It's about Movements not hot shotsA bit blurry but here's another one of the same piece (first link) but shows TW's classic fluid work over the toms which brought identity to Mr. Williams' mark as a genius craftsman of his instrument. Incredible precision, power, and dynamics ever utilized by any drummer I've heard. Tony was about pushing concept uniquely applied to the kit.
To play dotted heads, in my experience with it, there is fair amount of physical effort to pull the sound out of these heads. Although you can play low but better sounding if the snare was off, maintaining a tom sound on the snare as you will note in the video. But in most instances they were meant to be played hard if you was to produce anything reasonable projecting out of it. Or I could put this way; to play dots successfully you would have to be well developed in skill and physically able to apply technique without shying away. Dots did not have the rebound we have now with recent developments on head construction. As far as durability factor?..they were difficult to break and to break one was a gesture that you may have been pissed off and had a bad day
Question pose; If dotted heads are so out of range with good sounding heads why then did it sound so good when hearing Tony play them? I think the obvious is Tony himself.
And the other part is that it had to do with a quality of sound produced that was outside of the norm of what a drum was expected to sound like in a traditional jazz environment. Again, we need to recall that Tony was about deviating from the common mold to pioneer into experimenting new ways of expressing himself intentional with the motive of being respectful to his traditional ties. His credibility as an accomplished musician was that he could do this without any hesitations or concerns of what anybody thought or disliked. His well-earned leadership granted him to dictate how a kit would (will) sound in any traditional jazz situation he encountered. Mr. Williams was not merely known as pinnacle superior musicianship here, but a moulder to the direction of where jazz drumming was to journey if one so dared to go that trail. In the youth and genius of Tony, jazz was about to aggravate the familiar as it rocks the shackles of paradigm for change. But this was jazz. Tony was simply "redefining" it's identity of being a revolutionary movement of it's time and culture which aligns itself to being it's core statement that we are indeed...truly profoundly free.
Closing;But anyway, please do take note of Tony's work on the toms - and you get to hear the totality of the musical piece in all of it's compositional glory. And please, let's remind ourselves that I'm not talking about a drum contest consisting of cocky twerps promoting cutting-edge developments in drum heads here, but rather highly respected and well earned
movements of creative ingenuity that could be timeless lessons for today...if only it was hearkened.
Out,
Rac
https://youtu.be/fTUBecbl7Gs 
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