Cover photo © 2025 Dru Saren

While he may not be a household name, Bobby T. Torello has managed to fashion a career from behind his drum kit that has brought him some fame, travel, and close friendships. He also understands that life has a way of catching up with you.

“Two days ago I got news that a good friend of mine, guitarist Rick Derringer, just passed away not too long after the same heart surgery I had. The other night he reached for his pillow, felt something weird in his chest, went to the hospital and passed away. It’s sad and kind of scary. And now here I am complaining because I’m not a hundred percent yet. It takes a lot of energy to be me. I’m a really over- energized person, and the healing is not coming quick enough for me. But then when I heard the news about Rick, I’m like, okay, relax, be calm, go easy.”

Born in 1951, the drummer grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. As a youngster, Torello had two neighbors that were a bit older, and both played drums. He started getting interested when one of them let him play a bit. Then came the moment of revelation.

“After seeing Ringo Starr and the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan TV show, I knew I really had to do this. I started on a snare drum that we had rented while taking lessons in the school, which didn’t do anything for me. For my 13th birthday, my parents bought me a very inexpensive set of drums, which I dove into headfirst . Within six months I knew that was what I was going do for the rest of my life.

“I just really, really, really practiced, Every night after school, I came home and practiced until my dad got home from work. Then I’d have to stop because I would drive him crazy. Every morning he’d leave at 5:30 am and I’d get up to practice. I’d listen to records by Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa for inspiration. But seeing Ringo up there was the final story.

“The first band I put together was Little Bobby and The Impacts. I still think that’s a cool name. I got my first gig maybe a year after I started playing. I had a paper route, saved my money, and was able to buy another little set of drums. I got the band together from the kids in the neighborhood, whoever had instruments. First gig, we made $8 a piece. I was like, all right, this is great. I’d like to make $8 now! I pushed it really hard, had my brother for a singer. Once we went into the recording studio, he really wasn’t cutting it. That’s when I realized, do I want to be a big fish in a little pond? I decided, no, I want be a small fish in the big pond.”

Around the age of 17 years old, the drummer got a call asking him to consider joining David and the Giants, a band working the area from Mississippi down to New Orleans. But Torello needed to finish school. Several years later, he got another call.

“So I flew down to New Orleans to meet the band. I had already listened to Johnny Winter’s records and in the back of my mind I said, I’m going play with this guy. Johnny was in the mental institution in New Orleans called River Oaks. They didn’t have rehab for people back then. If you were addicted to drugs, they put you in a nuthouse. So I went down south with this David & the Giants and now I’m hanging out in New Orleans. On weekends, Johnny would get out to go jam with this other band called the Paper Steamboat.

“I got to know those guys. We did a jam together. Anyway, long story short, we sent him the tapes. Johnny said, you get that drummer, maybe another guitar player, put a band together and I’ll produce a record. So within eight months of me being down south, we flew up to New York City and I met Johnny Winter. The band became Thunderhead.

“We went on the road, played a lot, toured a lot. We were in Louisville, Kentucky, and the manager wanted more of a percentage because he saw the band was starting to do really well. We didn’t agree, so he had us arrested for stealing our own equipment with the help of a very crooked judge out of Louisiana. If you know anything about Louisiana, I think the whole place is crooked. They put us in jail for the night.

“We jumped to another manager who took us over to the guy who owned a studio in the country in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The band started really working hard and Johnny came down for a month to produce the Thunderhead album. Our manager shopped it out in California to all these record companies. Finally, ABC/Dunhill Records was interested but they wanted to redo the whole album with their producer. That’s the music business.

“Johnny put in all this time and effort, and we had to can that album, which almost made us enemies. So we did the album all over again, doing it their way, this really slick, modern recording. We liked the raw sound of the album we did with Johnny. The ABC version got released and we went on the road to support it, but they never coordinated a tour for the release of the album with a major act. We were being bounced around from like Lakeland, Florida to Lansing, Michigan to Louisville, Kentucky, down to Lafayette, Louisiana, giving you a day to get to places that it would take two days to get to. For a year they dragged our asses all over the United States.

“I should have read the contract more thoroughly before I signed it, but everybody was signing. The record company had the publishing rights to our songs and everything, which was screwed.. At the end of the year, I fired the management, the booking agency, and the record company. I took the whole band up to my parents’ house here in New Haven, Connecticut. We tried to get another deal out of New York City, which didn’t work out. We were playing out on Long Island, where the club owners are telling us to learn some cover songs. That’s not why we started the band. No one was going to tell us what volume or songs to play. I couldn’t do it anymore, so I left the band.”

With time on his hands, Torello picked up some gigs with another New Haven musician, Michael Bolotin, who later changed his name to Michael Bolton. A connection from his past soon sent the drummer in a different direction. While he was with David & the Giants, they had opened some shows for Black Oak Arkansas. Their road manager had played bass in a band with Torello before Thunderhead.

“I get the call from Black Oak Arkansas saying, we remember you opening up for us and everybody says you’d be the perfect fill-in for Tommy Aldridge, who left the band. It was only two or three weeks after I left Thunderhead. I fly down to Memphis, then to Arkansas to start rehearsing with the new version of Black Oak Arkansas, which was basically the Hot Dogs, a band out of Memphis. We’re opening up for Gary Wright, did a bunch of shows with the Electric Light Orchestra all through the South as a support act. Anyhow, they hand me my contract that they want me to sign. In the meantime, I had  smoothed over everything with Johnny Winter and we’ve become very tight, very tight friends.

“Johnny said, fly back, use my lawyer, and see if their contract’s up to snuff. If not, I’ll give you $50 grand to join my band. See if they can match that. Johnny’s lawyer went crazy when he read the contract. His eyeballs were hanging out. He said, “This is 1950s music stuff. You cannot, by any means, sign this.” I flew back, got my drums and told them I was done. They literally threw me out of Arkansas. But my dream of playing with Johnny finally came true.”

In short order, Torello is on a major tour all around the United States in Winter’s band, and 38 Special as the opening act for most of the tour, which lasted a year, the last Colosseum tour Johnny Winter did. After the tour, they headed into the studio.

“We were looking for a bass player, and finally I found the guy, Jon Paris, who was a monster bass player, harmonica player, one of those guys that plays everything. And he knew the blues inside and out. We went on what I called “the three hour tour” because we played clubs and it was Johnny’s first time doing clubs since the sixties. We hit the major clubs, doing two and three nights in every club that we played. The band was great and we’d play two and a half, three hours every night. Then we did an album called White, Hot and Blue, followed by Raisin’ Cain, with a major tour that took us to Europe, Canada, and back to Europe.”

After the tour came a break, during which Torello was contacted by singer Grace Slick, of Jefferson Airplane fame. She wanted him to play on what would be her next solo album, Welcome To The Wrecking Ball. He signed up for the project, recorded in Miami, and then came a big tour. But right before Christmas, the tour was canceled as Slick rejoined Jefferson Starship.

“I quit Johnny Winter and went to Grace Slick, and now I’m out of a job. I was living in New York for about a year before I told Johnny, could I please get my job back? And he gave me the job back, for a year and a half, almost two years. Then I did the MTV video with Michael, who was now Michael Bolton. He had the album recorded and they put us on a major tour opening for Bob Seger. I thought, you know, I’ve got to take this job, because Johnny always told me, if you think you could do better, go get another job and do what you have to do. He also said, even though I love having you play in the band, people come to see Johnny Winter.

“So I left again. Strike three. It worked out until CBS told Bolton you can’t do rock music anymore. You should only do ballads. Anyhow, that was the end of me playing with Michael. I tried asking Johnny for my job back again. He said, “come on Bobby, I can’t do it again.” After taking a year off, I moved to Miami and I hung out for a while. Then I saw Black Oak, Arkansas had a gig and they asked me to go back on the road with them. This is the second time.

So I go back on the road in 1985 with Black Oak Arkansas, but at this point they were really struggling as their popularity fell way off. The styles of music had changed. In 1985 you needed to be a metal band. I ended up moving to Chicago in 1988 or 1989, trying to make a living with a blues band, which is almost impossible. I lived there for two years. I played with blues bands, my own blues band, bouncing around, whatever I could do, and that’s when it became really tough.

“During that period, I got to be good friends with Robin Zander from Cheap Trick. While I was living in Chicago, I’d go up to Rockford, Illinois to hung out with him and write some songs. Robin was adamant that I needed to write my own material for my own band. I started working very hard on writing. Then I got married and had a child seven years later.”

After the turn of the century, Torello was part of a project with Florida guitarist Sean Chambers, released in 2004 as Humble Spirits.

“I enjoyed playing with Sean. He was a big Johnny Winter freak, so the music was cool. I was still living up here and I wasn’t planning on moving down to Florida to be part of his band. I guess things might have changed if the record had taken off, but, like everything else, it was very slow moving. I’m still real close friends with Sean. Now he’s playing with the last rhythm section that the band Savoy Brown had up to the passing of the group’s founder, Kim Simmonds.”

In recent years, Torello has worked with a number of bands, including the Name Droppers He has spent significant time backing guitarist Jay Willie, with the latest release being the fifth title they have done together as the Jay Willie Blues Band.

“I got to know Jay after one of the gigs when I was with Johnny Winter, and as I got to know him a little bit better, we started hanging out. I did a spot gig with him, then he asked me to do a record. Now four albums later, we’re doing this tribute, Raisin’ Cane, to Johnny Winter. It’s really a good record. Jay has a good singing voice and he’s a good songwriter. He gets the job done and we have some really cool songs.

“He’s got me as a special guest in a way because I’m doing a lot of the singing. We did songs that Jay and I felt that Johnny would have done if he had recorded another album. I don’t know if Johnny would be happy or sad about my singing, but I’m doing the very best Bobby T can do to make this thing sound real and soulful. I’m not trying to fool anybody. I gave it a hundred percent. There’s some cool drumming in it, but it’s really about the feel of the overall album, which I thought came out really good.

“Jay is a really good guitar player. I mean, really good. He has never gotten the recognition. He’s really a Johnny Winter clone in a way. He plays so much like him. When I played with Johnny, he had the ability to go to 11. Not a lot of people have that quality. If you can get to 10, you’re doing business. Back when he was really playing, Johnny had that ability to go to 11. I always put him one notch above a lot of people.

In 2017, Torello was inducted into the Classic Drummer Magazine Hall of Fame. He was also honored by the New England Music Hall of Fame in 2020.

When asked to describe his drumming style, Torello paused for a few beats before providing a in-depth response.

“When I played with Johnny, I felt like another guitar player, as I would feed off of what he played. I was a very busy player, but also very musical, with a very intense plan. Powerful. Speed, of course, is important.

“I am an ambassador for the WFLIII drum company, which is Bill Ludwig’s new firm. In July, I’m doing a clinic in Nashville at the Music City Drum show. I’m one of the clinicians out of six major drummers, a really a cool thing. I just hope that my stamina is good enough. What an opportunity and an honor to do something like that.

“After I got with Johnny, he said to me, okay, now you need to learn how to play the blues. This is back in 1976. I said, what do you mean? I know how to play the blues. He told me I didn’t know anything, saying you may know the Allman Brothers, but you don’t know how to play the blues. I went with him to his penthouse apartment in New York City for a month so he could play me real blues records.

“I had no idea they even made records like that. I never heard any of that stuff growing up. There was no blues in Connecticut. It was R&B, but as far as blues goes, I’d never heard it. The most I had heard of blues was B.B. King, “The Thrill Is Gone.” Johnny played stuff like Lightnin’ Hopkins, who would change time whenever he felt like it. I said, well, that doesn’t make sense. Johnny’s response was, that’s where he wanted to change, so it’s right. I said that’s easy if you’re playing guitar by yourself. Johnny stressed that you’ve got to pay attention. He really drilled me to learn how to play the blues, but it was a lot more intense than the way the old guys did it. They didn’t have any drums or bass player.

“I really thought a lot of Johnny. We became great friends and he was one of the nicest people, smartest people, and probably the most honest person in all of the music business that I ever met. So that meant a lot to me. Honesty. You don’t find that much in this business. A lot of years have gone by. My mind hasn’t changed much, but like I told you, my body needs to get back in shape after that heart surgery. I plan on doing this for many more years, and I’d like to thank everyone for all of your interest.”