If you have material you'd like to contribute, please see this page, with a few guidlines that would help me serve us all better.

These are posted in the order I received them with the most recently-received ones at the top.

Steve Jacobs, from Mapex Drums USA, contributed these excellent photos of Buddy at Disneyland.

Walter Hern contributed these photos of Buddy from two different eras.

Click here for his photos, from a September, 1963 performance with Harry James, and a concert featuring Buddy's own band, in 1972. Both performances are at Disneyland.

Fred Marcin has contributed some GREAT photos, and a recording he made at the concert, to go with them!

Click here for his photos, from a January 24th, 1980 concert that Fred attended.

Here's a great autographed photo of Buddy Rich as a child performer, from 1923, when Buddy would have been about 6 years old, contributed by Rex Strother, from Salt Lake, Utah. (This is scanned at 300 dpi, so it's suitable for printing.)

Note: Rex was kind enough to send along an even larger scan of this same photo, also at 300 dpi, which would make a nice 8X10 print. Click here for the larger one.

Rex's comments:

I was going through the memorabilia of Eileen Barton, from her estate (she was a 40s/50s pop singer) and she had an 8x10, signed to her mother Elsie (Eileen's parents were in vaudeville) from "Traps, The Drum Wonder" - dated February 12, 1923.

Here it is (autographed to Elsie Barton, mother of Eileen Barton the pop singer who had the #1 hit "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake" on Mercury).Rex Strother (Salt Lake City, UT)

Here are my photos, from a 1977 Buddy Rich concert in Minneapolis. (Mike James)

Photos contributed by Gary Kindt, including one photo of Buddy with Harry James in 1964, and three photos of Buddy with his own band, from 1982.

Here's a big selection of 38 photos contributed by Glen Darling. These photos are from two performances in Nutley, New Jersey, in 1974 and 1975. Glen, and his friend Marla Parris, provided the notes below:

First, my thanks to Mike James. He is a real human being, an avid Buddy Rich fan and a man dedicated to music.

My thanks second to Marla Parris, who emailed me after I posted some of these pictures on my Yahoo 360 site to tell me she was at both performances. She reminded me of the name of the club in where I took the March 1974 pictures. Marla is special people.

These notes are from both of us.

March 1974:

Colony Three, Nutley, NJ. (I said Belleville, NJ, which borders Nutley. But, Marla says Nutley, Her mind is a steel trap. Mine's a steel sieve. AND she is younger and prettier than me, so Nutley it is.)

For you fans of detail, he was using the Slingerland TDR (Total Dynamic Response) snare drum, later designated as a Buddy Rich snare drum with the TDR strainer. As always, the drums sounded like artillery - the snare a machine gun and the bass drum like a cannon.

Charlie Callas (a comedian and TV star at the time) was in the audience. Charlie is also a drummer. He sat in, playing "Love For Sale". Buddy grabbed a camera from a patron and climbed all over Charlie pretending to take pictures. Charlie did his usual shtick of making faces.

Interesting note: when Charlie played, Buddy's drums did not sound like artillery - the snare a machine gun and the bass drum a cannon. When Buddy played them, they did. Another testimony to the fact that he Man had magic in his hands and he played his ass off as usual.

I don't have a lot details to share on the Holiday Inn gig from 1975, other than noticing that the tunes were much longer than the recorded versions because Buddy was allowing more soloists and letting those soloists really stretch out.

My guess? This was due to having the recently disbanded small group for a year, where the guys really blew out.

The other memory was the wild, loud reception from the audience for Ben Brown's bass and Steve Marcus' soprano/wah wah solo on Three Day Sucker, followed by Buddy's solo at the end of the tune - left hand 16th notes on the snare, right hand accenting on different drums/cymbals (just like the record), but this time he really went through the paces. A real treat.

Glen Darling