Jeffrey Thomas Porcaro (/pɔːrˈkɑːroʊ/;[1] April 1, 1954 – August 5, 1992) was an American drummer, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known for being the co-founder and drummer of the rock band Toto, but is one of the most recorded session musicians in history, working on hundreds of albums and thousands of sessions.[2][3] While already an established studio player in the 1970s, he came to prominence in the United States as the drummer on the Steely Dan album Katy Lied (1975).
AllMusic characterized Porcaro as "arguably the most highly regarded studio drummer in rock from the mid-'70s to the early '90s" and said that "it is no exaggeration to say that the sound of mainstream pop/rock drumming in the 1980s was, to a large extent, the sound of Jeff Porcaro."[3] He was posthumously inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1993.[4]
Jeffrey Thomas Porcaro was born on April 1, 1954, in Hartford, Connecticut, the eldest son of Los Angeles session percussionist[5]Joe Porcaro (1930–2020) and his wife, Eileen. His younger brother Mike was a successful bassist and was a member of the band Toto. Younger brother Steve is still a studio musician and was also a member of Toto. Porcaro was raised in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles and attended Ulysses S. Grant High School. Jeff's youngest sibling was sister Joleen, born in 1960.
Porcaro began playing drums at the age of seven. Lessons came from his father Joe Porcaro, followed by further studies with Bob Zimmitti and Richie Lepore. When he was seventeen, he got his first professional gig playing in Sonny & Cher's touring band. He later called Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon his idols at that time.[6] During his twenties, Porcaro played on hundreds of albums,[7] including several for Steely Dan. He toured with Boz Scaggs before co-founding Toto with his brother Steve and childhood friends Steve Lukather and David Paich. Jeff Porcaro is renowned among drummers for the drum pattern he used on the Grammy Award-winning Toto song "Rosanna", from the album Toto IV.[8] The drum pattern, called the Half-Time Shuffle Groove, was originally created by drummer Bernard Purdie, who called it the "Purdie Shuffle." Porcaro created his own version of this groove by blending the aforementioned shuffle with John Bonham's groove heard in the Led Zeppelin song "Fool in the Rain", while keeping a Bo Diddley beat on the kick drum. Porcaro describes this groove in detail on a Star Licks video (now DVD) he created shortly after "Rosanna" became popular.
Richard Marx dedicated the song "One Man" to him and said Porcaro was the best drummer he had ever worked with.[9]Michael Jackson made a dedication to Porcaro in the liner notes for his 1995 album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I.
On October 22, 1983, Porcaro married Susan Norris, a Los Angeles television broadcaster at KABC-TV. Together, they had three sons: Christopher Joseph (1984), Miles Edwin Crawford (1986–2017) and Nico Hendrix (1991).
Porcaro died at Humana Hospital-West Hills on the evening of August 5, 1992, at the age of 38 after falling ill while spraying insecticide in the yard of his Hidden Hills home. The coroner ruled out an accident and determined a heart attack due to occlusive coronary artery disease caused by atherosclerosis resulting from cocaine use.[10][11][12] A Los Angeles County Coroner spokesman (and some doctors who treated Porcaro) attributed his death to a heart attack caused by an allergic reaction to inhaled pesticide. Bandmate Steve Lukather and Porcaro's wife stated they believed that Porcaro had also been suffering from a long-standing heart condition, and a smoking habit, both of which contributed to his death. Lukather noted that several members of Porcaro's family had died at a young age due to heart disease.[12]
Porcaro's tombstone was inscribed with the following epitaph, comprising lyrics from the Kingdom of Desire track "Wings of Time": "Our love doesn't end here; it lives forever on the Wings of Time."
The Jeff Porcaro Memorial Fund was established to benefit the music and art departments of Grant High School in Los Angeles, where he was a student in the early 1970s. A memorial concert took place at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles on December 14, 1992, with an all-star line-up that included George Harrison, Boz Scaggs, Donald Fagen, Don Henley, Michael McDonald, David Crosby, Eddie Van Halen and the members of Toto. The proceeds of the concert were used to establish an education trust fund for Porcaro's sons.
The book It's About Time: Jeff Porcaro - The Man And His Music, a new biography written by Robyn Flans, was released on September 1, 2020. Foreword by Jim Keltner.
A second book "Moments In Time, Jeff Porcaro Stories, by Robyn Flans was released in 2023.
