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


I don't hear the bass drums during playback of a number of jazz LPs (Webster, Hawkins, Ellington, etc). I have Thiel 3.6 speakers powdered by Mark Levinson 23.5 amp. I can isolate the sound of bass drums on rock/pop LPs but not on jazz LPs unless drummer play solo in the middle parts.

 

I read somewhere this has to do with size of the bass drums used in 40s, 50s and another explanation was the way drummer play bass drums. I can clearly isolate the double bass, snare drums, and cymbals on jazz LPs, but hardly the bass drum. Let me know your experience with this issue. 

pwerahera

Some of the best recorded jazz is on a Japanese label--East Wind--and the recoding of drums is particularly good on an album for the Great Jazz Trio (Hank Jones, Ron Carter, Tony Williams): "Direct from LA."  If you can find it, go for the original release (might be expensive) which has a very glossy cover.  The drum solo on "Night in Tunisia" is amazingly realistic.

 

Speaking of Tony Williams, in an interview in Modern Drummer Magazine the interviewer asked Tony if he had heard any drummers recently who impressed him. Tony responded (I paraphrase) "Have you heard the guy in The Ramones (he was speaking of the band’s second drummer, Marky)? Now THAT is great drumming!"

I’m pretty sure Tony was being sincere. If you listen to Marky’s drumming, it is very muscular, just what the music calls for. The playing of original Ramones drummer Tommy is much less so. Almost wimpy, in fact.

 

That "Night in Tunisia" track I mentioned above includes a Ron Carter bass solo and a Tony Williams drum solo with very prominent bass drums.

This reminds me of a jazz music joke: An anthropologist is given the privilege of being the first outsider to study an isolated tribe discovered deep in the jungle.  When he enters the village, he hears a slow drum beat.  He pays his respects to the village medicine man and asks about the drumming.  All he is told is that every thing is fine as long as the drum keeps beating.  The drum beats day an night and after a while the anthropologist scarcely notices it.  On his last day in the village he goes to the medicine man to say farewell.  Just as they are saying their final good byes the drumming stops.  A look of horror comes over the medicine man's face.  The anthropologist seeing the fear demands to know what this means.  The medicine man cries out: "Oh no.  BASS SOLO!"