10 Best Female Drummers Of All Time

If you want to know just how long women have been dominating the drums, look no further than the marvellous Viola Smith, one of America’s first professional female drummers.

Born in 1912 (and is 107 at time of writing), Smith began her career young when she played in a family orchestra with her five older sisters where she played in movie theatres, radio shows, and music halls.

Referred to as a female Gene Krupa, Viola would go on to study under drumming legend Billy Gladstone alongside the prestigious NBC Symphony Orchestra before forming her own all-girl ensemble The Coquettes with her sister.

With her signature style of having two tom-toms at shoulder height, Smith’s career would see her perform with various orchestras, play at President Truman’s inauguration, and record music for Hollywood musical Johnny Comes Marching Home and Abbot and Costello’s Here Comes The Co-Eds.

She wrote an article in Down Beat magazine advocating that women musicians can play just as well as men and urged orchestras to hire them – it worked. She performed with Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb and was the original drummer in the original 60s Broadway production of Cabaret. And those are just some of her accomplishments.