EGN NEWS DESK
Jimmy Van Eaton, who performed drums on epoch-defining hits, together with Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and lent spontaneity and creativeness to the unfettered sound of the influential Memphis label Sun Records, died on Feb. 9 at his dwelling in Tuscumbia, Ala. He was 86.
His daughter Terri Van Eaton Downing mentioned the trigger was problems of kidney illness.
Mr. Van Eaton’s impeccably deployed accents and fills had been heard not simply on Mr. Lewis’s recordings but in addition on common singles by Charlie Rich (“Lonely Weekends”), Johnny Cash (“Guess Things Happen That Way”) and others. He toured with Roy Orbison and Conway Twitty and, because the de facto home drummer at Sun, performed on “Raunchy,” the bluesy instrumental by the saxophonist Bill Justis that reached the Top 10 in 1957.
Mr. Van Eaton, who was generally billed as J.M., was a full-time musician solely briefly, from the mid-Fifties to the early Sixties, and carried out sporadically after that earlier than settling right into a profession as a monetary adviser. His affect, although, was abiding and deep — particularly his momentous work with Mr. Lewis, which had an influence similar to that of different groundbreaking rock ’n’ roll drummers like Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine.
“Lots of people attempt to copy” the sound of these Jerry Lee Lewis information, Mr. Van Eaton was quoted as saying in “Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll,” by Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins. But, he added, they will’t do it as a result of what he performed was “a shuffle with a backbeat” and never a straight 4/4 beat.
“I by no means may play that straight nation shuffle,” Mr. Van Eaton continued. “Maybe for eight or 16 bars, however after that I begin falling off the stool. I’ve obtained to pay attention, and if you focus, you lose the sensation.”
Feeling was paramount to Mr. Van Eaton’s drumming. His galloping accompaniment of Mr. Lewis was so unbridled at instances that the tempo virtually appeared to outrun the 2 males mid-session.
On “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” Mr. Van Eaton accelerated the cadence between the primary two stanzas, laying down a flurry of beats that created the impression of a locomotive choosing up steam because it pulls out of the station. Likewise, his headlong rhythms on “Great Balls of Fire” — and particularly on the aptly titled “Breathless” — threatened to overhaul Mr. Lewis and his piano.
(Some sources have mentioned that Mr. Van Eaton didn’t play on “Great Balls of Fire,” however consultants like Mr. Escott and Hank Davis, an authority on the drummers at Sun, have insisted that he did.)
“The looseness and unpredictability of his drumming could sound misplaced within the trendy period when most drum tracks are derived from a pc pattern repeated with mathematical precision,” Mr. Escott and Mr. Hawkins wrote of Mr. Van Eaton’s intuitive musicianship. “But the sound of shock that he captured in his taking part in was the heartbeat of Sun Records.”
James Mack Van Eaton was born on Dec. 23, 1937, in Memphis, one in every of six youngsters of Hobart and Annie Lou (Watson) Van Eaton. His father labored in a lumberyard; his mom ran the family.
Young Jimmy was captivated by big-band music and the Black gospel rhythms he heard at a church in Memphis rising up. He fashioned his first band, the Echoes, whereas in highschool. The group recorded a demo that caught the ear of Jack Clement, a producer and engineer at Sun who was recruiting musicians for the band of the rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley.
Still in his teenagers, Mr. Van Eaton performed on Mr. Riley’s best-known — and most incendiary — recordings for Sun, “Flyin’ Saucers Rock ’n’ Roll” and “Red Hot,” each from 1957.
In 1960, Mr. Van Eaton left Sun to hitch Mr. Riley and the guitarist Roland Janes, each of whom had been disenchanted with how Mr. Riley was being promoted, because the employees drummer on the newly fashioned Rita Records. Their greatest success got here with the singer Harold Dorman’s 1960 Top 40 hit, “Mountain of Love.”
Mr. Van Eaton additionally launched a single beneath his personal identify for Rita, an atmospheric, surf-style recording known as “Beat-Nik,” additionally from 1960. By the center of the last decade, nonetheless, he had all however retired from the music enterprise. He labored for his father-in-law’s merchandising machine firm earlier than establishing himself as an asset manager within the Eighties.
Mr. Van Eaton carried out solely sometimes over the following a long time, showing at rockabilly reunion concert events and taking part in on the soundtrack of the 1989 film “Great Balls of Fire!,” which starred Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis. (The singer Mojo Nixon, who died this month, performed Mr. Van Eaton onscreen.) He additionally did periodic session work into the 2020s on the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. In 1998, he launched “The Beat Goes On,” an album that includes his drumming, vocals and songwriting.
A longtime member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, he was additionally inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2022.
Besides his daughter Terri, Mr. Van Eaton is survived by his brother, Richard; one other daughter, Anna Blumberg; two sons, Mack and Tim; a stepson, Alex Lebrija; 13 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
“There are plenty of influential people who no person ever will get to listen to about, like guitarist Roland Janes and likewise Jimmy Van Eaton, who was drummer on plenty of stuff,” Mr. Clement was quoted as saying in “Good Rockin’ Tonight.”
“The sound that turned magic to lots of people,” he added, “was partly on account of him; it was so funky, however on the similar time it captured the enjoyable.”
