Leroy Maxey

Leroy Maxey

Leroy Maxey is a classic jazz drummer credited with high honors for innovation in the use of his bass drum pedal and tom-toms. Of much more importance to the average human being, of which drummers have proven themselves not to be, is the fact that Maxey is the dude playing in the Cab Calloway band during the all-important "Minnie the Moocher" performance immortalized by Betty Boop. This touch with immortality--how many drummers, after all, can even come close to having backed up this Betty--easily puts Maxey over the top in terms of famous drummers, yet there are still people carrying ridiculous amounts of equipment around who would rather discuss the Maxey approach

to "four on the floor," later to be perfected by his successor in the Calloway band, comfortable Cozy Cole, in which the subtle alteration of rhythmic accents seems influenced by Native American music.

Maxey certainly hailed from a Native American mound, Kansas City to be exact. By the early '20s he was one of the rhythm section players in Bennie Moten's group, a source of what has come to be known as the "Missouri groove." Maxey soon fell in with a band whose membership remained remarkably consistent through an evolving series of leaders. It began as Willard Robinson's Syncopaters, at first a territorial touring troupe and then a house band at the New York City Cotton Club. This group changed its name to the Missourians when the present leader, Andrew Preer, dropped dead. When Cab Calloway took over, the band's fortunes rose from hip club residency to the international hit parade. Maxey kept playing with Calloway until forced to retire due to health problems in the late '30s. He played on dozens of recordings in the '20s and '30s. Eugene Chadbourne