{"id":12814,"date":"2022-03-05T11:49:12","date_gmt":"2022-03-05T18:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=12814"},"modified":"2023-06-19T15:26:32","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T22:26:32","slug":"rip-sandy-nelson-legendary-drummer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=12814","title":{"rendered":"RIP: Sandy Nelson, legendary drummer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last month, we lost Sandy Nelson<\/strong>, one of the best-known rock drummers of the early 1960s. <\/p>\n

He was the drummer for a lot of Top 40 records, including songs recorded by friends he knew from high school – Jan Berry, Dean Torrence, Kim Fowley<\/strong>, and Phil Spector<\/strong>. In addition to working as a prominent session drummer, he also found success as a solo instrumental recording artist.<\/p>\n

His instrumental recording “Teen Beat”, hit the #4 mark on the Billboard Hot 100 list in 1959, selling over one million copies, earning him a gold record. He followed this up with two more Top 40 hits, “Let There Be Drums”, which went to #7 on the Hot 100, and “Drums Are My Beat” (#29). His success wasn’t limited to the USA, as “Let There Be Drums” became a Top 10 hit record in both the United Kingdom and United States in December 1961<\/p>\n

In late 1963, Nelson was in a motorcycle accident that left him with injuries that necessitated the amputation of a portion of his right leg. He learned how to play the bass drum with his left leg. As he told a reporter of The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2017, in the long run, he “developed a little better technique.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the recordings that he did after that accident was the \u201cBoss Beat\u201d album in 1965 which featured a great instrumental version of LOUIE LOUIE.<\/p>\n