Chuck
Rainey and Bernard Purdie hailed from Ohio and Maryland respectively, but their
legendary grooves mirrored the hustle and bustle and pulsating energy of New
York, the city in which they were the first-call rhythm section from the
mid '60s through the early '70s. In 1965, session contractor/guitarist Eric
Gale met Rainey in a Sam Cooke touring band and brought him into a studio fold
that already included the young hotshot Purdie. The pair gelled instantly. Says
Chuck, "Bernard always played with a lot of power and intensity, and --
more important -- plenty of nuance. Most drummers played a set beat that
demanded you go with them; Bernard was flexible. The subdivisions in his
grooves awakened a similar feel in me. He gave me so much to play off that no
matter what I did it worked." Of his multi-layered approach Purdie
explains, "The key is applying a half-time feel to the music. That frees
me up to add the flavor of eighth-note, triplet, and 16th-note subdivisions on
the upbeats, which really fattens the groove. Chuck instinctively felt that and
locked into it."
Rainey and Purdie became the heartbeat of Gotham's A-Team,
surrounded by such guitarists as Gale, Carl Lynch, and Cornell Dupree, and
keyboardists Paul Griffin and Richard Tee. (Jerry Jemmott and Jimmy Johnson
were Chuck's and Bernard's bass-and -drums alternates.) Though the duo's
versatility enabled them to handle dates for acts as diverse as the Shirelles,
Louis Armstrong, and Paul Butterfield, they found a true soulmate in the Queen
herself, Aretha Franklin. Bernard smiles, "Aretha had a natural shuffle to
everything she did, just like Chuck and I had. We would just listen to her play
piano and it was all there." That implied shuffle, which Purdie traces to
his growing up listening to New Orleans rag, funk, and march grooves, is richly
evident in such straight-eighth Aretha classics as "Rock Steady" and
"Spanish Harlem."
While sympathetic vibrations among the three may have inspired
the virtuoso rhythm-section performances beneath "Until You Come Back to
Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)," make no mistake -- the song always came
first with Rainey and Purdie. "We would listen to the melody and lyrics on
every song and let them dictate what we played," notes Chuck. "Often
Bernard would ask for a section to be sung over and over until we felt
comfortable with our parts."
Rainey and Purdie went on to add their sophisticated
"street" sound to landmark '70s sides by Quincy Jones and Steely Dan,
even after Rainey relocated to Los Angeles in 1972. They have since reunited
several times, most recently for an all-star Japan tour. Chuck sums up,
"I've always maintained that if I played drums I would sound just like
Bernard, and if he played bass he would sound just like me. Somewhere in the
distant past we are from the same tribe."
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Bernard's own website.