Keeping the beat Drummer continues career in Southbridge By Mark Wagner CORRESPONDENT   What becomes of old rock ’n’ roll drummers?

In Hollywood send-ups and public lore, drummers end up dazed and confused from a lifetime behind the bass drum. Some disappear; others have just blown up.

But real life has a way of correcting rumors, jokes and misimpressions. Just ask James “Jim” Sharp. With a passion for rhythm and blues since the early 1960s, Sharp has drummed for doo-wop bands in mob bars, has kept time in blues bars in Jersey, and found his hippie groove in California. He’s drummed on Pacific atolls while in the Air Force. Now 61 years old, Sharp is busy with the sounds of those coming the way of many a musical seeker before them.

“We’re going strong,” Sharp said from behind the sound glass in his Batcave Studio at Sharp Recording Service on West Street, which he started as a hobby in 1998 and has grown to be a business. By his own estimate, he has invested $100,000 in digital equipment, all designed to create a sound both professional and affordable. This was not possible before the digital revolution.

“I remember drooling over a Roland VS 1680 (a 16-track digital recorder),” he said. “That would have been around 1996. Then one day I bought it so our band could record our first album. I learned to work that machine, and then one thing led to another.”

The music industry has often been compared to a tournament. A lot of teams come to play, but very few make the top. When most ordinary Joes learn this, many end up keeping their day jobs, in the parlance of the music industry.

In contrast, Sharp is a survivor. His list of bands includes The Flinttones, The Want Ads, The Casuals, Robin Hood and His Merry Men, The Illusions, and Backyard Strut, to name a few. He has played seven nights a week for seven hours a day in a mob-owned bar called The Chasis in South Philadelphia. He was a sit-in stick man for entertainers touring the Pacific Theater after he was drafted during the Vietnam War. When he found his way to south Central Massachusetts in the 1990s, a blues band by the name of Backyard Strut became his passion.

Backyard Strut released two albums, its first was self-titled and its second was called “Emotional Skies.” On the release of the group’s second album, two critical things happened in Sharp’s musical life: He learned some tricks of the recording trade, and the band broke up.

“About four months after ‘Emotional Skies’ was released (1996), the band fell apart,” he said. “For a long time, I was the guy who kept things together. I drove the van, I kept the mailing list. I would buy people amplifiers. After a while, people get jaded and get used to having someone hold it all together.”

When the band members went separate ways, Sharp decided to make a go of it as a drum teacher. He also began to record in what had once been a practice space in the basement of his home on West Terrace.

Like many, Sharp is a child of an economy and society that favors mobility. Originally from South Jersey, he’s been from Tucson to Tucumcari, and one thing has been consistent throughout his life: He has taken his drums everywhere, including to a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

“When I got drafted for Vietnam, my brother encouraged me to join the Air Force, which is what I did. I played with some bands while at Travis Air Force Base (in California). Then I got shipped to Johnson Atoll, a missile site 800 miles southwest of Oahu. I could take 300 pounds in weight. I took my drums.”

Entertainers came through to boast the morale of the troops who were manning Atlas missiles and keeping steady watch on the Soviet Union. Some of the acts coming through had left their drummers behind, so Sharp sat in.

“Tex Williams was a fairly well-known country-western star,” he recalled. “He had a deep baritone voice and a couple of hits. One was ‘Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette.’ He couldn’t afford to bring the drums, so I played with the band. I never bought a drink at the canteen after that. After a while, they made me staff sergeant, ’cause music had a way of helping the boys forget where they were.”

Sharp tells the story of his life after the Air Force by decade and place: California, Albany, N.Y., Worcester, and, finally, Southbridge, where he lives with his wife, Sharon, a native of Connecticut.

“I’d say 75 percent of my business is return (business) now,” he said. “Oh, there’s big egos and wannabes, and there’s some local kids who are still in the thug phase of hip-hop and rap. I don’t encourage that. For me, the ideal thing is when a blues band or a rhythm and blues band comes through the door. That’s what I’m mostly tuned in for.”

Derick Cummings, a Springfield musician, has worked with Sharp as both a sound engineer and a musician. With Sharp on the knobs, Cummings recorded one album with his band, Stone Lily, and is planning another.

“I’ve known Jim since the late ’80s,” Cummings said, noting another project in which the two wrote and recorded music with an Iranian poet named Akbar Jafari.

“Jafari is an artist who came to America to be free and away from the tyranny of his home country,” Cummings said. “He was a singer and wanted to create an album of music dedicated to freedom in Iran. He hired Jim and myself to write and record the music. It was tricky because Akbar would just hum some melodies and the words were in another language in which the writing went from right to left. But it turned out all right.” The collaboration between Cummings, Sharp and Jafari can be found at www.AkbarJafari.com.

Next month, Cummings is returning to Southbridge with a new project called The Concoction to lay down some tracks.

While there haven’t been any Grammy nominations out of Sharp Recording Service, Sharp’s ear and gear have resulted in a richer musical landscape for south Central Massachusetts.

“If I find someone as passionate about music as I was,” he said, “if I find a young talent, money doesn’t matter. I’ll help them. I’ll do what I can to further their career.”