Jimmy Maelen

Jimmy Maelen (1940 - 14 January 1988) was a percussionist from the 1960s to 1980s, who worked with many artists including Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, Peter Gabriel, James Taylor, Dire Straits, Barry Manilow, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Madonna, Bryan Adams, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, David Bowie and John Lennon. He also played on hit records by Bob James, Duran Duran, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, Yoko Ono, Meatloaf, Alice Cooper, BJ Thomas, and many others.

Barely out of Junior High School, his first group was a doo-wop street corner quintet called the Velons. By the early 1960s, he had become an excellent percussionist, playing almost exclusively with Latin bands around New York.

Maelen became lead singer, percussionist and founding member of Ambergris, and played with them for a few years. For the next two or three years, he worked with several bands and did session work. By the mid 1970s, his career took off.

For most of the late 1970s into the 1980s he was one of the "first call" percussion players in New York City. During the golden years of the disco era he was especially successful, working with the remix team of Michael Barbiero and John Luongo and overdubbing on extended dance versions of disco classics such as Gonzales' "I Haven't Stopped Dancin' Yet", The Jacksons' "Blame It on the Boogie" and "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)", Dan Hartman's "Vertigo/Relight My Fire", Jackie Moore's "This Time Baby" and many more. He can be heard playing seven tracks of percussion on Barry Manilow's classic hit "Copacabana". His working relationship with Barbiero and Luongo led to a solo album for Epic/Columbia in 1980, produced by the trio and entitled Beats Workin'.

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