Listen to as much of these clips as you need to before picking the drummer that you feel is the best of the five.
Steve Gadd - drum solo
Omar Hakim - Drum solo
Bernard Purdie - Soul Drums
Billy Cobham drum solo 1968 w/ Horace Silver
Anton Fig (Drum Solo) With The CBS Orchestra - David Letterman 6/6/11 - HD 720p
Is there some reason nobody wants to vote on these guys?
I went with Billy C. Best of luck to all of the competitors!
Thanks for the vote. The poll finally got some life!
Good work wading through those minutes of no-drums! Billy’s good!
The best drummer in any of those clips is Horace Silver!
If the question is which of these clips is the best solo, I’d give it to Hakim’s supremely musical performance, though Cobham would be my overall choice from these five.
Of those solos, I picked Billy Cobham. Omar Hakim is a close second, though, and I had never heard of him before this poll.
I, too, went with Billy Cobham. But I almost went with Omar Hakim (and Steve Gadd, of course, is no slouch either).
Poor Anton! 
My reason:
Who?
Who?
Who?
Who?
The guy from Letterman?
Joe
I couldn’t really hear well enough through my notebook speakers, but of Cobham, Gadd, and Purdie, it’s really tough to choose.
I’m sticking with Steve Gadd, though, as number one. Very tasty. Love his work with Richard Tee and Stuff, so there’s some bias there.
Pretty Purdie, though, someone could just play on and off that groove all night, straight or high, and have a hell of a lot of fun.
I’d be stoked to hear Cobham play any day, with just about anybody, but I couldn’t hear well enough to listen to him accompanying Horace, just his (very good) solo.
I went with Cobham due to my early infatuation with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, even though I’m largely well past my jazz fusion phase.
But second would have been Steve Gadd. His little solo/coda at the end of Steely Dan’s Aja has always wowed me.