Let There Be Drums

Here's a real oldie from my record bins: Sandy Nelson's "Let There Be Drums." I'm going to confess to cheating a little bit. I found some digital versions of a couple of the songs from this album, so I'm going to post those, just because they sound better. But, in the spirit of keepin' it real, I'll post the original album version of "Tequila," scratches and all.


A little bio information: Sander L. "Sandy" Nelson was born Dec. 1, 1938, in Santa Monica, Calif. He went to high school with Jan Berry and Dean Torrence (later known as Jan and Dean), and Kim Fowley. A respected session drummer, he played on songs such as "To Know Him Is To Love Him" (Phil Spector's Teddy Bears, 1958), "Alley-Oop" (The Hollywood Argyles, 1960), "A Thousand Stars" (Kathy Young and the Innocents, 1960), as well as many others.

Sandy Nelson's song "Teen Beat" went to number four on the charts in 1959. He subsequently signed with Imperial records and pounded out two more Top 40 hits; "Let There Be Drums," which went to number three in Britain, and "Drums Are My Beat." All three were instrumentals, a relative chart rarity.

There is not a lot of information about Sandy Nelson floating around the Interwebs. The tsimon page seems about the best. Other pages I found usually cite that page as a main source.

Teen Beat.mp3
Let There Be Drums.mp3
Tequila.mp3