Joe Morello (born July 17, 1928in Springfield, Massachusetts) is a jazz drummer perhaps best known for his twelve and a half-year stint with The Dave Brubeck Quartet. He is frequently noted for playing in the unusual time signatures employed by that group in such pieces as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk".
Morello suffered from impaired vision since he was born, and devoted himself to indoor activities. At six years old he began studying th...
more
Joe Morello (born July 17, 1928in Springfield, Massachusetts) is a jazz drummer perhaps best known for his twelve and a half-year stint with The Dave Brubeck Quartet. He is frequently noted for playing in the unusual time signatures employed by that group in such pieces as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk".
Morello suffered from impaired vision since he was born, and devoted himself to indoor activities. At six years old he began studying the violin, to feature three years later as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, and again three years later.
At the of age 15 Morello met the violinist Jascha Heifetz and decided that he would never be able to equal Heifetz's "sound", so switched to drumming, first studying with a show drummer named Joe Sefcik and then George Lawrence Stone, author of the noted drum textbook Stick Control for the Snare Drummer. Stone was so impressed with Morello's ideas that he incorporated them into his next book,...
less
