Don Drummond (12 March 1932
[Cane-Honeysett, L: ''Don Drummond Memorial Album'', liner notes. Trojan 2009.] – 6 May 1969) was a Jamaican
ska
Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...
trombonist
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...
and
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
. He was one of the original members of
The Skatalites
The Skatalites are a ska band from Jamaica. They played initially between 1963 and 1965, and recorded many of their best known songs in the period, including " Guns of Navarone." They also played on records by Prince Buster and backed many othe ...
, and composed many of their tunes. In 1966, Drummond was convicted of murdering his 23-year-old lover,
Anita "Marguerita" Mahfood.
Biography
Drummond was born at the Jubilee Hospital in
Kingston,
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
, to Doris Monroe and Uriah Drummond.
He was educated at Kingston's
Alpha Boys School
Alpha Cottage School (often referred to as Alpha Boys School, Convent of Mercy "Alpha" Academy and now called Alpha Institute) was the name of the vocational residential school on South Camp Road in Kingston, Jamaica, still run by Roman Catholic ...
, where he later taught his younger schoolmate
Rico Rodriguez to play the
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...
.
His musical career began in 1950 with the Eric Dean's All-Stars where he performed jazz.
He continued into the 1960s with others, including Kenny Williams.
After performing jazz for a decade, Drummond began performing ska and in 1964 he joined
The Skatalites
The Skatalites are a ska band from Jamaica. They played initially between 1963 and 1965, and recorded many of their best known songs in the period, including " Guns of Navarone." They also played on records by Prince Buster and backed many othe ...
. With Drummond's politicized conversion to the
Rastafari movement
Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control o ...
, other band members followed his lead.
[Porter, Darwin, and Danforth Prince (2006). ''Frommer's Jamaica'', Edition 4 (Illustrated). London: Frommer's. p. 262. , .] He became a household name in Jamaica, before suffering mental health problems. It has been said that pianist
George Shearing
Sir George Albert Shearing, (13 August 1919 14 February 2011) was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. Shearing was the composer of over 300 t ...
rated him as being among the world's top five trombone players.
On 2 January 1965, Drummond's live-in lover,
Anita "Marguerita" Mahfood, was found dead with four stab wounds to the chest. Drummond reported to the police that Mahfood had stabbed herself, but, in 1966, he was found guilty of her murder. Drummond was ruled criminally insane and imprisoned at Bellevue Asylum, Kingston, where he remained until his death four years later.
[Campbell, Howard (2013)]
Don D's Rebirth
, ''Jamaica Observer'', 15 August 2013. Retrieved 18 August 2013. The official cause of death was "natural causes", possibly heart failure caused by malnutrition or improper medication,
but other theories were put forward; some of his colleagues believed it was a government plot against the Kingston musical scene, and some believed that he was killed by gangsters as revenge for the murder of Mahfood. Heather Augustyn, author of a biography of Drummond published in 2013 claimed to have proved that Drummond's death was caused by his medications.
Legacy
In 2013, a
ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
telling the story of Drummond's life was performed by the
National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) is Jamaica's leading dance theatre company.
History
The company was founded in 1962 by Rex Nettleford and Eddy Thomas with fifteen dancers, with Nettleford acting as its artistic director and pri ...
.
[Johnson, Richard (2013)]
A Ballet for 'Don D'
, ''Jamaica Observer'', 21 July 2013. Retrieved 10 August 2013. Created by Clive Thompson, the ballet is titled ''Malungu'', which was Mahfood's pet name for Drummond.
In 2013 a comprehensive biography of Don Drummond was published by McFarland Publishing. ''Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World's Greatest Trombonist'' by Heather Augustyn features a foreword by
Delfeayo Marsalis
Delfeayo Marsalis (; born July 28, 1965) is an American jazz trombonist, record producer and educator.
Life and career
Marsalis was born in New Orleans, the son of Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music pro ...
.
References
External links
*
*
Short biographyat allaboutjazz.com
*
ttps://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/don-drummond/ Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World's Greatest Trombonist
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drummond, Don
1932 births
1969 deaths
Converts to the Rastafari movement
Jamaican people convicted of murder
Jamaican people who died in prison custody
Jamaican Rastafarians
Jamaican ska trombonists
People convicted of murder by Jamaica
Musicians from Kingston, Jamaica
Prisoners who died in Jamaican detention
The Skatalites members
Island Records artists
Trojan Records artists
First-wave ska groups
20th-century trombonists