But, of course, that was for the singers, never for a drummer, so Sam Lay had to tirelessly earn a living as a session player for almost all the artists who fell into the studio at 2120 South Michigan Avenue. calls a theme played by the Rolling Stones in their beginnings, and precisely one of Lay’s best students was the young Charlie Watts, who when he was summoned by Jagger, Richards and Brian Jones, only played jazz and knew nothing of blues. That’s how Watts locked himself in to listen over and over again to how the drums sounded on classic Howlin Woolf songs like “Little Red Rooster” and “Killing Floor.” Lay also recorded with other blues greats like John Lee Hooker, Magic Slim and Lightning Hopkins, as well as playing on Muddy Waters’ best-selling album, “Fathers and Sons.”
Although everything he had done previously was enough to make him the great blues drummer of the time, Lay was later the protagonist of one of the key moments in the history of popular music, the day that Bob Dylan left folk and played at the Newport festival attended by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, of which Lay was the drummer at the time. In 2015 Lay was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with that band, the first to mix black and white musicians from Chicago, and played to the full range of audiences. So when Dylan put together his first true rock band for his seminal Highway 61 Revisited album, he included this drummer who they said didn’t play drums but “made his drums sing.”
Lay had a long-standing friendship with Dylan, who was present or appeared from a distance whenever he received awards or honors. Musicians like Iggy Pop assured that he was a unique figure beyond the musical, for his extroverted and carnivalesque look of a military band musician that even included all the paraphernalia of the cane player, which is what fascinated the singer of The Stooges when he was very young. . Those who want to know more about Sam Lay should watch Alan Johnson’s Grammy nominated documentary “Sam Lay in Bluesland” where the drummer tells how he used to joke with Dylan about his look and his ’60s hairstyle. telling him he looked like something out of a Muddy Waters song, “I found a bird’s nest on the floor.”
Source: Ambito
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