The Haunting Sound of Jackie Mittoo’s “Drum Song”

About 10 years ago during a late night family hangout while on vacation in an isolated cabin in Canada, my brother-in-law — the ultra-talented piano player and composer Peer Neumann — took control of the music selection process and put on a recording that I had never heard of before. Strangely enough, Peer stopped picking other songs and this song played on a loop the rest of the night:

It begins with a rat-a-tat of the drums featured in the title of the song and immediately a mesmerizing guitar line repeats over and over again supported by bass, drums, and a second chicken scratch guitar. Soon, an entrancing melody begins, played by an organ doubled by a trumpet. This languid duo part repeats on and on as if to lull the listener into a hypnotic state. Eventually, the trumpet gets its own solo followed closely by an organ solo that at first sounds like jazz flute before both resume the regular melodic part that repeats ad infinitum. Over the course of the recording, the drumming gets progressively more varied and complex. There’s no looping involved, it’s a band locked in on a spell-binding groove. 

On that night, given the ceaseless nature of the song and listening to it on repeat, it felt like the soundtrack of an intergalactic voyage that slowly moves through space with no expectation or desire to arrive at the final destination. At one point, I asked Peer who the artist was. He replied simply, “Jackie Mittoo.” Over the next few days, the guitar line and organ/trumpet melody played on repeat in my head. When I returned home, the song still haunted me and I needed to find out more about this artist and this recording.

Jackie Mittoo was born as Donat Roy Mittoo in Jamaica in 1948. He was a member of the influential 60s ska band The Skatalites as well as the session leader/musical director for the legendary Studio One label. Mittoo and his cohort served as the Jamaican equivalent of the Wrecking Crew in Los Angeles or The Swampers in Muscle Shoals, creating the bedrock sound for ska, rocksteady, and reggae in the 1960s that would later explode with the success of Bob Marley & The Wailers in the 1970s.

Mittoo recorded this version of “Drum Song” on his 1968 album Evening Time, credited to Jackie Mittoo and The Soul Vendors. Soon after its release, Mittoo emigrated to Toronto and continued recording and performing. Recognizing the power of the song, he revisited “Drum Song” in the studio a number of times, but none of those versions had the noir spookiness of the original track. Mittoo died in 1990 at the far too young age of 42 years old.

After that initial introduction to “Drum Song” courtesy of Peer, I began listening to the track on repeat. When it was not uncoiling on my stereo or in my car, it was playing on a loop in my head. I began conflating the track with other songs, making impossible connections as if “Drum Song” was a recent release, the influenced and not the influencer. One such association was with “From Then Till Now” by Wu-Tang Clan affiliate Killah Priest from his 1998’s Heavy Mental:

“From Then Till Now” is infused with imagery straight out of W.B. Yeats’s concept of Spiritus Mundi. It’s a prophetic vision in which the past, present, and future happen all at once. Killah Priest’s chorus — “What goes up must come down / What goes down comes back around again” — is filled with wistfulness as opposed to fury and regret. The track is powered by an eerie whistle that is sampled from the 1955 hit “The Man in the Raincoat” by Marion Marlowe. It’s this melody that most likely accounts for my mixing of “Drum Song” with “From Then Till Now.”

“From Then Till Now” was featured prominently in the 1999 film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, directed by Jim Jarmusch. The titular character Ghost Dog selects “From Then Till Now” as his soundtrack of choice as he drives through the city streets at night:

Though Ghost Dog favors hip-hop, one can easily imagine him sliding a burned CD into his Lexus’s stereo and “Drum Song” begins playing as he surveys the streets, musing on his warrior code around which he governs his life. 

Speaking of warrior codes, Jackie Mittoo is a secret hero, one whose contribution and influence far exceeds his fame. The haunting sound of “Drum Song” can be found in the Atlantic world sound of Jamaica, Afropop, and hip-hop. With its own sense of Spiritus Mundi, may the Möbius strip nature of “Drum Song” continue to repeat endlessly across history and simultaneously into the future.