Jim Watson | Jazz Drummer

Drummer Jim Watson grew up in jazz-starved southern Virginia and began his musical career at age 10, when he was enlisted in his older brother’s rock band. Through high school he played in various rock groups, getting his first taste of jazz as a member of the Washington and Lee University big band. Afterward, he played throughout Virginia with a variety of groups in styles ranging from rock to pop, R&B, country, blues, funk, and, for one horrifying month, disco.

In the early 1980s,Jim moved to Washington, D.C., where his musical tastes began to evolve. Here, he was electrified by the big bands of the Swing era: Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller. For the first time, he listened to the great drummers of jazz – Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson, Ray McKinley, Jo Jones, Sid Catlett. This “new” music set him on fire. He realized that, for a drummer, jazz offered more challenges, more thrills and more rewards than any other musical style.In jazz, drums contribute more than a beat. They are truly a musical instrument – an expressive, essential, organic part of the music.

Jim has performed with a number of Washington-area musical groups, most recently the smooth-as-silk swing band Blue Sky 5. In the late 1980s, he spent a year behind the drums for Doc Scantlin and his Imperial Palms Orchestra, then worked regularly with the jazz quartet Night & Day. Other groups have included The New Columbia Orchestra, the Jim Fox Jazz Band, and Jazz City. For two years, he was drummer for the 20-piece Olney Big Band. He traveled with the group to Switzerland in the summer of 2008 to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival, a show that climaxed with his extended solo in the Benny Goodman-Gene Krupa blockbuster “Sing Sing Sing.”