Editorial feature
The Best Drummers of All Time
Fifteen drummers whose recorded work changed how the instrument is played. Spanning big band, rock, fusion, prog, hip-hop, and beyond — ranked by record-defining contribution and influence on every drummer who came after.
Ranked by DrumThat’s editors
Fifteen drummers who changed the instrument.
01 · Top tier
John Bonham
The drummer every rock drummer is still measured against forty years after his death. Bonham’s feel — heavy, behind-the-beat, perfectly placed — defined the sound of rock drums on record. The triplet kick patterns of “Good Times Bad Times,” the half-time shuffle of “Fool in the Rain,” and the iconic groove of “When the Levee Breaks” remain reference points. The Wikipedia “drummer nicknamed Bonzo” query alone drives more drum-search traffic than most living drummers combined.
Key tracks
- When the Levee Breaks (1971)
- Good Times Bad Times (1969)
- Fool in the Rain (1979)
02 · Top tier
Buddy Rich
Rich was a self-taught vaudeville prodigy who became the most technically complete drummer of the 20th century. His one-handed roll, his single-stroke speed at 1,000+ BPM, and his ability to swing a 17-piece big band by sheer rhythmic gravity remain unmatched. Drumming students still study his West Side Story Medley solo line by line. There’s a generation-defining argument about whether Rich or Krupa was greater; Rich’s technique answers it definitively.
Key tracks
- West Side Story Medley (1966)
- Channel One Suite (1968)
- Love for Sale (1955)
03 · Top tier
Neil Peart
Peart treated drumming as a lifelong intellectual project. He took lessons from Freddie Gruber and Peter Erskine in his fifties to rebuild his technique from the ground up; the YYZ–era thunder gave way to a looser, more swung approach by the time of Rush’s final tours. The compositional ambition of his fills, the lyrical writing, and the sheer endurance of his solos turned a generation of progressive-rock drummers into students. His death in 2020 felt like the end of an era, because it was.
Key tracks
- YYZ (1981)
- Tom Sawyer (1981)
- La Villa Strangiato (1978)
04 · Mid
Keith Moon
Moon rejected the entire concept of timekeeping as a drumming role. His playing on “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Baba O’Riley” reads less like a drum part than like a second lead instrument, fills colliding into fills, the kit treated as a solo voice over which the band held the time. The approach is technically indefensible and impossible to replicate. It’s also the reason The Who sound the way The Who sound. Every chaos-rock drummer since has been negotiating with Moon’s legacy.
Key tracks
- Won't Get Fooled Again (1971)
- Baba O'Riley (1971)
- The Real Me (1973)
05 · Mid
Steve Gadd
If you’ve listened to any pop or jazz record made between 1975 and the present, you’ve probably heard Gadd. His linear groove on “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” is the most-imitated drum part in pop history; his ride feel and brushwork on Steely Dan’s “Aja” defined what session drumming sounded like for two decades. The economy is the lesson: nothing wasted, every note placed, every fill a complete sentence.
Key tracks
- 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (1975)
- Aja (1977)
- Late in the Evening (1980)
06 · Mid
Vinnie Colaiuta
Colaiuta is the drummer’s drummer — the player most working pros name first when asked who’s technically the best alive. The polyrhythmic facility on Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage” sessions, the looser feel during the Sting decade, and the constant studio work in between have made him a quiet ubiquity in modern recorded music. He’s notoriously private and rarely teaches. The technique speaks for itself.
Key tracks
- Keep It Greasey (Frank Zappa) (1979)
- Seven Days (Sting) (1993)
- Brush With the Blues (Jeff Beck) (1999)
07 · Mid
Tony Williams
Williams joined Miles Davis at seventeen and changed the harmonic approach to jazz drumming permanently. The ride-cymbal pulse on the Second Great Quintet records is the standard against which every modern jazz drummer is still measured. His later fusion work with Lifetime — angular, loud, electric — opened the door for every metal-influenced jazz drummer that came after. Died young; the catalog he left in 35 years is what most drummers manage in 60.
Key tracks
- Nefertiti (Miles Davis) (1968)
- Pee Wee (Miles Davis) (1967)
- Emergency! (1969)
08 · Mid
Stewart Copeland
Copeland fused punk energy with reggae feel and jazz-fusion kit awareness, and the result was a drumming style that became inseparable from the sound of post-punk new wave. The hi-hat work on “Walking on the Moon” — open, splashy, syncopated against Sting’s bass — is its own genre. He’s spent the years since The Police composing for film and orchestra, but the drumming legacy is locked in.
Key tracks
- Walking on the Moon (1979)
- Roxanne (1978)
- Message in a Bottle (1979)
09 · Mid
Dave Grohl
Grohl wrote the rule book for modern hard-rock drumming on Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and has spent the thirty years since proving the rule book holds. The pocket on “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the linear chops on “In Bloom,” and the controlled chaos of his Them Crooked Vultures session work all sit in the same fundamental place: heavy, musical, in-time, unmistakable. He’s the rare drummer who became a frontman without losing the drumming reputation.
Key tracks
- Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
- In Bloom (1991)
- No One Loves Me & Neither Do I (2009)
10 · Mid
Questlove (Ahmir Thompson)
Questlove is the drummer who taught hip-hop how to swing live. The Roots’ entire arc — from neighborhood Philadelphia jam band to Tonight Show house band — is built on the displaced-snare feel he developed studying J Dilla’s programmed beats and translating them back into a real kit. The result is the loosest, most human-feeling pocket in modern popular music, and it’s influenced every drum producer working today.
Key tracks
- You Got Me (1999)
- The Seed (2.0) (2002)
- What They Do (1996)
11 · Mid
Mike Portnoy
Portnoy reads as the most accomplished progressive-metal drummer of the last 30 years, and the catalog backs it up. His odd-meter choreography across Dream Theater’s 25-album run, the linear chops on “The Glass Prison” and the Six Degrees suite, and the willingness to keep learning new technical vocabulary into his sixties have made him the standard-bearer for prog metal as a genre. The Liquid Tension Experiment trio records are the technical reference.
Key tracks
- The Glass Prison (2002)
- Pull Me Under (1992)
- Acid Rain (LTE) (1998)
12 · Mid
Sheila E.
Sheila Escovedo grew up in the Bay Area Latin-percussion scene before Prince made her a global pop figure. The drumming on “The Glamorous Life” mixes funk pocket, Latin syncopation, and rock attack into a single voice that no one else has replicated. Her decades since Prince — solo records, percussion features, advocacy — confirm she’s one of the most multi-talented musicians the funk era produced. Watch any of her live solos.
Key tracks
- The Glamorous Life (1984)
- A Love Bizarre (1985)
- Erotic City (Prince) (1984)
13 · Mid
Travis Barker
Barker turned pop-punk drumming into a technical genre. The double-time hi-hat work, the linear fills under verse-chorus structures, and the willingness to play harder than the song needed defined a generation of drummers who came up in the late ’90s. The post-blink production work — collaborations with Machine Gun Kelly, Lil Wayne, Avril Lavigne — showed the chops scaling to genres no one expected him in. Aviation accident survivor, prolific everything.
Key tracks
- What's My Age Again? (1999)
- First Date (2001)
- I Miss You (2003)
14 · Mid
Chad Smith
Smith is the funk-rock hammer responsible for the sound of every Chili Peppers record after Mother’s Milk. The pocket is enormous, the dynamics genuinely controlled, and the willingness to sit back and play the song over showing off has kept him session-relevant for thirty years. The drum part on “Can’t Stop” alone has launched more drum-cover videos than most drummers’ entire catalogs.
Key tracks
- Can't Stop (2002)
- Give It Away (1991)
- By the Way (2002)
15 · Mid
Jojo Mayer
Mayer reverse-engineered drum-and-bass programming back into a real drum kit and became the technical reference for hand-technique pedagogy in the process. His “Secret Weapons for the Modern Drummer” DVD is the most-watched drum-instructional release of the last twenty years. The work with Nerve fuses electronic-music phrasing with live drumming in a way nothing in the catalog had previously attempted.
Key tracks
- Sphere (Nerve) (2008)
- Lookout (Nerve) (2014)
- Live solo, Modern Drummer Festival (2008)
Recommended listening
One signature track per drummer — the recordings to study
- 01 Watch on YouTube →
“When the Levee Breaks”
- 02 Watch on YouTube →
“West Side Story Medley”
- 03 Watch on YouTube →
“YYZ”
- 04 Watch on YouTube →
“Won't Get Fooled Again”
- 05 Watch on YouTube →
“50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”
- 06 Watch on YouTube →
“Keep It Greasey (Frank Zappa)”
- 07 Watch on YouTube →
“Nefertiti (Miles Davis)”
- 08 Watch on YouTube →
“Walking on the Moon”
- 09 Watch on YouTube →
“Smells Like Teen Spirit”
- 10 Watch on YouTube →
“You Got Me”
- 11 Watch on YouTube →
“The Glass Prison”
- 12 Watch on YouTube →
“The Glamorous Life”
- 13 Watch on YouTube →
“What's My Age Again?”
- 14 Watch on YouTube →
“Can't Stop”
- 15 Watch on YouTube →
“Sphere (Nerve)”