Sandy Nelson has been played over 10 times on NTS, first on 14 May 2015. Sandy Nelson's music has been featured on 13 episodes.

Sandy Nelson's song "Teen Beat" rose to #4 on the charts in 1959. Subsequently he signed with the Imperial label and pounded out two more Top 40 hits, "Let There Be Drums", which went to #3 in Britain, and "Drums Are My Beat". All three were instrumentals (a feat seldom, if ever, repeated).

Sander L Nelson was born on 1 December 1938 in Santa Monica, California. He attended high school with Jan Berry, Dean Torrence (who together became Jan and Dean), and Kim Fowley. After gaining respect as a session drummer, he played on such well-known songs as "To Know Him Is To Love Him" (Phil Spector's Teddy Bears, 1958), "Alley-Oop" (The Hollywood Argyles, 1960), "A Thousand Stars" (Kathy Young and the Innocents, 1960) and more.

Nelson continued to record into the early 1970s.