"Let There Be Drums" is a 1961

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

composed by American drummer

Sandy Nelson Sander Lloyd Nelson (December 1, 1938 – February 14, 2022) was an American drummer. Nelson, one of the best-known rock and modern jazz drummers of the late 1950s and early 1960s, had several solo instrumental Top 40 hits and released over 30 ...

and guitarist

Richard Podolor Richard Allen Podolor (January 7, 1936 – March 9, 2022) was an American musician, record producer and songwriter. His career started as a session musician in the 1950s, and he was best known as the producer of Three Dog Night. Life and caree ...

, who later became a renowned record producer.

Background

The piece is a

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

and drums duet and is an early example of

surf music Surf music (or surf rock, surf pop, or surf guitar) is a genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental su ...

Chart performance

It was released as a Sandy Nelson single on

Imperial Records Imperial Records is an American record company and label started in 1947 by Lew Chudd. The label was reactivated in 2006 by EMI, which owned the label and back catalogue at the time. Imperial is owned by Universal Music Group. Early years to ...

X5775 and was a charted hit, reaching No.7 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and No.9 on the U.S.

Cash Box charts ''Cashbox'', also known as ''Cash Box'', was an American music industry trade magazine, originally published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as ''Cashbox Magazine'', an online ...

(weeks of 24 December and 16 December 1961), and No. 8 in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

(weeks of 4 December and 11 December 1961). Nelson's "Let There Be Drums" was an Australian No.1 single for a week (week of 20 January 1962) and peaked at No.3 on the U.K. singles chart during the weeks of 4–10 January and 18–24 January 1962, becoming the 50th best-selling single in the U.K. during the calendar year 1962.

Cover versions

The

Incredible Bongo Band The Incredible Bongo Band, also known as Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band, was a project started in 1972 by Michael Viner, a record artist manager and executive at MGM Records. Viner was called on to supplement the soundtrack to the B-film ' ...

's rendition of this instrumental was the theme music for ''

Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling Grand Prix Wrestling (GPW) is a professional wrestling promotion run and owned by Emile Duprée. Grand Prix Wrestling has recently finished the 2013 Rising Sun In The Maritimes Tour. Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling tours parts of New Brunswick, P ...

'' telecasts on the former ATV in Maritime Canada between the 1970s and the 1980s. The song had reached #66 in the Canadian

RPM Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

charts. It was also featured in "The Tenth Inning" of Ken Burns' ''

Baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

''.Feeney, Mark. "Burns takes to the diamond again," ''The Boston Globe'', Tuesday, September 28, 2010.
Retrieved February 26, 2022.

References

{{authority control Songs about drums 1961 songs 1961 singles Imperial Records singles Sandy Nelson songs 1960s instrumentals