The Adventures of Joe 90

In my first instructional video, there’s a clip near the beginning where I’m playing the first few seconds of a piece called “The Adventures of Joe 90.” Never mind the title, I think it’s named after an old kids’ TV show, but it’s written for “The Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps.” From Wikipedia:

“The United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps is one of four premier musical organizations of the United States Army. Members perform using musical instruments and wearing uniforms similar to those used by military musicians of the Continental Army during the American Revolution.”

The group as a whole consists of Fifes (wooden flutes), snare drums, and bass drums. The piece in question features only the snare and bass drums. Basically, these folks play enormous 18th century style military drums with calf skin heads (at least I’m pretty sure they’re calf skin) and they do it at an incredibly high level. The part I learned back in the day was the snare drum part.

Daryl Spellman, one of my early drum teachers, introduced me to this piece when I was a teenager. After learning it I lost the sheet music, unfortunately, but since then I had that opening bit memorized. I’ve always thought it was the most interesting and fun rudimental drum piece I’ve ever encountered, and so every few years I’d make an attempt to find it again.

Since using that for my video I decided to do another search, and sure enough, I was rewarded… finding this PDF book with Joe 90 tucked way at the very back! So stoked to re-learn the rest of this piece that I had forgotten over the years. Maybe I’ll record a video of it soon.

But for now, here is a recording of the Old Guard performing “The Adventures of Joe 90.”