This has been a rough week! I’m waking up to read the news that another musical friend has passed away, legendary Sun Records drummer J.M. “Jimmy” Van Eaton. Jimmy was eighty-six years old and had been going through some health issues recently, but it was still a great shock to read the news of his passing.
Jimmy is best known as Jerry Lee Lewis’s drummer, and it’s true that he played drums on all of Jerry Lee’s Sun records, including the big hits: “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin On,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Breathless,” “Crazy Arms,” and “High School Confidential.” Jimmy would make it into the Drumming Hall of Fame on these recordings alone, if they were his only accomplishments, but he did so, so, so much more.
Jimmy told me he started playing on records when he was still in high school. He was a young teenager at the time (that’s one of the reasons we got to have him around longer than many of the other original 1950s rockers). Sam Phillips cottoned to his drumming style, and he recorded well when a microphone or two were draped over the drum kit. It always tickled me to think that a kid like Jimmy could go record a massive national hit like “Great Balls of Fire,” a record that would be played millions of times over the next six decades, and still have to wake up early the next morning and go to high school, only having a few extra bucks in his pocket for playing on the record to show for it.
Jimmy recorded with Hayden Thompson (“Love My Baby”) and Billy Lee Riley (“Red Hot,” “Flyin’ Saucers Rock and Roll”) before he recorded those massive hits with Jerry Lee. Jimmy was a member of Riley’s band, the Little Green Men, for a time, and he had lots of great stories about touring the mid-South with that group during that first initial rush of rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll. When Jerry Lee Lewis first showed up at Sun Studios, he played on Billy Lee Riley’s records as a session pianist, just to make some extra money on the side.
Jerry Lee’s first record, “Crazy Arms,” became a decent-sized hit, a boogie-woogie update of a Ray Price country song that was a recent chart-topping hit for Price and his Cherokee Cowboys. Jimmy’s drumming matched up perfectly with Jerry Lee’s piano playing. The two locked in together like they had been playing together for decades, even though both were young men, not even yet adults. When Jerry Lee hit with “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On,” the mold was cast and J.M. Van Eaton was the engine, the drivetrain in this souped-up new hot rod car they called rock ‘n’ roll.
Over the next few years, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Van Eaton recorded hundreds of songs together at Sun, hits and misses, but each one of them great. I’ve always said that Jerry Lee Lewis’s recordings at Sun Records are my favorite recordings by anybody, at any time in history, and Jimmy’s drumming was a huge part of that. He swung and rocked at the same time. His style was part big band, part country shuffle; it locked in the groove, but it was always—ALWAYS—exciting. Just listen to the drum fill before the solo in “Whole Lotta Shakin’”—it’s kind of odd, not really where a drum fill should be, but it resolves perfectly, and now it’s strange to think how that record would sound if Jimmy hadn’t played it exactly that way. The best Memphis records are like that—strange, not by the book, but perfect, and eventually iconic.
Jimmy didn’t go on the road with Jerry Lee once the hits came in—he was still in high school! Jerry Lee took a road drummer with him, and Jimmy kept recording at Sun. The list of records he played on is simply staggering: records by Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich (“Lonely Weekends,” “Rebound,” “Midnight Blues,” and many others), Conway Twitty (who recorded at Sun under his real name, Harold Jenkins), Bill Justis (“Raunchy”), Ray Smith (“Willing and Ready,” “Rockin’ Bandit”), and many more.
There were so many recordings, I’m not sure if they’ve ever made a complete list of all the records that Jimmy played on. I used to love to ask him about random records and hear him tell the story behind that session. (“Jimmy, is that you playing on ‘Jump Right Out of This Jukebox’ by Onie Wheeler?” “Yes, that’s me, I got a call after school to come down to the studio, I met Onie there and we did that record that afternoon.” “How about ‘That’s the Way I Feel’ by Jimmy Pritchett? I know that came out on Crystal Records, but it sounds like it was done at Sun?” “Yes, that’s me, and some of the other Little Green Men playing on that record. But it was recorded in an auditorium, it wasn’t done at Sun. That’s a great record!”
I will really miss having Jimmy around to ask about all these sessions. He had a great memory and he was there for many of the most important moments in the history of Memphis music. Jimmy kept playing and recording into the 1960s, even with the Memphis flame of rock ‘n’ roll severely reduced by the teen idol phenomenon and the neutering of many of the wildest stars of the original 1950s era. Jimmy played on some of my favorite instrumental records in the early 1960s by a very young Memphis guitarist named Travis Wammack. These records, produced by former Little Green Men/Jerry Lee guitarist Roland Janes, are just as mental as the earlier rockabilly stuff, just in a different era and genre. Go listen to Travis Wammack’s “Scratchy” or Wammack’s amazing cover of Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah I Love Her So” to hear Jimmy’s drumming progress into the 1960s. Did he ever play on a bad record?
I was hired to put together a J.M. Van Eaton set at the Ponderosa Stomp festival in New Orleans. I jumped at the chance, not only because it was some of my favorite music ever, but also because it meant I’d finally get to play with Jimmy. We got along famously, and I’ll never forget him rehearsing on a thrown-together drum kit in my hotel room. It was incredible to play with him; all those drum feels I knew from those Sun Records were all still there, in his hands. I must have played “Great Balls of Fire” with a thousand different bands over the years, and it never sounded like the original record. When we played it with Jimmy, THERE IT WAS—that groove! It sounded just like the original record. That cool, effortless, swinging and rocking Memphis groove. I looked back at him and his hands were barely moving. It was something he did without thinking, but he was the only one on planet Earth who held THAT FEEL in his drumming hands. It gives me goosebumps to think about it now.
I’ll also never forget when we rehearsed “Lonely Weekends” in my hotel room. He described the intro to us, expecting us to screw it up, as the number of repeats on the intro riff was slightly wrong, mathematically, and he said a lot of groups he played with couldn’t do it like the record. We started playing “Lonely Weekends,” and it fell in like a solid groove. We all stopped at the right place for the vocals to come in, and I’ll never forget the look of absolute joy on Jimmy’s face, a huge smile knowing that he was playing with some people who knew what the hell the music was supposed to sound like, how it was supposed to go. At that moment, we became great musical friends. We even played J.M.’s solo record, a cool instrumental called “Beatnik!” Jimmy declared it was the first time he had ever played the song live.
I had the honor of playing with Jimmy on several occasions, including a couple concerts at the Nashville Boogie festival, and best of all, a late-night recording session at Sun Recording Studio in Memphis. It was a pretty spur-of-the-moment decision to record there, with just myself, Jimmy, Scott Bomar on bass, and Micah Hulscher on piano. We met in the studio and Jimmy started setting up the drums. He put a wallet on the snare (his signature trick) and whacked the snare drum hard to get a sound. Good god, to hear him hit the snare in THAT ROOM still makes me crazy to think about—it had the same reverberant room qualities as all those hundreds of records I had worn out as a kid. This time, though, it was happening right in front of my eyes, played by the master himself. It was freakin’ amazing.
We recorded three or four songs that night, that all still sadly remain unreleased—I never could figure out what to do with them (COVID-19 kicked in and killed everything for a couple years, if you recall). Jimmy played great and we all marveled listening to playbacks in the studio how much they sounded like old Sun Recordings—just four or five microphones thrown up in that great-sounding, uniquely live room, with a touch of slapback tape echo. Voila, there it was. It was as if the previous six decades had never happened. Time stood still. We recorded a song about Bigfoot that I wrote called “Wild Man of the Woods,” and strangely enough, a group of Halloween partiers was out on the street in front, one of them wearing a Bigfoot costume. We brought him into the studio to pose with the microphone. Jimmy laughed at the spectacle, but this was Memphis. Weird and great and magical things happened all the time in this town. Bigfoot showing up at the studio on the same night we recorded a rockabilly song about Bigfoot must have been par for the course for him.
All of us who knew him are going to miss Jimmy terribly. He was a great person, very kind and generous and always positive. Every experience I had with him was a great one. He and my dad were about the same age; they really got along at those shows in Nashville. I remember thinking how cool it was that my dad was hanging out and “bro-ing down” with Jimmy Van Eaton.
I remember one other funny story: We were backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, and there was a special show taking place on the Opry stage that was part of the Nashville Boogie festival. I had put together a band with Jimmy on drums, Micah on piano, Brent Harding from Social Distortion on bass, and in addition to doing our own set, we backed up Big Sandy, Harmonica Sam, and Billy Harlan with Royce Morgan. Backstage, there was a large group of people hanging out. These were hallowed halls; I was given Roy Acuff’s dressing room (!), and there was a large degree of respect expected for being present in this space.
Suddenly, a couple of young guys started fighting—backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. The fight happened right by Jimmy, and they almost dragged him into it, scuffling. The fighters were pulled apart, but not without Jimmy getting shoved to the side, almost losing his balance. As we watched the pair of young ruffians getting pulled away, Jimmy looked at me and laughed although I could tell he was pretty shaken by what had happened.
“Man,” he said. “Those guys need to get to know JESUS!” We all started howling with laughter.
I can only imagine the band that Jimmy is joining right now. Can you? We’re so lucky we had him here on Earth with us for so many years. The next time you’re in a grocery store or a bar, driving your car or playing the radio, and you hear one of those iconic Sun Records hits come blasting out of the speakers, just remember—that’s J.M. Van Eaton you’re hearing on the drums. It’s possible you’ve never gone a day of your life without hearing him play. Don’t forget him. He was Jimmy Van Eaton, and he laid down that beat like nobody before or since. Gonna miss you, my friend. All of us who knew you will miss you terribly. I hope you’re whacking that snare drum, as only you can do, at a big jam session up there in heaven.
