In a quiet room filled with afternoon light sits a man with a century of rhythm in his hands. At 104 and three-quarters years old—he insists on the fraction—he is believed to be the world’s oldest living jazz drummer. Everyone just calls him Dad.
His story started with oatmeal boxes and pots on a kitchen floor, a boy in the 1920s captivated by the new sounds of jazz. He saved up for a real snare drum, and by his teens, he was playing swing in local halls for a few dollars a night.
Then came the war. He traded sticks for a rifle, but in the trenches, he’d tap rhythms on his leg, holding onto the music inside. After returning home, he built a life—family, a day job, and nights spent in smoky clubs, keeping time as jazz evolved around him.
Here, at 103, something wonderful happened. A local journalist found him, and the world took notice. Now, at 104 ¾, his routine is simple but sacred: a single strike on the ride cymbal to start the day, followed by twenty minutes of practice on his beloved Slingerland kit from 1952.
His hands are gnarled but sure. The cymbals are ancient, the drum shells covered in dents—each a memory. He’ll play a few bars of “Sing, Sing, Sing,” eyes closed, and the years fade away. The time is still perfect. The groove is still there.
He smiles and says his secret is “a little whiskey in the coffee and never stop swinging.” But it’s deeper than that. It’s about showing up. The band is always counting on you.
So the beat goes on—steady, resilient, and alive.
He doesn’t just play “Sweet Georgia Brown”; he conjures it from another era, his gnarled, age-spotted hands moving over the drum kit with a memory all their own. At 103 and a half, Dad is a study in elegant contradiction: a body that has weathered over a century, housed in a crisp cardigan, yet possessed by the relentless, joyful swing of a man half his age. His eyes, clouded by time, are closed in deep concentration, but his head bobs with an impeccable, innate rhythm.
Each strike on the snare is a punctuation mark in a life well-lived, every whisper of the hi-hat a sigh of contentment. The familiar, jaunty melody isn’t just a song; it’s his anthem, a thread connecting the vibrant young musician he was to the astonishing, timeless artist he remains.
He isn’t keeping time; he is proving that for some, time is a rhythm to be mastered, not a master to be obeyed.