Ben Riley
Drums Solo on
The Bridge

About

Ben Riley's drums solo is the last of four solos on this recording, following Bob Cranshaw on acoustic bass. Spanning two choruses of the 32-bar AABA form in B♭ at a blazing 336 BPM with a swing feel, the title track of Sonny Rollins's 1962 comeback album is a rhythm changes contrafact based on George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," composed by Rollins himself and taken at a scorching tempo exceeding 320 beats per minute. "The Bridge" is a contrafact built on the chord changes of "I Got Rhythm," requiring the soloist to navigate a familiar harmonic framework with a different melodic identity.

Ben Riley was 28 to 29 years old at the time.