musical drummers...who are they ???

Mike Portnoy-Dream Theater!
Neil Peart-Rush,
Simon Phillips-Toto, Jeff Beck, The Who, Judas Priest,
Carl Palmer-Asia, ELP,
Steve Smith-Journey,
John Bonham-Led Zepplin.

Carter Beauford, Dennis Chambers, Dave Giribaldi (sp)

To some extent subjective criteria determines whether or not a player is musical. Poorly informed listeners and people with fairly pedestrian musical sensibilities (most people) will spit out a very different list of players than a voracious listener who knows s##t from shinola. Dave Weckl and Steve Gadd have way too much Kenny G. in them to seem interesting when you can listen to:
Max Roach
Andrew Cyrille
John Hollenbeck
Lucas Niggli
Ches Smith
Pierre Favre
Han Bennink
Charles Hayward
Tom Rainey
Gerry Hemingway
Paul Motian
Dannie Richmond
Ed Blackwell
Pierre Tanguay... and most of the guys Xiekitchen mentioned.

Terry Bozio, from Missing Persons. Alwaythought he was good on that album, just saw an article in Drummer magazine, he was also w/ Zappa, (and others), lots of classical training. Now has a new CD out in which he plays a MASSIVE drum kit. The pictures shows the drums marked with letters to indicate notes, so I think he's playing melodies on the drums. The disc is called Chamber. I'm going to get it from Amazon if I ever get off Audiogon!

I have to agree with Xiekitchen - the young Tony Williams did it differently than anybody else. He didn't just keep a rhythm, he flowed with the the music. Check out Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage. Pure genius.