About Pistol

When you’re a drummer known as “Pistol,” you’d better be prepared to bring it every time you sit down to play.

And indeed Scott “Pistol” Crockett does, behind everyone he plays with, including Paul Stanley from Kiss and Don Felder as seen in the streaming documentary Rock Camp, the Movie, or performing with Lenny Kravitz, Willie Bobo, or Charles Wright & the Watts 103^rd Street Rhythm Band or at Pistol’s NAMM Jam. Whether it’s jazz, rock, funk, soul or blues, Pistol bears that responsibility to the moniker given to him because of the comparison made to one of his main influences, Motown’s legendary Richard “Pistol” Allen.

“I was particularly drawn to his laid-back ‘pocket’ feel,” Crockett says. “So when I began playing out live, people started saying, ‘Hey, you sound like that Motown drummer.’ I was honored and humbled.”

For Pistol, the kind of profound character defining event occurred at childbirth when he was born in Los Angeles to a young woman unprepared to become a mother. She handed her baby over to her father and his grandfather took him from her arms and raised him as his son. Despite those painful beginnings, because of his grandfather’s leadership, Pistol did not fall prey to the drugs, alcohol or gangs, so prevalent in the area.

At about age 11, Pistol’s grandfather died and his mother (who lived in the house as his big sister) began to look after him. Around the same time, he found his outlet in music after his drummer neighbor got him interested in the instrument. Then when Pistol found out his family member, Willie T Brooks, was a professional musician, Brooks became his first drum teacher, encouraging him “not to be a one-trick pony,” Pistol recalls.

Around the time of junior high school, Pistol began to take drums seriously as a possible future career, but the band director had other ideas. He had Pistol play the baritone saxophone. 

Pistol resisted the sax for an entire year and then destiny intervened.  One day on the way home from school, he decided he didn’t want to carry the large instrument all the way home, so he stashed it in some bushes. The bushes happened to belong to Albert “Tootie” Heath, drummer of the Heath Brothers, who called out to him and invited him in to his garage where he was practicing. That was the beginning of a relationship, which gave Pistol the courage to insist to the band director that he play drums or he would leave the band.

Tootie took the young drummer under his wing, introducing him to Leon Ndugu Chancler, who also mentored him, and Tootie let Pistol roadie for him at some local gigs.

“One of the great experiences I had was being around these jazz musicians,” Pistol recalls. “I remember setting up Tootie’s drums at a big concert at the Rose Bowl. He was playing with J.J. Johnson, the trombone player and the place was packed. I was standing on the side and Tootie called me over and he got off the drums and handed me the sticks and I was playing behind these guys at the Rose Bowl. They knew something happened because the groove changed, but they all went with it. They saw the joy I was having and I will never forget that.”

In high school, Pistol played in his band director’s pro band and in his senior year, his band director entered him in a competition for musicians with a piece he wrote for Pistol called Percussion for Discussion. “It was a call and response kind of solo,” Pistol explains. “It was very emotional.” Pistol won the Donny Hathaway Memorial Scholarship Award for this performance.

While jazz had been most prevalent until then, R&B came to the foreground when he and Lenny Kravitz connected. Pistol went to Crenshaw High and Kravitz went to Beverly Hills High, but they lived down the street from one another and were in a band together for about three years that played a lot of Earth, Wind & Fire, Frankie Beverly and Maze and such.

In college, Pistol majored in music and expanded his abilities to include classical instrumentation. As a safety net he minored in something else he found interesting, computer science.

In about 2005, while on a gig with James Brown’s bass player, legendary Charles Wright (Charles Wright & The Watts 103^rd Street Rhythm Band best known for the hit, “Express Yourself”) came into the club and told Pistol he wanted to use him on his current record project.

“It scared the crap out of me,” Pistol admits. “I grew up listening to him. I didn’t call Charles back for two months.”

Luckily, Wright persisted because Pistol finally acquiesced and says it was “like going to school with one of the masters. One of the things he loves to tell me is, ‘Ain’t nothing to it but to do it,’” he says of Wright with whom he still plays.

In 2014 Pistol had the idea to create a jam evening in conjunction with the annual winter NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Show held in Anaheim, CA.

Through 911 For Kids, the organization that teaches children how to use the emergency phone number, with which Pistol has been involved for some time, he met a fellow drummer who helped him enlist several drum companies to sponsor what became the wildly successful Pistol NAMM Jam annual event held at Roscoe’s just a few miles away in Fullerton. Several well-known musicians stopped by to take the stage with the house band, including Charles Wright one year.

Pistol added to his musical vocabulary when he had the opportunity to back Eagles’ Don Felder and Kiss’ Paul Stanley in the 2021 documentary Rock Camp: The Movie. Even though it was really Pistol’s first big foray into the rock world, at the end of one jam, Stanley said to the band, pointing to Pistol, “You guys are going to do well as long as you’ve got him back there; he reminds me of Buddy Miles.” Pistol did such an exemplary job that he was invited to return to play for the Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp the following year.

Musically, Pistol has always aspired to play for the artist and support the song. He’s never been interested in being the star. It’s that bottom, that fire, and that foundation he wants to provide.

And in life, he was eager to create a foundation. In college he made sure to prepare for everything. That minor in computer science has helped him land a job at an aerospace and defense company, dealing with classified machines, allowing him to enjoy his musical career as a family man. Perhaps because of his very beginnings on this earth, his family – his wife and three daughters — has been paramount to him, so he’s preferred to take work closer to home. Pistol has the best of all worlds.