaster player who did. We had moved from San Jose to L.A. together in June of 1979, right after The Knack broke big. Paul Skelton was his name (another dead one, this guy from smoking cigarettes). You can hear him on a buncha Austin-artists albums, including the debut by the Hillbilly/Rockabilly singer/songwriter Wayne "The Train" Hancock. By the way, Jr. Brown recorded one of Cornell’s songs, making him a little dough.

All right, that’s enough outta me. Perhaps more than enough 😉.