Jim Gordon (musician)

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Jim Gordon (born James Beck Gordon, 1945, Los Angeles, California) is a retired American musician. He was one of the most requested session drummers in the late 1960s and 1970s and was a member of the rock band, Derek & The Dominos.

1 Music career
2 Retirement and incarceration
3 Associated musicians
4 Reference
5 External link

[edit] Music career

Gordon began his career as a session drummer in Los Angeles. During this period, he performed on many famous recordings including Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers by Gene Clark and The Notorious Byrd Brothers by The Byrds. Gordon achieved a level of success in the world of rock studio drumming that matches that of virtually any drummer before or since, perhaps surpassed only by Hal Blaine.

In 1969 and 1970, he toured as part of the backing band for the group Delaney & Bonnie, which at the time included Eric Clapton. Clapton subsequently took over the group's rhythm section — Gordon, bassist Carl Radle and keyboardist-singer-songwriter, Bobby Whitlock. They formed a new band which was eventually called Derek & The Dominos. Gordon played on the group's acclaimed 1970 double album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and wrote and played the elegiac piano coda for the title track, "Layla". He also toured with the band on a subsequent U.S. tour, but the group split in spring 1971 before having completed the recording of their second album.

In 1970, Gordon was part of Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour. In 1971, he toured with Traffic, appearing on two albums with them, including The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. Later in 1972, Gordon was part of Frank Zappa's 20-piece "Grand Wazoo" big band tour, and the subsesequent 10-piece "Petit Wazoo" band. Perhaps his most well-known recording with Zappa was the title track of the 1974 album Apostrophe ('), a jam with Zappa and Tony Duran on guitar and Jack Bruce on bass guitar, for which both Bruce and Gordon received a writing credit. He worked with Chris Hillman again when he was the drummer in the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band from 1973 to 1975.

Gordon was also the drummer on the Incredible Bongo Band's Bongo Rock album, released in 1972. His drum break on the LP's version of "Apache" has been repeatedly sampled by rap music artists.^[1]

[edit] Retirement and incarceration

In the late 1970s, Gordon complained of hearing voices in his head. He was later diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia, which had been worsened by a cocaine addiction. By 1981, this situation ended his music career.

On 3 June 1983, Gordon bludgeoned his mother with a hammer and then stabbed her to death with a butcher's knife. In May 1984 he was sentenced to sixteen years to life in prison. He has served his sentence at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, Atascadero State Hospital in Atascadero, and the State Medical Corrections Facility in Vacaville.