Russell Buddy Helm

Drumming for as long as he can remember, Russell Buddy Helm (southern California) has played live and in recording sessions with a variety of rock bands, including Frank Zappa, Chuck Berry, Tim Buckley, and the Allman Brothers. He has taught everything from Afro-Cuban to jazz, R&B, rock ‘n roll, and reggae. His current drumming workshops make the healing qualities of the drum accessible to all people, regardless of their musical backgrounds. When he was eight, he started his classical...See more

Drumming for as long as he can remember, Russell Buddy Helm (southern California) has played live and in recording sessions with a variety of rock bands, including Frank Zappa, Chuck Berry, Tim Buckley, and the Allman Brothers. He has taught everything from Afro-Cuban to jazz, R&B, rock ‘n roll, and reggae. His current drumming workshops make the healing qualities of the drum accessible to all people, regardless of their musical backgrounds. When he was eight, he started his classical musical training under a well-known woman drum teacher in Elkhart, Indiana named Eilleen Trafford. He excelled at percussion in both symphonic work and drum and bugle corps, earning fifteen medals of excellence. As a teenager he developed his musical styles in rhythm and blues, rock, country, folk and spiritual drumming like Afro Cuban and Gospel. While living in Coconut Grove in Miami, he was exposed to the   Caribbean culture where his understanding of spiritual drumming progressed. He moved to Los Angeles to continue his musical career and artistic training and to teach drumming. There he played with Frank Zappa and then played and toured with Tim Buckley for several years, recording an album in 1973,  (Honeyman, released in 1997). See less