Jazz Notes: Joe Roma
“Stay out of the way and make the band sound good” is what drummer Joe Roma says his job is. “I don’t like solos. I don’t want all that attention on me.” Yet off stage, Joe is animated, quite the jokester, gracious, and talkative, especially when it comes to his family.
JAZZ NOTES: Do you remember the first music you heard at home growing up?
JO ROMA: My mother liked listening to Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett records every night – I’d lie in bed and I’d hear the music through the walls of my bedroom. One record that influenced me was the 1967 Sinatra album with Antonio Carlos Jobim; when people want a bossa nova these days, I learned it from the best.
JN: You were already a drummer by then, right?
JR: Oh, yeah! I started lessons at St. Ambrose School in Endicott when I was eight. Then I went to the Hooper School in Endwell and played snare drum in the band. In eighth grade, my band director found out I had an ear, so he moved me to tympani – the kettle drums – because it’s all pitched. I didn’t have a drum set until a little later.
JN: What attracted you to the drum kit?
JR: I was maybe 15 and went to see the great drummer Buddy Rich at what was then Broome Tech. There was no MTV then, so in 1969 you just didn’t see the big drummers at work. But when I saw Buddy Rich, it was like an epiphany! I couldn’t believe it; I had never heard anything like that! I want to do that! So, Ken Craig got me started with those lessons.
Another epiphany [in 1969] was hearing a song on the radio… Quincy Jones had a hit with “Killer Joe,” with Grady Tate on drums, and that turned me around from thinking drumming had to be flashy, to seeing the value of percussion as support, just making the band sound solid.
JN: When was your first paid gig? How old were you?
JR: My first professional job wasn’t as a jazz drummer. I was 16 and my high school band director recommended me for an opening with the Binghamton Philharmonic. I kept a copy of the check. I think it was $35. I loved orchestral music. Still do. About that same time, I started playing with a big band, The Melody Masters, which played vintage arrangements from the ‘30s and ‘40s.
JN: And then a year or so later you were playing with the legendary trumpeter Clark Terry?
JR: Yes, Clark Terry came to Jazz at Harpur, a summer program Al Hamme started at Binghamton University. I enrolled at SUNY Binghamton as a pre-med student, but the music program was so good there… I wound up studying percussion with David Buttolph who was a Yale and Julliard graduate and a student of the NY Philharmonic’s Saul Goodman.
JN: Talk about going to New York City for lessons.
JR: I wanted to study with the best drum set players in the world. I got connected with drummer Ed Shaughnessy who was playing with trumpeter Doc Severinsen and the “Tonight Show” band, back when Johnny Carson was still in New York. I was 18 when I auditioned for Shaughnessy, and he took me on as a private student. But then the TV show moved to California around 1972, and I was bummed. But my lessons were late in the day so I was fortunate enough to go to a preshow band rehearsal – a very coveted ticket!
So… I was playing a jazz gig at the old House of Yu on the Vestal Parkway, and the sax player said he knew Dave Brubeck’s drummer Joe Morello really well, so he said [to] tell him “Ernie sent me.” I auditioned again and took lessons from one of my idols!
JN: You were still in your late teens. What came next?
JR: I worked my way through college teaching private lessons, playing weekend gigs. Weddings, rock in clubs, classical music with the Philharmonic and the BC Pops. The BU jazz scene included playing with the Harpur Jazz Ensemble with Urbie Green, Lou Soloff, Marvin Stamm, and Frank Wess who was with Count Basie. Jazz fans will know those names.
JN: Tell us about your radio days.
JR: When WSKG radio first went on the air in 1975, someone said I should submit a “demo tape” (I didn’t even know what that was), and because I had musical background in both jazz and classical music, I became the music director and librarian there, and had an air shift every night.
JN: And you are still teaching today?
JR: I’ve been teaching for 48 years. And I still love doing it. I taught Michael Buble’s drummer Pete VanNostrand; Tim Blake, who plays with the “President’s Own” band; Joe Smales, director of bands at Binghamton High School’s Rod Serling School of Fine Arts and principal percussionist with Tri-Cities Opera Orchestra; Joel Carle, band director at Windsor Schools; Steve Roessner and Jeremy Kinney.
JN: Could you sum up the last couple of decades after you served as adjunct faculty in the BU Music Department, leading the University Percussion Ensemble?
JR: I performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 1981, then founded and ran Joe’s Drum Shop in Johnson City from 1983-2004. I continue to teach privately, serve as adjunct at SUNY Broome, and play in the Miles Ahead Jazz Quartet, the Ralph Muro Trio, my own group called Anything Goes, plus the Andrew Williams Quartet, and an acoustic trio Old Friends. I also play for the Tri-Cities Opera, the Binghamton Philharmonic, and play rhythm section at the Firehouse Jazz Sessions.
When asked to chronicle his career, he was amazed at himself. He grew up in the age when there were so many opportunities to play there just wasn’t enough time to fit every job into one’s schedule. Yet even now, for the veteran Roma, his professional plate is full, partly because of the experiences and the contacts he nurtured over fifty years of playing drums in the Triple Cities.
Roma regularly plays with the Andrew Williams Quartet at Moxie Woodfire Grill; Miles Ahead Jazz Quartet; Anything Goes at Number 5, and on the Schorr Family Firehouse Stage. Check out williamsmusic.com, milesaheadjazz.net, moxiegrill.com or the Facebook pages of any of the above.
