Jeff Porcaro is a legend and one of my heroes. Without any doubt Rosanna is one of the most elaborated Popsongs of all time and the groove is simply magical.

* Personal note: On German mainstream radio they still play the song but they started editing out the drum intro, so the song starts when the piano comes in and sometimes they cut out the piano too, so they start when the vocals come in. When the guitar solo starts, they fade it out but then they play a stupid Katy Perry song in full length. I was never a fan of German radio but when they started doing that I just turned away with Abscheu.

However, back to the masterpiece. According to Jeff himself, the famous groove is a mixture of the ‚Purdie Shuffle, created by Motown Drum Legend Bernhard Purdie and John Bonham’s half-time shuffle drum part for Fool In The Rain plus the iconic Bass drum figure Jeff added himself. So who am I to disagree?

If you try to learn the groove look at the way it’s counted (half-time) and mind those little triplets played on the hihat with an additional ghost note on the snare. The fills before and in every chorus are slightly tricky due to 2 beats added, so every fill consists of basically 6 beats.

That’s it, now enjoy the song, it’s lots of fun 🙂