Jeff Porcaro
| Jeff Porcaro | |
|---|---|
Jeff Porcaro on the drums on the Toto Fahrenheit World Tour at Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu, Hawaii on November 10, 1986
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Jeffrey Thomas Porcaro |
| Born |
April 1, 1954 South Windsor, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Died | August 5, 1992 (aged 38) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) |
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| Instruments | Drums |
| Years active | 1971–1992 |
| Associated acts |
 Jeff Porcaro's signature |
Jeffrey Thomas "Jeff" Porcaro (April 1, 1954 – August 5, 1992) was an American drummer, songwriter, and record producer. In a career that spanned more than 20 years, Porcaro was best known for his work with the rock band Toto. Porcaro is one of the most recorded session musicians in history, working on hundreds of albums and thousands of sessions. While already an established studio player in the 1970s, he came to prominence in the United States as the drummer on the Steely Dan album Katy Lied. AllMusic has characterized him as "arguably the most highly regarded studio drummer in rock from the mid-'70s to the early '90s", further stating that "It is no exaggeration to say that the sound of mainstream pop/rock drumming in the 1980s was, to a large extent, the sound of Jeff Porcaro." He was posthumously inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1993.
Jeffrey Thomas Porcaro was born on April 1, 1954, in Hartford, Connecticut, the eldest son of Los Angeles session percussionist Joe Porcaro and his wife, Eileen. His brothers Mike and Steve were also successful studio musicians and members of the band Toto. Porcaro was raised in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles and attended Ulysses S. Grant High School.
On October 22, 1983, Porcaro married Susan Norris, a Los Angeles television broadcaster. Together, they had three sons, Christopher Joseph (1984), Miles Edwin Crawford (1986), and Nico Hendrix (1991).
Porcaro began playing drums at the age of seven. Lessons came from his father Joe Porcaro, followed by further studies with Bob Zimmitti and Richie Lepore.
When he was seventeen, Porcaro got his first professional gig playing in Sonny & Cher's touring band. He later on called Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon his idols at that time. During his 20s, he played on hundreds of albums, including several for Steely Dan. He toured with Boz Scaggs before co-founding Toto with his brother Steve and childhood friends Steve Lukather and David Paich. Jeff Porcaro is renowned among drummers for the drum pattern he used on the Grammy Award winning Toto song "Rosanna", from the album Toto IV. The drum pattern called the Half-Time Shuffle Groove, was originally created by the legendary drummer Bernard Purdie who called it the "Purdie Shuffle." Porcaro created his own version of this groove by blending the aforementioned shuffle with the one heard in the Led Zeppelin song Fool in the Rain. Porcaro describes this groove in detail on a Star Licks video (now DVD) he created shortly after Rosanna became popular.
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