Jerry Carrigan, who helped change the way drummers play country music in Nashville, has died in Chattanooga, Tenn., at age 75. Schooled in his native Alabama as an R&B-influenced drummer whose skills included the ability to read musical notation, Carrigan recorded two groundbreaking Southern soul hits in Alabama before moving to Nashville, where he applied his elegant style to hundreds of equally innovative country, rock ’n’ roll and pop records. Carrigan played on sessions with country singers George Jones, Kris Kristofferson and Dolly Parton, and he also worked with folk-pop giant John Denver and with Elvis Presley. Like the great Nashville session musician he was, Carrigan always served the song, but he played with a snap and flourish that helped define each record he contributed to.
Carrigan was born Sept. 13, 1943, in Florence, Ala. He was a self-taught drummer who started playing when he was 12, and he played drums in his junior high-school band. Like fellow Alabama natives Norbert Putnam, who played bass with Carrigan when both were still teenagers, and keyboardist David Briggs, who also played in an early band with Carrigan, he listened hard to the R&B of Bobby Bland, James Brown and New Orleans hitmakers like Smiley Lewis and Fats Domino. Carrigan would adapt the techniques of R&B drummers like Earl Palmer and Charles “Hungry” Williams to the demands of country music.
Putnam, who moved to Nashville in 1965 a few months after Carrigan had relocated to town in late 1964, recalls how R&B shaped their aesthetic in the early 1960s.
“David Briggs and I had been playing in a rockabilly group, and we would play early Elvis music,” Putnam says from his home in Florence, Ala. “[Jerry Carrigan] and his father, Larry, were putting together an R&B band at the age of 16. We played James Brown, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Ray Charles and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. His father would book us gigs at frat parties at the University of Alabama, Ole Miss and Auburn.”
As part of a band, The Mark V, that specialized in R&B — the group included guitarist Marlin Greene, who would later work with soul great Percy Sledge — Carrigan developed a style that was based on shuffle rhythms. You can hear Carrigan’s distinctive take on shuffles on Arthur Alexander’s 1961 recording of “You Better Move On,” produced in Muscle Shoals by Rick Hall at FAME Studio. Carrigan also played on Jimmy Hughes’ 1964 hit “Steal Away,” a record that established the sound and feel of Southern soul music.
In Nashville, Carrigan changed his approach to the shuffle. The dictates of R&B required him to play with an emphasis on dotted eighth and sixteenth notes. For his country sessions, Carrigan achieved a subtly different flow by playing with a triplet feel. Still, Carrigan’s Nashville work includes his explosive contribution to pop singer Tommy Roe’s 1963 single “Everybody” and his elastic groove on Charlie Rich’s 1965 hit “Mohair Sam.”
Mohair Sam - Charlie Rich
As Carrigan told Modern Drummer’s Robyn Flans in 1986, he wasn’t afraid to use unconventional techniques to achieve his effects: “I was the first person in Nashville to play the real hard snare drum on country records, and I don’t say that to brag. Nobody else had the nerve to do it.” In fact, “Everybody” featured Carrigan playing the bottom of his snare drum, which gave the record a uniquely thick texture.
Carrigan’s Nashville work included innumerable sessions, and he worked with producer Billy Sherrill on recordings by George Jones and Tammy Wynette. He was featured in a longform presentation by the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009 (watch his talk with Bill Lloyd) and was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2010. His death was confirmed by his cousin, Tom Harrigan, of Jamestown, N.C. At press time, funeral arrangements remained incomplete.
