PAS Hall of Fame:
Sheila E
by Robyn Flans
In addition to pointing that out in her letter nominating Sheila, Colleen B. Clark, Drumset Editor of Percussive Notes, further illuminated Sheila’s many qualifications: “There is no question that the combination of both her unmatched recording and performance output and influence on both the worlds of percussion and drumset is perhaps the most unique in the modern era, making her both a pioneer and a living legend, deserving of this great honor.”
When growing up in a family whose patriarch is Pete Escovedo, perhaps it is destiny to become a musician. The truth is, Pete did everything he could to dissuade his daughter Sheila from following in those footsteps, knowing it was not an easy way to make a living. Instead, he asked her elementary school teacher to put her on the violin, believing if she could read music and play classically, perhaps she would have a future. She confesses she never learned to read well, but continued to play violin in junior high school and even earned scholarships.
Despite the battle with her father and subsequent challenges, there was no denying fate; Sheila would go on to break down barriers for female drummers and percussionists, as well as eliminating usual boundaries to artistic genres, while including Latin, pop, funk, R&B, gospel, and jazz in her nine solo albums. Her diverse abilities would lead to recording or touring work with such artists as Prince, George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Marvin Gaye, Ringo Starr, Hans Zimmer, Beyonce, Gloria Estefan, Lionel Richie, and many more.
But the journey was not smooth. As a young girl, sports vied with music as her number-one love. Living in a rough Northern California neighborhood, she says she became a very fast runner, escaping from being beaten up every day. “I was running for my life every day, but that’s what made me a track star,” she says.
When being targeted by gangs, you either give in or keep getting hurt. At one point, she was forced into two gangs. Ultimately, music helped her escape from that world.
Young Sheila was inspired to play percussion by her father, of course, but one day when she was in the second grade, she was stirred by the sound of a snare drum coming from the second floor of the corner house down the street. She ran to the corner where she could hear a band playing a James Brown song and thought to herself: “Oh, my God, I love drums.”
At age 15, music won over dreams of competing at the Olympics. “My father’s other percussion player got sick, and I just told him, ‘Pop, I know all the music.’ He goes, ‘No, you’re only 15 years old.’ They were signed to Clive Davis at the time, and they were touring with the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and Earth Wind & Fire. And I said, ‘You know that I know the music; I can do it.’ He goes, ‘No, no, no, no.’ When they couldn’t find anyone, I went to my mom and said, ‘Mommy, Daddy won’t let me play.’ She went to him and said, ‘Let her play.’ I played the show, and that changed everything. That night was when I realized that this is the gift God had given me, because the experience was very spiritual.”
A few weeks later, she was out on tour with her father and his band Azteca, and she never looked back. That was 1973. For the next year, they toured internationally, and it wasn’t until later that Escovedo realized that while she had been watching her father play as a youngster, she had learned to play left-handed on a right-handed setup.
“I was playing on my lap while I was watching him, so what his right hand would do, my left hand would do,” she explains. “The conga was set up right-handed, but my left hand was the dominant hand because I was watching him in a mirror image. We didn’t realize for a very long time that I was playing left-handed on a right-handed setup. And the same thing with the timbales. The cowbells are set up for right-handed, and I don’t know how this happened, but the timbales are set up for left-handed, so, they’re both switched.”
Not long after that tour, Escovedo began getting calls to go on the road and record with such luminaries as George Duke, Herbie Hancock, and Billy Cobham. There weren’t many women in the studios yet, and she faced a new challenge. Having grown up in a household with percussion and musicians constantly playing, the daughter of Pete Escovedo just took that for granted and thought everyone’s homes were the same. She never considered that she would encounter sexism when she finally began to work in the outside world.
“I would walk into a session and the drummer would look at me and say, ‘Hey, can you get me a cup of coffee?’” She recounts. “I’d be like, ‘I’m not the receptionist; I’m here to play.’ He’d be like, ‘What?’”
Prince saw her for who she was and allowed her to explore herself as an artist, a musician, and how she wanted to present herself. They met briefly in 1978, and they re-connected in the early 1980s when they began their professional (and personal) relationship. In 1984, when Prince produced her first solo outing, The Glamorous Life, Escovedo became known as Sheila E. She has said the shortening of her last name was to create a recognizable artistic identity. She has emphasized that the change was not about forgetting her roots; it was about being more identifiable and memorable.
Sheila’s strong sense of self, which she attributes to her parental upbringing — mostly her mother — kept her from never acquiescing to the idea that in order to be taken seriously as a musician, she needed to tone down her sexuality on stage. In fact, her fourth album in 1991, and the first without any input from Prince, carries the tongue-in-cheek title Sex Cymbal.
With the idea of being a serious musician, she has always taken an active role, in not only her stage presence but her tools. Drum Workshop founder and chief product officer Don Lombardi’s relationship with Sheila dates back to the late ’80s. “I happened to hear her on drums one day during her tenure with Prince, and I recall thinking, ‘Holy Moses!’” says Lombardi, who adds that she is not only an incredible player, but a wonderful person. “She’s a huge advocate of education, and she’s very philanthropic,” Lombardi says. “She’s very goal oriented, religious, and family oriented. She’s just a beautiful person all around.”
Lombardi says Sheila became involved with DW by challenging them to figure out innovative techniques for the painting and airbrushing process for putting photos of her nieces and nephews on her kit. When DW acquired Latin Percussion in 2015, she approached them with new product suggestions, such as different sounding cowbells, mics inside her timbales and, at one point, for hydraulic timbale and cymbal stands that could lower them three inches in the middle of a song. DW facilitated this for her, so the glamorous superstar could kick off her high heels in the middle of the show and just get down to playing.
Her penchant for stilettos had already gotten her into trouble. All the dancing and performing drum solos in them for years had resulted in nerve damage and extreme pain. A collapsed lung occurred from acupuncture treatment she sought for the pain, which required surgery in the early ’90s. This put her career on hold for several months. “It took me four months to even walk a block correctly without a cane,” she says.
When Sheila finally got back on her feet, she stopped playing drums in heels, but did begin her percussion set in them, ending it in her bare feet.
To date, Sheila has released nine solo albums including 2024’s Bailar, which earned Sheila her first Grammy (Best Global Music Performance) this year for the track, “Bemba Colora,” featuring Gloria Estefan and Mimy Succar. In a bold move, Sheila released two albums within one week of each other in May of this year: Bailar Deluxe, which has three new songs, including the first recorded Latin version of “The Glamorous Life.” Sheila E. & Friends Bailar Instrumentals is the instrumental version, adding some great Latin musicians on melodies and solos, as well as players normally known to work in other genres of music such as Chris Botti, Peter White, Kirk Whalum, Marcus Miller, and her godson, Michael Gabriel.
Sheila prides herself in crossing genres on her own projects as well as getting calls for a diverse assortment of music as a sideman. That preparation began early in the Escovedo household. “My dad would play Latin music or Latin jazz, because that’s the music that he chose and loved and created. But he also brought in jazz. He brought in salsa. We would listen to Motown a lot, so some Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, Temptations — whoever was on Motown, and everyone was on Motown at the time. Then James Brown. Growing up in the environment of being in the Bay Area, it was a mecca of all genres, and the radio stations there would play multiple genres of music, not just one. So, growing up in the Bay, I was listening to Sly and the Family Stone, The Pointer Sisters, Tower of Power, The Grateful Dead, Santana — I mean, the list goes on. Then Larry Graham and Graham Central Station comes along and it just continues to grow, and there’s so much music in the Bay and so many places to play and to listen to local artists.
“Growing up in that environment allowed me to listen to all music — rock, pop, Latin, Latin/rock. Learning classical music allowed me to respect that music. Then we also had the big gospel scene with the Hawkins family and church, and rap when Tupac came there and opened up that big door, and not just him, but Arrested Development and others. I mean there’s many, many artists, and that’s why it has made me the artist that I am, because I grew up in the environment of all music with as much music as I could learn.”
Even with all that, Sheila never expected her touring resume to include a Beatle. It was a shock when Ringo asked her to join his 2001 All-Starr tour. “Like, who would think of that?” Sheila ponders with a laugh. “And he told me, ‘You’re going to be the drummer in the band — not me, you. And then we’ll trade off and I’ll play drums on your music.’ So, I’m thinking, ‘Wow, Ringo’s going to play ‘Glamorous Life’ and ‘A Love Bizarre,’ which is amazing, because I knew we were going to do both of those songs.”
Figuring out how to play with Ringo was a challenge for Sheila at first. Management sent her about 28 songs, which she listened to and practiced, and she explains, “I had to really figure out, if you will, ‘How does he walk? How does he swing when he walks?’ I was thinking, ‘Wow, I don’t understand why every time I do a fill, he’s already there?’ I kept missing, trying to understand, ‘I’m getting ready to do the fill, but he has already started the fill.’ And then I figured it out: ‘Wait, he leads with his left hand.’ Once I got that, then I understood him,” says Sheila, who returned to the All-Starr Band for the 2003 and 2006 tours.
By far, the oddest call Sheila says she has gotten was to play the 37th Academy of Country Music Awards performance in May 2002 for the hit country duo Brooks & Dunn. It served as yet one more musical lesson to this legend: “You have to open yourself up to being versatile and playing other genres of music, not just playing the authentic [Latin] beats, because otherwise you won’t get called back, because those beats will not work for all the music,” Sheila emphasizes. “As I’ve said before, there’s a painting that’s already done and they’re asking you, as a percussion player, to add one color and you’re going, ‘Oh my God, it’s already perfect, what do I do?’ You’ve got to find that one space to figure out what works.”
When Sheila looks back at her life thus far, it is packed with more highlights than she can rattle off — but the attempt is valiant: “The first time playing with my dad at 15, which changed my life. A highlight was meeting Billy Cobham and George Duke, because that opened the door to meeting so many amazing artists in my life thus far, and being able to play and record with all of them. Of course, meeting Prince in the ’70s is a highlight for sure. There are so many highlights; every day is a highlight. Winning all of these awards that have been given to me, to us, to my family, our legacy, getting the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Grammys for my dad and me — that was huge because a father and daughter team has never been given that award. So, we made history, and then getting the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was amazing and winning the Grammy this year.”
A significant high point comes to mind where both Sheila’s dreams of music and being in the Olympics converged in a very symbolic way. Sheila was asked to join a star-studded lineup including Gloria Estefan, Tito Puente, B.B. King, and Little Richard to perform a Latin-funk medley, featuring Miami Sound Machine’s “Conga” at the closing ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics at Centennial Olympic Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.
