Indeed.
I have his autobiography Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew. Not the most modest of men.
He inherited the mantle of "greatest rock drummer" from (and was helped in his career by) Earl Palmer who was from New Orleans and is on, say, all the Fats Domino, Little Richard, Lloyd Price hits and invented rock drumming - but Palmer was black, suffered accordingly in the deep south and was less self-aggrandising than Blaine.
His (more modest) biography is called Backbeat.