DRUM! Vol. 6 #6 September '97
The Disappearing Giant
                            Leedy began as a small mail-order business in Indianapolis, selling snare and bass drums, calfskin heads, stands and hardware.  As the business progressed, the company undertook the production of xylophones, vibraphones, timpani, cases, sound effect traps and anything else related to percussion.  Vaudeville and traveling musical variety shows were at the peak of their popularity, creating a demand for Musical instruments.  When silent motion pictures began in the 1920s, they created an even greater need for music and sound effects, and the Leedy Company, which had almost a ten-year lead over its next chief competitor, prospered the most.
By the end of the 1920s, the owner of the company, Ulysses Grant Leedy (U.G. for short) began to consider the future of his empire.  His large and successful business had a bright, talented, and energetic researchand-development staff and sales force.  A family-like atmosphere prevailed among many of his workers.  Loyalty was high and the quality of Leedy products was considered by most to be second to none.
Leed’s main competitor, the Ludwig Ludwig Company, continued to make successful products and began to shorten the Leedy's lead in the race for customers.  But all drum companies were beginning to face a loss of revenue brought about by the decline of musical variety and the advent of soud cinema.  Furthermore, U.G.'s health began to decline, and none of his children seemed up to taking over a large manufacturing juggernaut.
In 1929, U.G. sold Leedy to the Conn Corporation, an outfit that specialized in the production and sales of band instruments.  The Leedy drum division continued to thrive with the advent of many new product developments.  Many innovations in drum design were introduced, and as a result, drum sets were beginning to look like the drums we play today.
But that end was achieved when, in the mid '30s, the Slingerland Drum Company came out of nowhere and took the American market over with substantial assistance from its drum wunderkind Gene Krupa. Suddenly, within half a decade, Leedy drums and all other competitors seemed tragically unhip.
Leedy looked for its own pin-up personality.  Stellar names such as Chauncey Morehouse, Phil Patton, Erny Rudisill, and Frank Friselle graced Leedy advertisements with less than spectacular results.  Perhaps the greatest name associated with Leedy during the '30s and '40s was Sonny Greer, the flashy drummer for Duke Ellingtons orchestra.  Unfortunately, as a symptom of the era, we can imagine why Greer, an African-American, did not receive greater recognition and publicity.
Leedy carried on through the World War II years, and afterward emphasized its mallet percussion and drum corps divisions, while cutting back somewhat on the production of drum sets.  In 1950, Conn - which by this time owned both Leedy and Ludwig & Ludwig, but had been operating them as separate companies - decided to combine both lines and market them as one.
Slingerland and Krupa were still on top in terms of popularity and sales, but the Leedy-Ludwig Drum Company attempted a bold incursion into the drum-set market.  Unfortunately, it was a disaster.  The LeedyLudwig Knob Tension drums were a creative design that didn't translate well into reality.  Featuring a clunky internal tuning mechanism, the drum was despised universally. (For the full story on this tribute to American ingenuity, consult your July/August'95 issue of DRUM!)
In 1955, Conn gave up on the drum business and sold off the Leedy-Ludwig line to two eager buyers - William E Ludwig II and Bud Slingerland.  Members of the Ludwig family had been making drums for almost 20 years under the WEL. name, and they dearly wanted the legal right to use their old name and regain some of their old patents.  But in a somewhat inscrutable decision, Slingerland, under the direction of owner Bud Slingerland, purchased the name and patent rights to Leedy's products.
Although both companies had come together on this deal, Slingerland and WEL/Ludwig were considered arch rivals.  Other companies such as Rogers and Gretsch had made names for themselves, but were considered secondary to these two battling behemoths.  Still, Slingerland and Ludwig were in transition.  Drum-set sales had been declining for Slingerland.  A new generation of drummers was buying drums, and they thought the aging Gene Krupa was over the hill.
Bud Slingerland also wanted a cut of the school and band corps market, which the Ludwigs had dominated in past years.  So he decided to acquire Leedys patents for tympani and mallet instruments.  And keeping the Leedy name alive meant the Ludwigs would have to compete with two drum companies owned by Slingerland.
Instead, what Bud Slingerland got was antiquated technology, increased production and advertising costs, and ownership of a company that nobody cared about anymore.
It could be that Bud Slingerland realized the mistake he made very early on, because the Slingerland company did little to develop its new line.  In the remaining period of Leedys life - which lasted until approximately 1965 - the Leedy Company was virtually downsized out of existence.  The company that invented the vibraphone, and at one time sold over 30 varieties of mallet instruments, offered none in the '65 catalog.
The drum sets that Leedy offered in '65 were made entirely from Slingerland components, including shells, hoops, hardware, and finishes.  The only thing that distinguished them as Leedy drums was the use of the Leedy beavertail lugs and the Broadway strainer on several of the snare drum models.  The only real innovation introduced by Leedy during this period was a center mount snare-drum casing that looked like two beavertail lugs squashed together.  The drums were marked with a blue oval badge that looked like a rendition of a Slingerland badge.
L.A. studio veteran Shelly Marine was recruited as Leedys star endorser.  You might remember him for the tasty brush soloing on episodes of The Wild Wild West, among other things.  Though he owned The Marine Hole, an L.A. jazz club, Marine wasn't much of a draw outside of California.  Sadly, Leedy's other endorsers were far more obscure.
The most tragic aspect of Leedys demise is the way Slingerland allowed the once-great company to disappear slowly, as Slingeriand's inconsequential second line.  The parent company had a clear lack of interest in promoting the Leedy name.
Need proop The final catalog, number 70 in 1965, shows a picture of parade drums bearing a Leedy-Ludwig badge.  It is the identical photograph used in a LeedyLudwig catalog from a decade before.  Apparently, Slingerland couldn't be bothered to shoot new photographs.
And take a look at the photo above.  It came from a free promotional postcard that was offered by the company.  The caption on the back reads, "Ledy - tops in the field."
Ledy? 0 death, where is thy dignity?

DRUM! Vol.6 #5 August '97
The Speed King Pedal
                            It seems that every decade or so, a company declares that it has created a bass drum pedal that revolutionizes the function, quickness and balance of all previously slow and cumbersome predecessors.  In the '90s, the Axis pedal has earned the distinction of being state-of-theart.  Yet many companies such as Drum Workshop and Tama have held their own in the down-and-dirty winner-take-all pedal market.
The lineage of popular bass drum pedals almost reads like the "begat" section in the Bible. (Imagine Moses playing double-bass Tama Cobras!) So let's travel back in time to the very first pedal, patented in 1885 by George R. Olney.  Before this, at least three drummers had to be hired for most gigs: one for the snare drum, another to play cymbals and a third to strike the bass drum.  Olneys invention was a wooden overhead swing pedal mounted on the top hoop of the bass drum.  A rawhide thong attached the foot pedal to the beater ball.
It was the first evolutionary step in the right direction, but it wasn’t very useful.  Other bass  pedal designs followed into the 20th century, including the Frisco heel pedal and a Leedy overhead model that was mechanically complicated and not very efficient.  Then a drummer by the name of William F. Ludwig recognized the need for a practical bass pedal that could play ragtime tempos, and he began hand-carving prototypes out of wood.  In 1909, one of his prototypes turned into a production model, and an empire was born. He created a simple, functional, cast metal pedal that worked well enough for the time and could be disassembled and placed in your coat pocket.
Approximately 30 years later, due to a number of setbacks, Mr. Ludwig was faced with the prospect of having to start his company again.  One of the first new products that he marketed was the Twin Spring Speed King.  This pedal was slightly revamped in 1950 to become virtually the same Speed King pedal that continues to be sold by Ludwig today.  It has a
sealed double-post stand that houses the compression springs and the ball bearings in which the rocker shaft that holds the beater rotates.  It's an efficient design that has worked for 60 years, but it is not without some inherent problems.  The tension on the springs in the shafts is adjustable only by a screw at the bottom of the upright posts, and sometimes it just doesn't work very well. The other major problem is that air has a tendency to leak into the sealed compartment where the ball bearings and lubricant are located.  When this happens, the lubricant can dry out and the pedal either begins to squeak or becomes gunked up to the point where the pedal simply doesn't work.  Still, I remember salvaging my restaurant gig one evening by lubricating my Speed King Pedal with salad oil.
Camco originally produced only drum hardware in the 1950s and '60s, including bass drum pedals. (It wasn't until '61 that the company began to manufacture drums, but that's another story.) Camco's pedal design was unique.  Though it was based on a spring design, which already was common in its day, it utilized a kidney-shaped camshaft that increased the velocity of the beater shafts throw, and that was a revolutionary idea.
Throughout the '50s and '60s, Camco was subcontracted by the Gretsch Drum Company to produce the Gretsch Floating Action Pedal, which coupled all of the Camco pedal features with a strap drive.  These pedals were so successful that when Camco gained control of the George Way Drum Company in '61 and renamed it Camco, the identical floating action pedals continued to be made with the Camco stamp on the footboard.
Both the Gretsch and Camco pedals are very popular collector's items today.  When Camco was sold off to DW and Tama in '79, both companies continued to use the technology in its pedals that was pioneered by the original company.  Today Tama has profoundly changed their pedal designs, but in the vast array of DW pedals, one can still see vestiges of the original Camco design, even though the overall construction has been drastically improved.
Also - primarily in the '50s - most drum companies that developed a cocktail kit had to devise a pedal that would be able to beat the bottom head of an upright drum with an upstroke rather than the traditional side-stroke.  Some companies did this by merely bending the shaft of the pedal, while others removed the pedal's rocker arm and reversed it.
In the '70s and '80s, the Caroline pedal was manufactured in France by the Asba company.  These pedals achieved a cult status after it was discovered that such diverse players as J.R. Robinson and Mitch Mitchell were using and endorsed them.  Known for their smooth action, the pecws are no longer in production but are still sought after by some collectors.
During the '60s (some say the '50s, but I can't find evidence of that), the Ghost pedal was developed in the Midwest by a small manufacturer.  It had a bulky design that featured two 3"-diameter circular housings that each contained an inner coiled spring.  When the footboard was depressed, the spring contracted, throwing the crossbar with the beater shaft into the contact point of the head.  The Ghost pedal also achieved cult status for a while, especially among doublebass players such as Carmine Appice. (I remember seeing him using a set at a Cactus show.) Eventually, the Ludwig company purchased the manufacturing and marketing rights of the Ghost pedal and sold it successfully for several years.
Compared with other technologies, the evolution of the bass drum pedal is a rather humble tale.  Nonetheless, it's interesting that these various designs and improvements, false starts and epiphanies, agonized over by a long line of inventors whose histories span decades, all were dedicated to finding an answer to the same question: What's the best way to hit a bass drumhead with a beater?

DRUM! Vol.6 #4 June '97
Ludwig & Ludwig New Era Sensitive Snare Drums
                            During the 1920s, the United States experienced a period of economic growth, cultural expansion and rapid technological advancement.  The stock market was booming, and the middle-class was born people who had more leisure time and disposable income than their parents had.  Musical variety shows and theater had been popular forms of entertainment since the 1890s, but these diversions hadn't been available to all people, mainly due to financial and geographical considerations.
In the roaring '20s the invention of the radio and motion pictures brought the decadence and excitement of the modern world to some fairly remote locations.  Within the space of a decade, a huge entertainment industry sprang up in response to increasing national demand.
Radio brought music and drama to the masses, transmitting over the airwaves a glamorous fantasy of becoming a player in the new industry.  In every small town across America, old theaters were converted into modern movie houses, or new ones were built.  Since the movies of the '20s were silent, most movie houses employed musicians to provide accompaniment and sound effects for the film presentations.  Often, the theaters presented a bill that would feature a movie and some musical variety acts.  Soon, virtually every movie house in America had at least a piano player on the payroll, and the larger ones even employed small pit orchestras.  As a direct result, business for musical instrument manufacturers began to boom.
Since the 1890s, when Leedy - the largest major production drum company of the day - appeared, the drummer's role in popular music had undergone significant changes.  In the beginning, popular groups followed the precedent set by military bands and classical orchestras.  Three drummers had been employed: one to play bass drum, one to play snare drum and one to play cymbals.  But some clever drummers began to maximize profits and minimize space requirements by figuring out ever-more efficient ways for a single drummer to play all three percussion instruments at once.  This trend prompted the evolution of the modern drum set.
In Chicago, two brothers named Ludwig, both drummers, decided to supplement their income from gigs by starting a shop and selling drum equipment.  Initially, the brothers mostly sold Leedy drums and percussion, but soon began to market their own products.  The Ludwigs invented a compact, lightweight bass-drum pedal that operated reliably and a metal snare drum that utilized the most efficient throw-off then found on the market.  By the '20s, one of the Ludwig brothers had died, but the survivor, William E Ludwig, had turned the Ludwig & Ludwig drum company into Leedys chief competitor with its own line of innovative drum equipment.
Thanks to technological contributions made principally by the rival drum companies, the three separate drummers of the old pit bands had been downsized into one who played a trap set ("trap" is an contraction of "contraption").  Typically, a drummer played very specific parts that were written in a musical score.  Snare drum parts were based around the 26 rudiments.  Time keeping was performed by the bass drum playing either four to the bar, the occasional two to the bar or a waltz feel with snare-drum and cymbal accents.  Early prototypes of the hi-hat had just begun to appear.  The idea of playing time with ride cymbal patterns hadn't yet been developed.  No one made very extensive use of toms.  However, a professional drummer was expected to have a full arsenal of sound effect "traps" that included a variety of whistles, animal calls, bells, ratchets, slapsticks, triangles, wood blocks, toms, accent and Chinese cymbals and perhaps even mallet percussion or timpani.  These sound effects were used to enhance the realism of silent films, stage plays and radio programs. Ludwig & Ludwig catalogs from the '20s and the Ludwig Drummer, a magazine published by the company, featured page after page of new and amazing sound effects that were designed to help the player get, and keep, that big drumming job.  By 1926, Ludwig & Ludwig introduced the Super snare drum, which in every sense was a Ludwig & Ludwig Standard model, except that it featured the newly invented Super snare throw-off mechanism.  This allowed the most individually precise snare adjustments ever offered, enhancing the articulation of the drum, even at low volumes.  Ludwig Super snare drums were made of metal or solid maple, walnut or mahogany, and they continue to be widely sought after today, principally by contemporary studio and orchestral players and collectors.
Yet another new drum company, Slingerland, made its debut in 1926 and enjoyed the distinct advantage of having previously cashed in on the banjo and ukulele craze of the early'20s.  In response, Ludwig & Ludwig invested heavily into its own new line of stringed instruments, but the fad had virtually ended.  The misstep spelled a major financial setback for Ludwig & Ludwig.
But drumming itself was about to undergo a dramatic blow.  In late 1927 motion pictures with recorded soundtracks were introduced, and within several years, thousands of drummers were out of work.  The new "talkies" didn'tt require orchestral sound effects and musical accompaniment, and furthermore, the new technology caused attendance at musical theater, vaudeville and burlesque shows to drop off to nothing.
By 1929, there were hints that big changes were going to occur in live music and drumming, but nobody was quite sure what they would look like.  The two Ludwig Drummer magazines produced in 1929 offered tips on finding work and editorials favoring the sound quality of live music versus recorded music and also introduced the new line of Sensitive snare drums.
Sensitive snare drums had an additional set of wire snares inside the drum, directly underneath the top head, which increased the drums response, especially in pianissimo situations.  In its literature, Ludwig & Ludwig reasoned that the enhanced crispness of Sensitive drums offered a drummer a competitive advantage, since sound reproduction methods used in radio, phonograph and film recording were so poor.
Three models of Sensitive snare drums were produced.  The flagship was the Super Sensitive model.  These were 5" x 14", 6-1/2 x 14" and 6-1/2" x 15" drums that featured Ludwig & Ludwig's top-of-the line Super mechanism mounted externally across the bottom, and the new Sensitive mechanism mounted internally under the top.  It was available as a metal or wood drum in a variety of finishes.  These Sensitives were the only ones that Ludwig & Ludwig continued to manufacture into the 1930s.  The Standard Sensitive featured the economy Standard external throw-off along with the top Sensitive mechanism.  Neither the Standard Sensitive nor the Super Sensitive ever appeared in any catalog.  They were advertised only in the spring and fall 1929 issues of the Ludwig Drummer.
The drums in the photo are two examples of the New Era Sensitive model.  Each features a solid maple shell, one covered with Peacock pearl and the other with Avalon pearl.  They were also available with a mahogany finish or in metal (nickel over brass), but only in a 5" x 14" size.  The supposed advantage of these drums was that they featured two Sensitive snare units, both located on the inside of the shell: one set of snares was underneath the batter head and the other on top of the snare head.  Whenever a player broke the batter head, the drum could be flipped over and played on the other side, until it was possible to replace the damaged head.
Well, no one bought that story.  And William F. Ludwig evidently decided that the golden age of drum manufacturing had been decimated by decreasing profits brought about by "tames" and his own disastrous foray into the banjo business.  At some point during 1929, Mr. Ludwig sold the company to the Conn corporation (following the Leedy Co., which had also sold out to Conn) for a million dollars in Conn stock shares.  After the stock market crash of October 1929, Ludwig's shares in Conn were worth a fraction of their original value, prompting Mr. Ludwig to stay on with the company for a while as an advisor.  In one of its first moves streamline production, Conn decided to eliminate the Standard and New Era Sensitive models.  But that's a different story.
A new era had indeed begun for American drummers, though the next resurgence of interest in the drum set and drumming wouldn'tt happen until the end of the 1930s, when one particular drummer and one particular drum manufacturer utterly captured the public's imagination.  Do you know who they were?

Like Mullholland, Bowler, drummer with the band Giddy 'Up, caught vintage fever, becoming fascinated by the lore and history of his instrument.
"I thought I knew everything about drums, but it turns out I didn't know anything," he says.  "I took the next logical step and started going backwards. Vintage fever is a strange sort of thing.  People get turned on."

He and Mulholland met at vintage drum shows and decided to become partners in the mail order business, selling to buyers in The United States, Europe and Japan.  They opened A Drummer's Tradition last November.
While their main customers are hobbyists and drum collectors, their shop has become a magnet for Professionals.
- A wall in one of their drum rooms has been signed by Steve Smith of Journey, Kenny Dale Johnson of Chris Isaak's band, Mariah Carey's drummer, Gigi Gonoway, Bud E. Luv, David Lauser of Sammy Hagar's band and former Zazu Pitts drummer Billy Lee Lewis, who wrote under his name, "It's about time."
Brain, drummer for the rock band Primus, rented a 1929 Ludwig set from the store to play in a new music video.
In addition to selling drums and equipment, the store also offers lessons with former Van Morrison band drummer Tommy Dolinger.

Trap drums are collections of different drums and cymbals - often bass, snare, toms and sound effects held together by gleaming hardware.  They range in price from an entry-level beginner set for $199 to collector's kits that sell for many thousands of dollars.