<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After reading Mark Volman\u2019s biography (<\/span>Happy Forever \u2026<\/span><\/i> as chronicled in two parts – FTV: <\/span>The Turtles 3-4-26 <\/span><\/i>and<\/span> Flo & Eddie 4-1-26 <\/span><\/i>(it wasn\u2019t a typical autobiography as 90 percent of it was contributed by his colleagues, friends, and family)), I was inspired to take a \u2018wayback machine\u2019 trip to examine my encounters with drummers.\u00a0 I began my drumming career in Marquette and brought it with me when I came to Ontonagon in 1975.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It has been many years I have been\u00a0 privileged to call myself a drummer (as in \u2018musician\u2019, not \u2018salesman\u2019). but it wasn\u2019t a solo journey by any means.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My first interest in \u2018drumming\u2019 started in the living room of our home on Norway Avenue in Marquette.\u00a0 We moved into that house when I was about four years old and it was my dad who sparked my earliest time keeping adventures.\u00a0 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 \u2018play along\u2019 with him.\u00a0 This happened off and on until I hit third grade in 1962.\u00a0 My older brother Ron was already in high school and I can trace the true beginnings of what I refer to as my \u2018drum crazies\u2019 to seeing the HS marching band.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My 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.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t a great piano student – after I learned a song, it was easier for me to play it from memory than to follow the music.\u00a0 This could account for me not being great at reading sheet music. \u00a0 Knowing the different notes and time signatures, however, helped me fly through the \u2018music test\u2019 they had us take at the end of fourth grade.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 On the line where the form asked what instrument we might be interested in, you can guess what I wrote in big capital letters:\u00a0 DRUMS!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When fifth grade began, there were three of us taking drum lessons at Whitman Elementary; Suzie Anderson, John Thompson, and myself.\u00a0 We were told to visit MacDonald\u2019s Music Store and pick up a pair of 1B drumsticks and the first Thompson Music Book series for drums (no relation to John).\u00a0 On our lesson days, we would march with sticks and books in hand down to the nurse\u2019s office in the hall by the gym.\u00a0 There we would meet with the HS band director, Mr. Joe Patterson.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 My folks got me a red sparkle plastic snare drum and stand for Christmas that year.\u00a0 It was a good place to start but little did they know I had already set my sights a little higher.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the fall of 1963, we visited the Harvest Festival just down the street from our house at the National Guard Armory.\u00a0 They had a four piece combo set up in the garage area with two guitars, a bass, and drums.\u00a0 The kit the drummer was playing was either gold or champagne sparkle (my memory is a little vague here) but suddenly my brain went, \u201cBoom!\u00a0 I want to play a drum set!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n For the next two years, I practiced the rudiments from my John Thompson Music book, watched drummers on TV (even on Lawrence Welk\u2019s weekly show), and collected Ludwig drum catalogs from the music store.\u00a0 The catalogs were more fun to browse through than a Christmas catalog.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I joined the JH band under the direction of Mr. Jim Smeberg in the fall of 1965 and was introduced to another set of drummers.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We looked up to him and when he said, \u201cDon\u2019t worry if all the rolls have the right number of strokes in them.\u00a0 The important thing is coming in and ending at the right spot.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, the first important lesson I learned was how to fake it so even if what we played was not rudimentarily correct, it \u2018sounded right\u2019.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There may have been a couple more but the ones who didn\u2019t stick with band for the long haul have disappeared in the mists of my memory.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In April of my seventh grade year, dad surprised me when he came home from work one afternoon.\u00a0 He said, \u201cBoerner Music Store has a drum set on sale.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go look at it.\u00a0 If we buy it, they will deliver it and give you one free drum lesson.\u201d\u00a0 I am not often tongue tied but in this instance, my dad did all the talking as my head swirled with excitement.\u00a0 As promised, a guy with slicked back 1950\u2019s hair delivered the silver sparkle Ludwig drum kit to our house and showed me how to set it up.\u00a0 \u201cYou play the drums in band, kid?\u201d he asked.\u00a0 When I said I did, he said, \u201cWell, that won\u2019t hurt you.\u00a0 Look, to get your feet and arms working together, start like this.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He then added half notes with the right hand on the ride cymbal and left hand snare drum beats on the \u2018two\u2019 and \u2018four\u2019 count.\u00a0 Once I showed him I could do it, he said, \u201cWell, kid, practice, practice, practice,\u201d and then he left.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That summer, I also took drum lessons with Mr. Patterson once a week at the high school band room.\u00a0 He was a little disappointed that I wasn\u2019t going to be in his band for another year, but he said he was looking forward to me joining up after eighth grade.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When eighth grade started, Suzie, Wayne and I were still in the JH band.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 Jim came out of the drum corp tradition and was a much better rudimentary drummer than yours truly.\u00a0 Naturally, I\u00a0 shared with him the \u2018Mike\u2019 tricks on playing the music so it sounded right.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The pep band area was a small balcony in the Graveraet gym accessible by a locked door from the second floor hall.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Before I knew it, I was off to high school and new drum adventures.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In July of 1967, I got a letter reminding me that marching band practice would start the first week of August.\u00a0 When we showed up, I was surprised because that first week, it was only the drummers.\u00a0 In addition to Suzie and Wayne , our freshman class included Tim Vandenburg, and Maggie Hilton.\u00a0 There were two seniors in the drum section – Tim\u2019s older brother Steve (an avowed <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> freak (as was Tim)), and a converted clarinet player named Mike Gustafson (not Mike B.).\u00a0 As Mike B. did in the Jr High band, Mike G. took us under his wing and showed me the ropes.\u00a0 Like Mike B., Mike G. was a wizard at making parts sound good whether they were \u2018played right\u2019 or not.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Pep band favorites included a healthy dose of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass songs.\u00a0 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, \u201cI bet <\/span>Man of LaMancha<\/span><\/i> wins for Best Film of the Year.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We spent the first week marching up and down the parking lot playing the drum cadence that had been written by Mr Patterson.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 When the rest of the band reported, we ran through some music inside and then went outside to march without instruments (save the drums).\u00a0 Mr. P told the other 100 members to \u2018pay attention to the drum line.\u00a0 They know how to march and it is your job to look as good as they do\u2019.\u00a0 A couple of more days like this were followed by two weeks of marching and playing.\u00a0 Football game halftime shows were just us playing in block formation on the field.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After that, we could relax, get some popcorn and enjoy the game until we got bused from Memorial Field back to the high school.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sophomore year began much like the summer before only now Mr. P informed me that I was the section leader.\u00a0 When Jim and Sara came in as freshman, they were joined by another new face named Eric Stordahl.\u00a0 Marching band, the homecoming parade, pep band, and our first concerts were great fun.\u00a0 It was my turn to instruct Jim on the finer points of pep band and we became what I still refer to as \u2018the dynamic drum duo\u2019.\u00a0 All was well in my drum world until late spring.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We started at the corner of Fair Avenue and Third Street.\u00a0 Just before we stepped off, Mr. Paterson handed me his whistle and said, \u201cI can\u2019t go with the band.\u00a0 Go a block, blow the whistle, do the roll off and the band will play.\u00a0 When that song is done, go another block and do the same until you get to the Graveraet school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The band played, but between the tall buildings in that block, it was like playing in an echo chamber.\u00a0 When we stopped at Graveraet, Mr. P got his whistle back and thanked me for taking over for him.\u00a0 A couple of months later, Mr Patterson was hospitalized and passed away which was a clue as to why he didn\u2019t march with us that day.\u00a0 I could not bring myself to attend the funeral but that is another story.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was a shock to all of us and rumors about who would be the next director were rampant.\u00a0 The vocal teacher, Mr. Bill Saari, stepped in and did double duty for the rest of the year.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Mr. Saari announced he would hold open sectionals so he could get a better feel for who the strong players were. \u00a0 Having ascended to the exalted position of \u2018section leader\u2019 that year, I was challenged for the position by Maggie.\u00a0 I had never had a challenge before.\u00a0 Bill held them a couple of days a week during band.\u00a0 Being challenged in front of the whole band saw nerves shake the confidence of a few of the players put on the hot seat.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We were given a couple of sheets of music to practice.\u00a0 The third element in the challenge was sight reading where we were given a new piece of music to play without practice.\u00a0 Maggie had taken private drum lessons and she was also, rudimentarily, a good drummer.\u00a0 We did equally well on the two pieces we had practiced.\u00a0 Having learned how to fake my way through music from two masters, the sight reading part was a breeze.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In reality, the first chair duties were shared between the \u2018dynamic drum duo\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Saari was hired as the full time band director and never required us to have a sectional tryout again.\u00a0 He brought in a drum instructor from Northern to \u2018help tighten up our drum section\u2019 for the marching band.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Bill let us go back to using our old \u2018Mr. P\u2019 cadence.\u00a0 I wrote a new one for the next summer and fall (partly based on parts of Ron Bushy\u2019s drum solo in <\/span>Inna Gadda Da Vida<\/span><\/i>) which we used for parades until I graduated. \u00a0 For the remainder of my high school career, sharing the section leadership worked just fine;\u00a0 the \u2018dynamic drum duo\u2019 ran a taut ship.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was a bit of a shock when Maggie didn\u2019t rejoin band the next year.\u00a0 We added some young faces in Tom Lyons, Dave Lawrence and Kerry Lauscher.\u00a0 There may have been one more but the yearbook went cheap on us and didn\u2019t use a closeup of the band (which they repeated for my senior yearbook as well).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The band underwent a few transitions that year:\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After two years of bruised thighs, it was a relief to not get battered while marching.\u00a0 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).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One thing did change during my last two years.\u00a0 When Maggie was still in the band, she got mad at me one day and said something along the lines of, \u201cOh, all you ever do is play the snare drum and make everybody else play the other stuff.\u201d\u00a0 I believe she had told Mr. Saari something similar back when she challenged me for first chair.\u00a0 There were a couple of times after that when he broadly hinted that perhaps it was holding back the younger players.\u00a0 I had nothing to prove and my internal dialog went something like this:\u00a0 \u201cYou 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?\u201d\u00a0 When we got new music, I would find a part that looked interesting to play and I grabbed it.\u00a0 My music reading skills were still not great so I avoided things like the chimes and marimba, but there wasn\u2019t a bass drum, cymbal, wood block, or triangle part I wouldn\u2019t tackle.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Mr. 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).\u00a0 We were doing a challenging piece for a band festival that required three tympany.\u00a0 We only had two and Tim, our resident tymp player, practiced getting the three drum effect using the tuning pedals on his two tympany.\u00a0 Tim was absent one day and I was told to move over and play his part.\u00a0 I failed miserably because I had not spent any time learning the part Tim had worked on for so long.\u00a0 I was humbled in front of the whole band for not being able to play it.\u00a0 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).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Later, Mr. S had to specifically ask me to play the first snare part on a couple of more challenging numbers.\u00a0 Afterward, he asked me privately, \u201cWhat are you up to?\u00a0 How come you are making me ask you to play certain things?\u201d\u00a0 I explained how Maggie\u2019s comments the year before had made me re-evaluate what a section leader should actually do.\u00a0 I was simply giving others space to get their turn and enjoying myself exploring other percussion parts.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI see.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That would be better.\u201d\u00a0 He didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 He did tell me I missed out on the Outstanding Senior award because I missed one basketball game pep band .\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Otherwise, the year was free of any other \u2018new director drama\u2019 moments we may have had the year before.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Senior year was fun and we again had a couple of new players to squeeze into the lineup.\u00a0 After marching in the summer of 1970, we did a couple of great football halftime shows Mr. Saari had put together.\u00a0 When I graduated, there were two interesting notes in my yearbook from two longtime section members.\u00a0 Around a photo of the drum section rehearsing, Sara wrote, \u201cWow – they must have caught you in one of your good moods.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t realize how honored I was to be in a photo with you,\u201d (which I took as good natured ribbing).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 My dynamic drum duo partner Jim just said, \u201cWe are going to miss you next year!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In Part Two of this FTV, we will get into the drummers I encountered outside of the school music program.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 From the\u00a0Ed Sullivan Show<\/em> in 1960 – Gene Krupa performs his iconic\u00a0Sing, Sing, Sing .\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>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.\u00a0 Me?\u00a0 I stuck to being a humble time keeper and not a flash soloist!<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After reading Mark Volman\u2019s biography (Happy Forever \u2026 as chronicled in two parts – FTV: The Turtles 3-4-26 and Flo & Eddie 4-1-26 (it wasn\u2019t a typical autobiography as 90 percent of it was contributed by his colleagues, friends, and family)), I was inspired to take a \u2018wayback machine\u2019 trip to examine my encounters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3845"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3848,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions\/3848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}