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The Indian “tomtom” used for the opening, middle, and end of the original 1960 recording of Apache was actually a Chinese drum, found under a staircase in Abbey Road Studios. The account says it is called a “tamtam,” but that isn’t any help as there appears to be no specific Chinese drum with that name. It is described as bound by rope around it and small enough to be held under Cliff Richard’s arm.

A Chinese friend who is a Shadows enthusiast found this drum for us some years ago, and it is what we tend to use (although a very large Chinese dragon drum is very effective). No Cliff for us, so our singer Ethel filled in.

I think if Ethel had been around those days, she was preferred to do the chinese drums too instead of Clif

Cees

abstamaria wrote:A Chinese friend who is a Shadows enthusiast found this drum for us some years ago, and it is what we tend to use (although a very large Chinese dragon drum is very effective). No Cliff for us, so our singer Ethel filled in.

Your Cliff substitute is far better then the original !

Didier

She's got good time, too. Quite talented.

Here I quote an account of the recording – “Cliff Richard also had a presence on the track as a result of the fact that they wanted some Indian drums. Jerry Lordan explained, “Tony Meehan couldn't (do it), with only two tracks, and Hank and the others playing on the other track, Tony couldn't play the regular bass drum, the snare and the tom tom and this Indian drum, which they didn't have anyway, so Norrie Paramor, the producer, said go and have a look, lads, in the prop room. This is Studio Two at Abbey Road, so there's a huge props room under the stairs stuffed full of ... cowbells - and you name it, and they came out with this Chinese drum. It's actually called a tam tam, and it's circular with a rope on it, and you hold it in one hand and beat with a mallet with the other, and Cliff Richard held that over Tony Meehan's drum kit. That's him all the way through, bom bom bom bom, bom bom... he kept great time, too.’”

Andy

Had a search online and only references to 'TamTam' was either as a Chinese gong or as a Moroccan TamTam Drum.

I think the Moroccan drum may be a strong contender after looking at the Chinese drums and gongs and would fit snugly under the arm to gold whilst playing.


example here

http://www.amazon.com/Moroccan-darbouka ... B00A4NG048

You could be right, Roger.

My own theory is that they correctly identified the drum as Chinese, because it looked Chinese, but made a mistake on the name (they probably didn’t know how to call it). The term ”tam tam” is sometimes still used (mistakenly, IMO) to refer to a Chinese drum. See, for instance –

http://www.ask.com/answers/39574301/how ... in-6000b-c

The drum in your photo seems very African and probably would not have been mistaken for a Chinese drum. Here is a close-up of the drum that Ethel used.



The best sound we’ve gotten, however, is from a very large traditional Chinese drum; this has rope mimicked around it, fitting the description used for the “apache” drum. Cliff’s version might have been a smaller version. This large drum cuts through the mix very well and, according to friends in the back row, had a commanding, deep boom – very “Apache” like.

It's not apparent in the photo, but the rope band around the drum is Fiesta Red.

Andy

Having just had a very careful listening of Apache, it seems that the "tam-tam" in the intro/outro is not the same as the "tom-tom" in the middle and is has a much deeper sound, which leads me to believe that the middle part was played by Tony on his drum kit.

Bojan

You had me put on headphones there, Bojan. You may be right; the drum does sound different in the middle bit, so it could just be Tony Meehan. (There are, by the way, two thumps at 1:00 that seems to be the Chinese drum; our bassist Anna noticed that before.)

Jerry Lordan said, “Cliff Richard held that [the Chinese drum] over Tony Meehan’s drum kit. That’s him all the way through, bom bom bom bom, bom bom… he kept great time, too.” That made it seem like Cliff was beating the drum throughout. I keep listening for that, but Cliff seems limited to the intro and outro, and until tonight I thought the middle part. Interesting.

Andy

Perhaps he did play the Chinese drum throughout, because I had always wondered why the Shadows version of Apache sounded so "dark," for lack of a better word. It could have been that tam-tam that gave it that dark atmosphere, together with Jet's "moody" bass. It could also be that the tam-tam was edited in the studio and turned down slightly during the middle part but still present . . .