Ron Simmonds

PHIL SEAMEN

Fond memories of the legendary drummer

Phil Seamen’s death at the age of 45 robbed the music world, and particularly the drumming fraternity, of one of its most brilliant jazz talents.

Phil, a legend amongst musicians both for his tremendous professional ability and his endearingly outrageous sense of humour, first came to notice in the early ‘fifties. He was quickly recognised and graduated to the top echelons of the business, a triumph compounded by his being publicly admired by such great American percussionists as Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson.

Able to work in any idiom, Phil was featured by Nat Gonella and his Georgians, the Joe Loss, Tommy Sampson and Jack Parnell orchestras, on broadcasts with Kenny Baker’s Dozen, in the pit of West Side Story and on film sessions with Laurie Johnson.

He is remembered as the complete professional musician, talented, dedicated, accepting vicissitudes with good humour, possessed of that blessed equanimity that can find something to joke about in the direst situation.