6 Years Ago Today: Eric Clapton's Drummer Jamie Oldaker Dies at 68

James Robert Oldaker was born September 5, 1951, and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, per Wikipedia's account of his career. He cut his teeth locally with the Rogues Five, a regional band that opened for The Doors at the Tulsa Convention Center in the mid-1960s, then worked stints with Bob Seger and Leon Russell before his break: Eric Clapton's own bassist, Carl Radle, was assembling a band for Clapton and recommended him.

"Carl said to me, 'I got a call from a friend of mine, and he wants to do a record,'" Oldaker recalled in a 2018 interview excerpted in his obituary from Modern Drummer. Clapton had been woodshedding at home in England with a demo tape Radle had given him, then called Radle directly: "I'm going to Miami to do a record with Tom Dowd; bring that kid from Tulsa with you!"

The Miami sessions became 1974's 461 Ocean Boulevard. Oldaker's account of cutting "I Shot the Sheriff" is one of the more understated origin stories in classic rock: producer Tom Dowd had a copy of Bob Marley's original, unreleased in America at the time, and suggested they cut it. "Eric didn't like it, because he felt we didn't do justice to the original," Oldaker said. "Two takes and we were done." The song hit number one and, per Oldaker, "put reggae on the map in the U.S. and worldwide."

That session opened a 12-year run, on and off, across 11 Clapton albums, including E.C. Was Here and There's One in Every Crowd (1975), Slowhand (1977), Backless (1978), and Behind the Sun (1985), plus a Live Aid appearance in 1985. Oldaker also recorded with Peter Frampton, Bob Seger, the Bee Gees, and Ace Frehley's Comet, and later played in alt-country band The Tractors. Battling lung cancer through the 2010s, he was declared cancer-free by late 2019; the disease returned the following year, and he died in his hometown of Tulsa on July 16, 2020, at 68.

Oldaker credited two bassists he played alongside in Clapton's band, Carl Radle and Donald "Duck" Dunn, with reshaping how he played. "They taught me a lot, like less being more," he told Modern Drummer in 2018. "When I first began with Eric I was playing as many licks as I could, but then Eric would turn around and look at me with his glasses down and eyes peering above and say, 'Where are you going? Settle down, youngster.'"

Oldaker's other unlikely hit came later, with Tulsa alt-country band The Tractors. Their self-titled 1994 debut wasn't a label favorite, he recalled: "The record label hated the band... we weren't pure 'cowboy hat,' and we recorded in Tulsa as opposed to Nashville." Radio mostly passed too, but line-dance clubs playing "Baby Likes to Rock It" turned it into a hit anyway, and the record went on to win a CMA award.

Oldaker's own drum kit specifics from the Clapton sessions aren't documented in the kind of source-backed detail CYS requires before naming a setup. What is universal is the stick a huge share of working drummers, session players included, reach for by default.