There's something in the sonority of bebop and early hard bop / cool recordings that particularly appeals to me. It's a kind of sour taste. I can't really identify its source: maybe the recording technology itself or the calfskin drumheads. I hear this most with Art Blakey; the recordings with Monk for Blue Note; some Miles Davis nightclub recordings from 1951 with Blakey on drums, where the recording quality is rather poor, but his bass drum feels like a punch to the stomach. The bebop slang for this kind of bass-drum hit was a "bomb."

Blakey tunes his drums lower than most of his contemporaries, and his famous for a particular kind of press-roll with crescendo.