If any musician has earned bragging rights, it’s Bernard “Pretty” Purdie.

The session drummer, bandleader and inventor of the Purdie Shuffle — his signature beat, heard on records by everyone from Aretha Franklin to Steely Dan — has played on more than 4,000 records since the early ’60s. He’s worked with at least 2,200 different artists.

And while he was quick to mention both during a recent 40-minute-plus interview with GO! Magazine, he also had some advice for young musicians: Check your ego.

“As a musician, ego is something that you need, but you must learn how to control it,” Purdie said from his home in Monroe, New Jersey, about three weeks before his two-night, three-show stand that kicks off the seventh annual Jazz at the Oxford series Oct. 21 and 22. “… Everybody’s gonna tell you how good you are when you’re doing something for them, but you must learn how to control that ego so you can do better for the next person, and the next and the next and the next.”

Sometimes that’s a hard lesson to learn.

“The first time that I learned it, I was 12, when a young man I had never seen and never heard of came in and played my solo better than me,” Purdie said. “And then he turned around and said, ‘Now, that was your solo,’ what he did — then he did it his way, and it was better than I could possibly have done. Now that was the biggest one.”

This humbleness extends to Purdie’s live performances as a bandleader. He’ll take requests at his Oxford dates.

“I’ll find out some of the songs that the people might want to hear because I ask,” he said. “We always have one of those kind of things, especially when it’s right up close.”

This is the second Jazz at the Oxford series that Portland saxophonist Patrick Lamb curated; he took over the series last year after founder Marshall Glickman departed.

The five acts this year — including The Brubeck Brothers Quartet (Feb. 10 and 11), vocal duo Tuck & Patti (Nov. 18 and 19) and avant-jazz group The Bad Plus (Jan 13 and 14) — are all new to the series.

“The standard that we’re trying to bring to the series is just, number one, the quality of the acts. We don’t bring anybody that has played here before, so every season is new,” Lamb said.

Three artists in the series, including Purdie, will offer a free workshop on the Saturday they perform at the hotel (Oct. 22, Feb. 11 and March 18).

“For me, personally, I know that I started in these beginning band programs, and a lot of my compatriots and people that got into music started with the music workshops and programs,” Lamb said.

This year the series has competition from Glickman, who is spearheading the Mt. Bachelor Riverhouse Jazz series at the Riverhouse on the Deschutes hotel. But Lamb said he isn’t concerned, as the Oxford series is well established in town.

“The shows, some of them are almost sold out, so it’s just not even something that we’re (thinking about),” Lamb said. “I think he’s (Glickman) gonna have more of the difficulty because I think our brand has been obviously successful, and been here for seven years. Like I said, we’re just gonna focus on … bringing in great music.”

Purdie, the self-proclaimed “world’s most recorded drummer,” got his first session work soon after moving from his native Maryland to New York City in 1961. He played on the re-recording of R&B duo Mickey & Sylvia’s 1956 hit “Love is Strange” and was thrilled when Mickey Baker and Sylvia Vanderpool told him he “played it even better than the original.”

“That just excited me even more so,” Purdie said. “And I did it on a Sunday afternoon, from 12 to 4, and they paid me $80. I was rich! You couldn’t tell me — I’ve only been in New York a week, and I hit the big time.”

Once artists caught on to the Purdie Shuffle — a technique that uses triplets against a half-time backbeat, and a key innovation for funk music — he became one of the most sought-after session drummers in New York City. At his height he was playing 15 to 20 recording sessions per week, he said.

“Yeah, it was rock ’n’ roll, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was Latin,” Purdie said. “You could put (the Purdie Shuffle) in anything you wanted, but you had to control it, and that control is what I had and nobody else had it, because they didn’t know what the hell it was.”

Over the years, Purdie played on records by The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, B.B. King, Bob Marley, James Brown and more. One of his longest gigs was with Aretha Franklin: He worked with her on and off for nearly two decades, including as her musical director from 1970 to 1975.

“Playing with her was the biggest joy, and just as much on the recordings because there was nobody more humble when we did a recording than Aretha Franklin,” Purdie said. “Now being out on the road, that’s a whole different ball game. She was Miss Diva. Hey, she deserved it. Nobody did what she did, and you’d follow and do whatever she wanted. Here’s somebody who could sing over the bar line — she could sing four bars in front of you and end up where you are.”