FTV: Drummers Past

 

     After reading Mark Volman’s biography (Happy Forever … as chronicled in two parts – FTV: The Turtles 3-4-26 and Flo & Eddie 4-1-26 (it wasn’t a typical autobiography as 90 percent of it was contributed by his colleagues, friends, and family)), I was inspired to take a ‘wayback machine’ trip to examine my encounters with drummers.  I began my drumming career in Marquette and brought it with me when I came to Ontonagon in 1975.  The focus of this FTV is not going to be on famous drummers, but those whom I got to know in the local scene(s).  Parts of this tale have been told here and there, but this is my first attempt to stitch together the tale of fellow drummers who influenced me over the many years.  It has been many years I have been  privileged to call myself a drummer (as in ‘musician’, not ‘salesman’). but it wasn’t a solo journey by any means.

     My first interest in ‘drumming’ started in the living room of our home on Norway Avenue in Marquette.  We moved into that house when I was about four years old and it was my dad who sparked my earliest time keeping adventures.  Dad would sit on the couch and play his harmonica and, perhaps looking for something to burn off some of my endless energy, suggested I take the empty wastebasket from the kitchen closet and ‘play along’ with him.  This happened off and on until I hit third grade in 1962.  My older brother Ron was already in high school and I can trace the true beginnings of what I refer to as my ‘drum crazies’ to seeing the HS marching band.  We had walked the five blocks up to Magnetic Street to watch the homecoming parade and the sound of the drumline beating out the cadence mesmerized me.

     My piano lessons (taken from our neighbor Mrs. Bowers and paid for by my dad building them a fireplace for their basement) were soon displaced by my desire to play the drums.  I wasn’t a great piano student – after I learned a song, it was easier for me to play it from memory than to follow the music.  This could account for me not being great at reading sheet music.   Knowing the different notes and time signatures, however, helped me fly through the ‘music test’ they had us take at the end of fourth grade.  It was an aptitude test to see where we might fall in terms of learning an instrument to play in the Jr High and HS bands.  On the line where the form asked what instrument we might be interested in, you can guess what I wrote in big capital letters:  DRUMS!

     When fifth grade began, there were three of us taking drum lessons at Whitman Elementary; Suzie Anderson, John Thompson, and myself.  We were told to visit MacDonald’s Music Store and pick up a pair of 1B drumsticks and the first Thompson Music Book series for drums (no relation to John).  On our lesson days, we would march with sticks and books in hand down to the nurse’s office in the hall by the gym.  There we would meet with the HS band director, Mr. Joe Patterson.  We did our lessons on a formica top table, not on a drum, but as long as I was learning to play, that was fine with me.  My folks got me a red sparkle plastic snare drum and stand for Christmas that year.  It was a good place to start but little did they know I had already set my sights a little higher.

     In the fall of 1963, we visited the Harvest Festival just down the street from our house at the National Guard Armory.  They had a four piece combo set up in the garage area with two guitars, a bass, and drums.  The kit the drummer was playing was either gold or champagne sparkle (my memory is a little vague here) but suddenly my brain went, “Boom!  I want to play a drum set!”

For the next two years, I practiced the rudiments from my John Thompson Music book, watched drummers on TV (even on Lawrence Welk’s weekly show), and collected Ludwig drum catalogs from the music store.  The catalogs were more fun to browse through than a Christmas catalog.

     I joined the JH band under the direction of Mr. Jim Smeberg in the fall of 1965 and was introduced to another set of drummers.  The section leader was an eighth grader named Mike Burke and he was a font of information about how to survive playing in the band.  We looked up to him and when he said, “Don’t worry if all the rolls have the right number of strokes in them.  The important thing is coming in and ending at the right spot.”  Yes, the first important lesson I learned was how to fake it so even if what we played was not rudimentarily correct, it ‘sounded right’.  The section also included Suzie from Whitman (I do not recall John carrying on), a special ed student (he was old enough to shave but loved to play the bass drum), and another seventh grader named Wayne Maki.  There may have been a couple more but the ones who didn’t stick with band for the long haul have disappeared in the mists of my memory.

     In April of my seventh grade year, dad surprised me when he came home from work one afternoon.  He said, “Boerner Music Store has a drum set on sale.  Let’s go look at it.  If we buy it, they will deliver it and give you one free drum lesson.”  I am not often tongue tied but in this instance, my dad did all the talking as my head swirled with excitement.  As promised, a guy with slicked back 1950’s hair delivered the silver sparkle Ludwig drum kit to our house and showed me how to set it up.  “You play the drums in band, kid?” he asked.  When I said I did, he said, “Well, that won’t hurt you.  Look, to get your feet and arms working together, start like this.”  He demonstrated how to play four beats on the bass drum with my right foot while alternating beats on the hi-hat cymbals with my left.  He then added half notes with the right hand on the ride cymbal and left hand snare drum beats on the ‘two’ and ‘four’ count.  Once I showed him I could do it, he said, “Well, kid, practice, practice, practice,” and then he left.  I started playing along with records and a short time later, the folks got a new stereo with a remote speaker in the basement so I could make noise down there instead of in my bedroom.  That summer, I also took drum lessons with Mr. Patterson once a week at the high school band room.  He was a little disappointed that I wasn’t going to be in his band for another year, but he said he was looking forward to me joining up after eighth grade.

    When eighth grade started, Suzie, Wayne and I were still in the JH band.  The upcoming seventh graders included Sara McKie and Jim Soderberg (again, these are the two who stayed with it through high school and the names of any others are lost to me).  Jim came out of the drum corp tradition and was a much better rudimentary drummer than yours truly.  Naturally, I  shared with him the ‘Mike’ tricks on playing the music so it sounded right.  We enjoyed ourselves and got picked to play in a one off pep band Mr. Smeberg organized for the annual faculty vs eighth grade basketball game held at the end of the regular season.  The pep band area was a small balcony in the Graveraet gym accessible by a locked door from the second floor hall.  It was only one performance, but I began to realize that being in band was even more fun than I had thought it would be when I first joined up.  Before I knew it, I was off to high school and new drum adventures.

     In July of 1967, I got a letter reminding me that marching band practice would start the first week of August.  When we showed up, I was surprised because that first week, it was only the drummers.  In addition to Suzie and Wayne , our freshman class included Tim Vandenburg, and Maggie Hilton.  There were two seniors in the drum section – Tim’s older brother Steve (an avowed Star Trek freak (as was Tim)), and a converted clarinet player named Mike Gustafson (not Mike B.).  As Mike B. did in the Jr High band, Mike G. took us under his wing and showed me the ropes.  Like Mike B., Mike G. was a wizard at making parts sound good whether they were ‘played right’ or not.  When pep band started during basketball season, he gave me a primer on how to make bass drum, two snares, and one ride cymbal (on a stand that looked to be from sometime in the 1940s) drive the band.  Pep band favorites included a healthy dose of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass songs.  He would take me along when he stepped out of the back door of the band room to have a smoke and share bits of wisdom like, “I bet Man of LaMancha wins for Best Film of the Year.”     

      We spent the first week marching up and down the parking lot playing the drum cadence that had been written by Mr Patterson.  The parade drums we carried were heavy and had a metal leg brace that put a permanent bruise the size of a softball on my left thigh.  When the rest of the band reported, we ran through some music inside and then went outside to march without instruments (save the drums).  Mr. P told the other 100 members to ‘pay attention to the drum line.  They know how to march and it is your job to look as good as they do’.  A couple of more days like this were followed by two weeks of marching and playing.  Football game halftime shows were just us playing in block formation on the field.  The band marched on and off the field to our cadence and the band was required to stay together in the stands until we played the fight song at the end of the third quarter.  After that, we could relax, get some popcorn and enjoy the game until we got bused from Memorial Field back to the high school.

     Sophomore year began much like the summer before only now Mr. P informed me that I was the section leader.  When Jim and Sara came in as freshman, they were joined by another new face named Eric Stordahl.  Marching band, the homecoming parade, pep band, and our first concerts were great fun.  It was my turn to instruct Jim on the finer points of pep band and we became what I still refer to as ‘the dynamic drum duo’.  All was well in my drum world until late spring.  When Bishop Baraga Catholic High School won the State Class D basketball championship in the final year the school was open, we were asked to march in a victory parade to welcome them back home.  We started at the corner of Fair Avenue and Third Street.  Just before we stepped off, Mr. Paterson handed me his whistle and said, “I can’t go with the band.  Go a block, blow the whistle, do the roll off and the band will play.  When that song is done, go another block and do the same until you get to the Graveraet school.”

     This parade took us down Third Street hill to Washington Street, one block over to Front Street, and then back up the big hill toward the JH.  I was smart enough to not blow the whistle going down and then up the big hill, but I thought they were going to kill me when I blew the whistle as we turned the corner onto Washington.  The band played, but between the tall buildings in that block, it was like playing in an echo chamber.  When we stopped at Graveraet, Mr. P got his whistle back and thanked me for taking over for him.  A couple of months later, Mr Patterson was hospitalized and passed away which was a clue as to why he didn’t march with us that day.  I could not bring myself to attend the funeral but that is another story.

     It was a shock to all of us and rumors about who would be the next director were rampant.  The vocal teacher, Mr. Bill Saari, stepped in and did double duty for the rest of the year.  I remember Mr Saari doing elementary music when I was at Whitman School and later found out he had gotten his start at the Greenland Township School in Mass City.  Mr. Saari announced he would hold open sectionals so he could get a better feel for who the strong players were.   Having ascended to the exalted position of ‘section leader’ that year, I was challenged for the position by Maggie.  I had never had a challenge before.  Bill held them a couple of days a week during band.  Being challenged in front of the whole band saw nerves shake the confidence of a few of the players put on the hot seat.

     We were given a couple of sheets of music to practice.  The third element in the challenge was sight reading where we were given a new piece of music to play without practice.  Maggie had taken private drum lessons and she was also, rudimentarily, a good drummer.  We did equally well on the two pieces we had practiced.  Having learned how to fake my way through music from two masters, the sight reading part was a breeze.  I felt bad for Maggie as sight reading was not her strong point and in the end, I entered my Junior year still listed as section leader.  In reality, the first chair duties were shared between the ‘dynamic drum duo’.

     Mr. Saari was hired as the full time band director and never required us to have a sectional tryout again.  He brought in a drum instructor from Northern to ‘help tighten up our drum section’ for the marching band.  I am not sure what he expected from a bunch of high school kids, but the cadence he showed us was pretty much impossible to play, even for a couple of good fakers like Jim and I.  Bill let us go back to using our old ‘Mr. P’ cadence.  I wrote a new one for the next summer and fall (partly based on parts of Ron Bushy’s drum solo in Inna Gadda Da Vida) which we used for parades until I graduated.   For the remainder of my high school career, sharing the section leadership worked just fine;  the ‘dynamic drum duo’ ran a taut ship.

     It was a bit of a shock when Maggie didn’t rejoin band the next year.  We added some young faces in Tom Lyons, Dave Lawrence and Kerry Lauscher.  There may have been one more but the yearbook went cheap on us and didn’t use a closeup of the band (which they repeated for my senior yearbook as well).  The long distance shot of us in concert formation in the gym showed the principle people remaining from tenth grade but some of the young kids do not show up very clearly.  The band underwent a few transitions that year:  New uniforms, a new director who wanted to jazz up our football halftime shows, and new marching drums with spring loaded leg rests and straps.  After two years of bruised thighs, it was a relief to not get battered while marching.  Mr Saari had grand plans and we worked all that year to prepare for a trip to march in two Cherry Festival parades in Traverse City the next summer (plus the Marquette Fourth of July parade).

     One thing did change during my last two years.  When Maggie was still in the band, she got mad at me one day and said something along the lines of, “Oh, all you ever do is play the snare drum and make everybody else play the other stuff.”  I believe she had told Mr. Saari something similar back when she challenged me for first chair.  There were a couple of times after that when he broadly hinted that perhaps it was holding back the younger players.  I had nothing to prove and my internal dialog went something like this:  “You know, there are a lot of other percussion parts and we have more drummers than we know what to do with, so why not branch out?”  When we got new music, I would find a part that looked interesting to play and I grabbed it.  My music reading skills were still not great so I avoided things like the chimes and marimba, but there wasn’t a bass drum, cymbal, wood block, or triangle part I wouldn’t tackle.

     Mr. Saari and I had a few points of disagreement over time (mostly driven by my lack of understanding of how difficult it is to run a band program).  We were doing a challenging piece for a band festival that required three tympany.  We only had two and Tim, our resident tymp player, practiced getting the three drum effect using the tuning pedals on his two tympany.  Tim was absent one day and I was told to move over and play his part.  I failed miserably because I had not spent any time learning the part Tim had worked on for so long.  I was humbled in front of the whole band for not being able to play it.  A later conversation made me wonder if Mr. Saari felt bad for taking me to task for not being able to perform this difficult part cold (which would have amounted to a miracle considering how much time it took Tim to master it).

     Later, Mr. S had to specifically ask me to play the first snare part on a couple of more challenging numbers.  Afterward, he asked me privately, “What are you up to?  How come you are making me ask you to play certain things?”  I explained how Maggie’s comments the year before had made me re-evaluate what a section leader should actually do.  I was simply giving others space to get their turn and enjoying myself exploring other percussion parts.  He said, “I see.  I have no problem with that as long as you recognize when the younger kids are struggling and step up without me having to ask you.  That would be better.”  He didn’t go so far as to apologize for throwing me under the bus in front of the whole band, but from then on, we seemed to understand each other.  He did tell me I missed out on the Outstanding Senior award because I missed one basketball game pep band .  When reminded that I had told him about a band job with The Twig that night, he said he had forgotten he excused my absence. Trumpeter Tim Wiegle was a worthy recipient so it worked out just fine.  Otherwise, the year was free of any other ‘new director drama’ moments we may have had the year before.  

     Senior year was fun and we again had a couple of new players to squeeze into the lineup.  After marching in the summer of 1970, we did a couple of great football halftime shows Mr. Saari had put together.  When I graduated, there were two interesting notes in my yearbook from two longtime section members.  Around a photo of the drum section rehearsing, Sara wrote, “Wow – they must have caught you in one of your good moods.  I didn’t realize how honored I was to be in a photo with you,” (which I took as good natured ribbing).  There was a grain of truth to what she said – we did have a lot of fun but I also took what we did in the percussion section seriously.  My dynamic drum duo partner Jim just said, “We are going to miss you next year!”

     In Part Two of this FTV, we will get into the drummers I encountered outside of the school music program.

 

Top Piece Video:  From the Ed Sullivan Show in 1960 – Gene Krupa performs his iconic Sing, Sing, Sing .  Although this was still six years before I would get my own drum kit, there are a couple of takeaways here – 1) He plays Slingerland drums, not Ludwig (my kit), 2) when I started to play, everyone kept calling me ‘Gene Krupa’, 3) my favorite drums sticks for years were the Gene Krupa model, and 4) I never had the hand speed to play like Krupa or Buddy Rich – but for my money, I liked Krupa’s playing better.  Me?  I stuck to being a humble time keeper and not a flash soloist!