Jazz Articles about Les DeMerle

Les DeMerle: Once in a Lifetime

by Jack Bowers
May 16, 2023

Drummer Les DeMerle recorded his first album, Once in a Lifetime, when he was a twenty-year-old prodigy in 1967. However, as is sometimes true in the music business, the album was lost in the shuffle at Atlantic Records and sat gathering dust until someone had the good sense to retrieve and release it some fifty-six years later. As the saying goes, better late than never. To share the front line on this dynamic (mostly) studio date, DeMerle ...

Les DeMerle & Sound 67: Once in a Lifetime

by Scott Yanow
May 14, 2023

Every once in a while, the discovery of a forgotten recording from the past results in the history of jazz being altered. Until now, it was believed that the hard-driving and swinging drummer Les DeMerle made his first recordings in 1969 with his debut as a leader, Spectrum. The first-time release of Once In A Lifetime, which was recorded in 1967, rewrites the history books a bit. At the time, Les DeMerle was 20 and already had quite ...

Les DeMerle Band Featuring Bonnie Eisele: Cookin' at the Corner, Volume Two

by Edward Blanco
December 14, 2007

On November 11 and 12, 2005 drummer Les DeMerle and his band recorded a two-session live performance at The Jazz Corner in Hilton Head, South Carolina, producing his fourth and fifth recordings, Cookin' at the Corner, Volume One and Volume Two for Origin Records. Recording a total of thirty songs, Volume Two represents the second half of this project.

As with the first session, this follow-up release features vocalist and wife, Bonnie Eisele, with whom DeMerle has recorded ...

The Les DeMerle Band: Cookin' At The Corner, Volume One

by Edward Blanco
April 30, 2007

A veteran first-call musician and leader of many bands who has also shared the stage with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Mel Torme, power drummer Les DeMerle's fourth album on the Origin label, Cookin' at the Corner, Volume One, was recorded live at the Jazz Corner in Hilton Head, South Carolina in 2005. DeMerle and crew deliver a swinging performance of jazz vocals and instrumentals music, playing thirteen classic standards packaged in between two original tunes.

Dynamic Les DeMerle Band: Hittin' the Blue Notes, Volume 2

by Dan McClenaghan
October 9, 2004

A lot of us jazz fans cut our listening teeth on Blue Note records by Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan and more. The Dynamic Les DeMerle Band's Hittin' the Blue Notes, Vol. 2 celebrates that classic sound with a set of swinging, hard-driving hard bop tunes.Les DeMerle sat in the drummer's chair in the Harry James Orchestra for twelve years, and he brings to this project an exuberant and swinging propulsion, a crisp and brightly optimistic rhythmic ...

The Les DeMerle Band: You're The Bop: A Jazz Portrait of Cole Porter

by C. Michael Bailey
September 1, 2001

A small band with a very large band sound.

Skip right to the last track, “Love for Sale". This is a drum-voice duet between DeMerle and Eisele. It is stunning. Eisele's time is as perfect her empathy with the drummer DeMerle. This reading is as effective as the same vehicle used by Mary Pearson on her Arkadia release You and I, where she duets with the drums. Voice and drums'drums and voice, this is what this disc is ...