Steve Rucker | |
---|---|
Stephen Rucker (born 2 March 1954) is an American musician and drummer who served as a drummer with many artists. His biggest and well known act was the Bee Gees. With the Bee Gees band, he appeared on The Tonight Show , Late Night with David Letterman , Oprah Winfrey, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and a Royal Variety Performance. Rucker appears on the Bee Gees' One Night Only recording and DVD. [1] He is currently the Drumset Studies director of the University of Miami's Frost School of Music.
Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, Rucker attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, and holds an Undergraduate Degree in Studio Music and Jazz and a master's degree in Jazz Performance from the University of Miami Frost School of Music. [2]
From September 1974 until May 1975, Rucker toured with the Charlotte-based band Sugarcreek. During this period he became the musical arranger for the seven-piece horn band, and wrote and recorded their first single, "Runnin' Out of Time". [3]
Rucker moved to Miami, Florida in 1976. Soon after, he was voted "Best Jazz Performer" and "Most Versatile Artist" in South Florida polls.[ citation needed ] In the early 1980s, Rucker was a member of the Ross-Levine band, a jazz fusion group. In addition to numerous appearances with them, he recorded "That Summer Something" [4] and "Humidity".
While a member of Randy Bernsen's Ocean Sound Band in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he recorded tracks on "Paradise Citizens" [4] and "Calling Me Back Home", and performed in many concerts internationally, including a billing with Miles Davis. In 1992, he recorded "Blues Hat Dances 'Round Midnight" [4] with Randy Bernsen and Onorino Tiburzi in Italy.
In 1990, he recorded "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me" with Gloria Estefan. [4] For many years, he performed nationwide with Ben Vereen, [3] and appeared with Vereen with the Atlanta Symphony and the Dallas Symphony. [1]
Rucker founded and produced the jazz ensemble Active Ingredient, a group of musicians from the University of Miami. The band debuted on Bainbridge Records in 1988 with "Building Houses," followed by "Extra Strength" in 1990. [5]
In 1997, Rucker appeared on a Bee Gees concert at the MGM Grand Las Vegas which was shown on pay-per-view television, HBO, and was released as a live album selling over 5 million copies. [1] This led to a world tour of "One Night Only" concerts. The tour included playing to 56,000 people at London's Wembley Stadium on 5 September 1998 and concluded in the newly built Olympic Stadium in Sydney, Australia in March 1999.
Rucker also performed or recorded with Michael Jackson, Paquito D'Rivera, Barry Gibb, Jaco Pastorius, Cliff Richard, Joe Sample, Johnny Cash, Ben Vereen, Bo Diddley, Freda Payne, the Woody Herman Big Band, the Tommy Dorsey Big Band (with Warren Covington), Sam Moore and Bob James. [1] [3]
Since 1979, Rucker has been the Director of Drumset Studies at the University of Miami. He directs the Funk/Fusion Ensemble, which has won over twenty DownBeat Student Awards.[ citation needed ] In previous years has created ensembles performing the music of Tower of Power and Weather Report. [1] RUCKER also directs the RUCK Ensemble, an original hip hop/funk group.[ citation needed ]
In 2008, Rucker created an avant garde duo with guitarist Tom Lippincott.
In 2010, Rucker recorded an album with composer Ron Miller, entitled Peacock Park the Music of Ron Miller. [6]
Rucker completed an album in 2013 entitled Conversions with singer/pianist Hal Roland, in a live jazz quartet configuration. [7]
In 2015, in collaboration with former student Jonathan Joseph, Rucker wrote and published Exercises in African-American Funk, which contains a set of exercises for developing a fusion of African and American funk drumming elements. [8]
The Bee Gees were a musical group formed in 1958 by brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio were especially successful in popular music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and later as prominent performers in the disco music era in the mid- to late 1970s.
Robin Hugh Gibb was a British singer and songwriter. He gained worldwide fame as a member of the Bee Gees with elder brother Barry and fraternal twin brother Maurice. Robin Gibb also had his own successful solo career. Their youngest brother Andy was also a singer.
Sir Barry Alan Crompton Gibb is a British musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He rose to worldwide fame as a member of the Bee Gees, with his younger brothers, Robin and Maurice Gibb, one of the most commercially successful groups in the history of popular music. Gibb's career has spanned over 60 years.
The 45th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 23, 2003, at Madison Square Garden in New York City honoring the best in music for the recording of the year beginning from October 1, 2001, through September 30, 2002. Musicians' accomplishments from the previous year were recognized. Norah Jones and her song "Don't Know Why" were the main recipients of the night, garnering six Grammys, including four major awards: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist, plus Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album. Songwriter Jesse Harris received the Song of the Year award for his work on "Don't Know Why." Simon and Garfunkel reunited to open the show performing "The Sound of Silence".
Jazz fusion is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.
Richard Allen "Blue" Mitchell was an American trumpeter and composer who worked in jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock and funk. He recorded albums as leader and sideman for Riverside, Mainstream Records, and Blue Note.
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post–John Coltrane era.
Return to Forever was an American jazz fusion band that was founded by pianist Chick Corea in 1972. The band has had many members, with the only consistent bandmate of Corea's being bassist Stanley Clarke. Along with Weather Report, The Headhunters, and Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever is often cited as one of the core groups of the jazz-fusion movement of the 1970s. Several musicians, including Clarke, Flora Purim, Airto Moreira and Al Di Meola, came to prominence through their performances on Return to Forever albums.
Virgil Donati is an Australian drummer, composer and producer. He holds the drum sticks in the traditional style and is also proficient at the keyboard. Donati formed Planet X with Derek Sherinian and was the band's principal composer on all their albums. He also performed in Melbourne with Jack Jones in a Van Halen tribute band known as Hans Valen before inviting Jones into Donati's own bands The State and Southern Sons. Donati is widely regarded as one of the most technically advanced drummers of all time.
Michał Urbaniak is a Polish jazz musician who plays violin, lyricon, and saxophone. His music includes elements of folk music, rhythm and blues, hip hop, and symphonic music.
Lonnie Liston Smith Jr. is an American jazz, soul, and funk musician who played with such jazz artists as Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis before forming Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes, recording a number of albums widely regarded as classics in the fusion, smooth jazz and acid jazz genres.
David Maxwell Middleton is an English composer and keyboardist. Trained as a classical pianist, Middleton also had a strong affinity for jazz. He is known for his work on the Fender Rhodes electric piano and the Minimoog synthesiser, and for his percussive playing style on the Hohner Clavinet. He started his professional music career by playing keyboards for Jeff Beck and is best known for his work on Beck's Blow by Blow (1975).
Charlie Zeleny, also known as Charlie Z, is an American session drummer, music director and solo artist. He was also a member of the progressive metal bands Blotted Science and Behold the Arctopus, has played in a duo with keyboardist Jordan Rudess, and has performed drum duets with Terry Bozzio for The Drum Channel. His 2011 video project, Drumageddon Brooklyn, was a one-take, continuously shot 8-minute drum solo with Zeleny performing through an entire building in Brooklyn and ending on the building's rooftop. Zeleny is also known by his solo artist persona "DRMAGDN: Cyborg/Drummer DJ".
Håvard Fossum is a Norwegian jazz musician, composer and arranger, situated in Oslo since January 2000. He is known from a series of recordings and cooperations with the likesog Tommy Dorsey, John Surman, Staffan William-Olsson, Jens Wendelboe, Anders Aarum and Jarle Vespestad.
Scott Routenberg is an American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and orchestrator. Currently Associate Professor of Jazz Piano at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, he has published both full-length compositions for jazz ensembles and several studio albums. His 2003, 2006, and 2020 releases "explore jazz-influenced electro-acoustic hybrids." He has won a number of songwriting contests, including the John Lennon Songwriting Contest Maxell Song of the Year in 2004 for his song "Bandwidth", which also won the JLSC's Grand Prize in the Jazz Category.
David Joseph Shelley was an American blues rock musician who performed with Cher and released two critically acclaimed albums, That's My Train (2012) and Trick Bag (2013).
Alex Bailey is an American multi-instrumentalist. He is most known for performing with bassist Marcus Miller. He is also known for his drumming on the Walt Disney movie, Safety.
John Daversa is an American jazz trumpeter, electronic valve instrument (EVI) player, composer, arranger, conductor, bandleader, producer and educator.
Ben Stivers is an American musician. Stivers records, tours, and collaborates with artists across multiple genres, including jazz, blues, rock, pop, Latin pop, and jazz fusion. In June 2019 Ben joined Lyle Lovett and His Large Band on their US tour, playing piano and keyboards.
Randy Bernsen is an American jazz guitarist.