Steve Gadd - Playing in the Pocket

Steve Gadd

Birth name	Stephen Kendall Gadd
Born	April 9, 1945 (age 66) Irondequoit, New York, United States
Genres	Jazz, bebop, rock music, blues,R&B
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Drums, percussion
Years active	1968-present

Gadd is a native of Irondequoit, New York, a suburb of Rochester, New York. When he was seven years old, his uncle, who was a drummer in the US army, encouraged him to take drum lessons. By the age of eleven he had sat in with Dizzy Gillespie.

After graduating from Irondequoit's Eastridge High School, he attended the Manhattan School of Music for two years before transferring to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, playing in wind ensembles and concert bands. After Gadd finished college in the late 1960s, he played regularly with Chuck Mangione and his brother Gap Mangione. His first recording was on Gap Mangione's debut solo album, Diana in the Autumn Wind (1968).

Gadd was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent three years as a drummer in the Army Music Program, most of which was spent with the Jazz Ambassadors of the U.S. Army Field Band in Ft. Meade, MD. While living in the Washington DC area, he briefly took lessons from the noted jazz drummer, Michael S. Smith. Following his military service, Gadd played and worked with a band in Rochester. In 1972, Gadd formed a trio with Tony Levin and Mike Holmes, traveling to New York with them. The trio eventually broke up, but Gadd began to work mainly as a studio musician. Gadd also played with Chick Corea's Return to Forever but left the group.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he toured internationally, and recorded with Paul Simon and also with Al Di Meola's Electric Rendezvous Band. In response to confusion over another drummer by the same name, Gadd, while on his We're on a Mission from Gadd tour in 2005, told fans that was not him. Gadd said, "I've never met the other Steve Gadd. We happened to stay in the same hotel once, though. I kept getting his messages and apparently he was getting mine."

In 1976, Gadd and other session musicians in New York City, including Richard Tee, Eric Gale and Cornell Dupree, formed the group Stuff. Their work included appearances on NBC's Saturday Night Live, both performing on their own and backing Joe Cocker.

By the end of the 1970s, Steve Gadd was an accomplished drummer, with transcriptions of his drum solos on sale in Japan. Chick Corea once commented, "Every drummer wants to play like Gadd because he plays perfect ... He has brought orchestral and compositional thinking to the drum kit while at the same time having a great imagination and a great ability to swing."

In 2005, along with Abraham Laboriel, Patrice Rushen and others, Gadd was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music for outstanding contributions to contemporary music.

The song "A Little Green Rosetta" from the Frank Zappa album Joe's Garage lampoons Steve Gadd's status as one of the highest paid session drummers in popular music.

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