The Beat Goes On

"'When you're working in the studios, you're playing every genre of music,' Hal Blaine, his friend and another prolific session drummer, said in an interview Saturday. 'You might be playing classical music in the morning and hard rock in the afternoon and straight jazz at night. . . . That's where they separate the men from the boys. If you're going to be a studio musician, it's the top of the ladder. You can't go any higher than that in the music business.'"

Claire Noland in the Los Angeles Times writes an obit for session drummer extraordinare Earl Palmer.