Karl Kiffe

Karl Kiffe’s standard certificate of so-called “platinum hipster” position lists the next known reasons for his receiving this coveted position: Kiffe won a jazz drums competition presided over by non-e apart from Gene Krupa. Kiffe continued to try out the film a part of “jive golf club drummer” inside a 1944 exploitation epic entitled Youngsters Aflame. A particular silver star is usually denoted because of this film released beneath the alternate name of Hoodlum Ladies, that being truly a appreciated and potentially fascinating sign of the desperate low quality. Kiffe ascends towards the gilded levels of hipsterdom finally because he doubled on bongos, especially as back-up to Sammy Davis, Jr. Like a talented teenager in LA, Kiffe in 1943 led an take action referred to as the Hollywood Canteen Children. Maker Ken Murray offered him an individual quantity in Blackouts, a vaudeville revue rather than the consequence of troubles using the Western Coastline power grid. The drummer experienced just switched 18 when he grabbed a tempo chair in Jimmy Dorsey’s music group, remaining until early in 1953. On the brand new York scene soon thereafter, Kiffe drummed with a fascinating selection of players, including tenor saxophonists Stan Getz and Zoot Sims, trumpeter Charlie Shavers, and pianist Jimmy McPartland. The drummer herded with Woody Herman over many tour drives in 1957. For the ultimate year from the ’50s he sprinted behind vibraphonist Crimson Norvo, tempos boiling, after that simmered right down to place a speed for the great vocalist June Christy. In the ’60s Kiffe became area of the regular musical staff on the Flamingo Resort in NEVADA, a good spot to match Sammy Davis, Jr., particularly if lugging a couple of bongo drums. Jack port Cathcart was Kiffe’s employer in the playing mecca, sometimes arousing suspicion that he demanded bongo solos to be able to utilize the instrument’s nifty case to smuggle contraband. Occasions concerning bongos are noted in a fairly huge Kiffe discography, the outcomes of almost 100 recording periods between the middle-’40s and middle-’60s. Leonard Feather suggests the next bongo fury, and he should be aware of: Jumpin’ Rings by Georgie Auld and many Jimmy Dorsey paths in the Swingin’ Dorseys.