The Invention of the Drum Set and its Use in Early Jazz

M. Amado J. Ohland May 1994

The invention of the drum set, or contraption, is an event concealed in the pre-history of Jazz. The best place to look for clues about its origin is in the older books on the history of Jazz. In these older books, the prehistory of Jazz is closer to recent memory. Nonetheless, information on band leaders, drummers, and their instruments can generally be found in the first chapters only. By the second or third chapters books discuss the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and King Oliver. The drum set had been invented by the time these bands were established. Similarly, just how the drum set was used in early Jazz is difficult to discover. Clues are hidden in the pre-history of Jazz recordings, and can only be inferred from testimony of people who were there. The Instrument There are almost as many drum set configurations as there are drummers. A "standard" drum set of today includes a bass drum operated by a pedal, a snare drum on a stand, a HiHat cymbal unit, two tom-toms mounted on top of the bass drum, a floor tom, and two cymbals of different timbres, one "crash" and one "ride." Most professionals depart from this standard. Back-to-basics minimalists prefer to play on one bass drum, one snare, and one cymbal, while some drummers surround themselves with two bass drums and a pile of percussion instruments ranging from cowbells to timpani to electronic drum pads. The instruments in the set vary according to the type of music it is used for, but a set invariably contains a bass drum with pedal, a snare, and some type of cymbal, and usually contains some other instruments for "color." in the parishes around New Orleans, people began dancing to the new beat of jazz and the blues. Military drumming, rudimental drumming, was too rigid to power these new rhythms. In their search for an answer to this problem, drummers began ransacking the percussive inventory. They invented a new kind of drumming and, almost incidentally, a new instrument. This hybrid was known as a "contraption," later shortened to "traps." Within twenty years virtuosos of the "traps" emerged, people like New Orleans jazz great Warren "Baby" Dodds... By the time the jazz age caught hold in the twenties, drum makers like the Ludwigs were already marketing formalized versions of the contraptions that drummers like Dodds had put together. ---Mickey Hart, Drumming on the Edge of Magic Accounts like Hart's about the early days of the drum set are as common as they are inaccurate, but the spirit of his account is right. The events Hart refers to occurred as much as ten years before his account, and involved musicians a generation older than Dodds. The Ludwig family was selling drum sets as early as the 1910s. The first use of the drum set in Jazz occurred between 1887 and 1907. At that time, two men were active in New Orleans who later became legends, King Buddy Bolden and Papa Jack Laine. Facts about either person are scarce. There is some disagreement among jazz historians over which of these musicians was playing "jazz" first. This work does not propose to settle that debate, but an understanding of what was happening in New Orleans at the turn of the century is necessary for this study. One of the most popular forms of entertainment was the Brass Band. A marching band would parade for most major events, and quite a few minor ones. There might be a parade every week during most seasons, and continuously during Mardi Gras season. One such marching band was the Reliance Brass Band, a white band lead by Papa Jack Laine. (Segregation was enforced in New Orleans, so there were no racially integrated bands.) The Reliance Band eventually became so popular that Laine was able to manage several bands under the name Reliance and book them for simultaneous dates throughout the city (Brunn, pp. 18-19). It was common for a Brass Band, when it had marched to its destination, to set up on a stage or pavilion and play some music for dancing. The marching band pieces in the band's repertoire were updated for these occasions by borrowing from ragtime- the band pieces were "ragged." Laine led his first band, and was "ragging" marching band pieces for dances, when he was fourteen years old in 1887 (Dexter, p.7).

References show that in 1887 marching bands typically had two drummers, one on bass and one on snare. Laine himself is listed as one of two drummers is printed advertisements from the time (Jazzmen, p. 43). Ten years later, dance bands were invariably using one drummer. One of Laine's later bands, Jack Laine's Ragtime Band, lists Laine as the sole drummer. To find out when and why this change took place is to discover when the drum set was developed. A contemporary of Laine's was a man named John Robichaux. Robichaux was a Creole black of French-Haitian descent. Before the 1894 Black Code Amendment a Creole black in New Orleans was, in fact and by law, a higher class citizen than a full-blooded, or "uptown," Negro. Robichaux grew up with most of the advantages white families enjoyed, including a formal music education. Around 1891, when he was 34 years old, he moved to New Orleans and got a job as a bass drummer for the Excelsior Cornet Band (Marquis, p.79). The Excelsior Band was of some renown at the time, on par with Laine's Reliance organization. By 1893, Robichaux had organized his own dance band and was using Edward "Dee Dee" Chandler on drums. Robichaux, like Laine, became more of a manager for the John Robichaux Orchestra. In addition to music arranging and business details, he led the band and played violin. An 1896 photograph of his orchestra shows Chandler seated next to a bass drum that appears to have an overhanging (or swinging) beater attached to the rim of the type that is operated by a foot pedal. On the floor next to the bass drum a snare drum is sitting on its side, apparently not in use. Though some sources credit Chandler with the invention of the first bass pedal (Marquis p.78), this seems unlikely. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, the "first bass-drum pedal, a foot pedal designed to play the drum with a beater, was invented before 1850 by Cornelius Ward for use with a lithophone." However, the photograph of Chandler with Robichaux is the earliest documentation of the use of the bass drum pedal in Jazz. A pedal on a bass drum would only be necessary if the drummer wished to keep his hands free for other percussion instruments.

When the 1894 Black Code Amendment was passed, hardship befell Robichaux's Orchestra. Once one of the most successful dance bands in New Orleans, suddenly the orchestra was forced to compete with the Negro bands from Uptown. It took a while for Robichaux to again achieve the kind of success he was accustomed to, during which time some of his band members had to moonlight with the Onward Brass Band (Marquis, p.80). However, by 1902 he was Buddy Bolden's chief competitor. The story of the Onward Brass Band contains more clues about early drums. The band was something of a New Orleans Brass Band super-group, its membership consisting, at one time or another, of many of the most prominent musicians of the time. Manuel Perez, another Creole black, was leader of the band by 1905. He was slightly younger than Robichaux, approximately the same age as the legendary Buddy Bolden. A 1905 photograph of the Onward Brass Band shows two drummers, Bebe Matthews carrying a snare and Dandy Lewis seated next to a bass drum. The bass drum appears to have a number of small percussion instruments affixed to its top side, possibly woodblocks, cowbells, or a cymbal. In the photograph, Lewis is shown holding a bass drum beater in his left hand. Trumpet player King Buddy Bolden is cited by all the old timers as the first person to play the music that was later named Jazz. Born in 1877, he spent his youth in New Orleans listening to the music from the Baptist church and marching along in the "second line." "Second line" is the term given to the bunch of children, school-aged or older, that would follow after a parade. By the time Bolden started the first of his musical groups in 1895, he had already been exposed to the not-quite-jazz sounds of "ragtime" bands like Laine's and Creole dance bands like Robichaux's. By the time his career ended in 1907 he was one of the most popular and hardest working musicians in New Orleans. He played something subtly different from his contemporaries and, inasmuch as he did, can be said to have "invented" Jazz.

The Invention of the Drum Set and its Use in Early Jazz, 2

However, it makes more sense to understand the beginnings of Jazz in much the same way we must understand the invention of the drum set - in terms of an evolution. It becomes apparent that there were several styles of music in 1890's New Orleans that were quite similar to the Jazz that was about to emerge. Uptown black marching bands played upbeat tunes after the funeral of a departed loved one. White marching bands played a precursor of ragtime Dixieland music at picnics and private society parties. Musically trained Creole musicians lent their style to the music of their dance orchestras. So the difference between these musics and Bolden's "jazz" was little more than a difference in style or flavor. In fact, because musical tastes vary, nearly as many people sought out Bolden's competitors on a weekend night as they did Bolden. In a similar manner, and at about the same time, responsibility for the percussion shifted from two people to one person. The marching band sat down on stage, and the "snare and bass drums of the marching band acquired appurtenances when they no longer had to be played and carried at the same time; tom-toms, wood blocks, and triangles grew on them like Spanish moss." (Condon, pp. 26-27) This is another oversimplification, but an illustrative one. Perhaps one of the drummers could not stay for the picnic after the parade, or the host of a party didn't want to pay a manager like Laine for two drummers; for whatever reason, a lone person was called upon to do the percussion. We might conjecture that, between 1890 and 1896, a New Orleans drummer said to himself, "if I could only get a hold of one of those pedals for my bass drum, I could put our snare on a chair next to me and play both parts, and still be able to play my woodblocks and cowbells some." That is precisely what the came to happen, and with the invention by Ulysses Leedy of an adjustable snare drum stand in 1898, it became easier and more logical to do so. From this point forward, the story of the drum set is one of improvements, additions, deletions, and refinements. An early, significant refinement came in 1909, when the Ludwig drum company patented the first all-metal bass drum pedal. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, this pedal "was so successful that it served as a model for nearly all subsequent pedals," presumably one of the reasons the company was successful in the twenties. A later addition to the instrument is in almost universal use today: that of the HiHat cymbal. The drummer Walter Johnson, associated with the Fletcher Henderson organization, is credited with its invention. He shared his idea, of two cymbals operated by a foot pedal, with friend and designer Doe Mathers, and together they made a HiHat in the early 1930's. Use of the Drum Set Playing [a drum set] stimulated a new set of feelings. Mostly it wasn't martial; instead of marching all the time, you could swing, skip, shuffle, even rock. In fact, the drum set was invented precisely to accommodate these new rhythmic requirements. ---Mickey Hart, Drumming on the Edge of Magic The evolution of the use of the set is most easily understood in terms of which piece is the main beat-keeper. In 1930s Big Band swing, for example, the drummer played a continuous string of "swinging" eighth notes. The other instruments, including the bass drum, were used to accent important notes in the soloist's playing. Rock and Roll has used, almost from its birth, the snare to mark the off beats, beats two and four of a fourbeat measure. In many styles of music drummers now use the HiHat to softly beat out all four beats in a measure. There were no recordings of Jazz before 1917, and the full drum set does not appear on recordings until much later. As a result, we can only reconstruct what has come to be known as the fundamental New Orleans style. The main references for such a reconstruction are interviews with, and written testimony of, the people who were in the New Orleans music scene between 1890 and 1910. According to reports, in 1900 residents of New Orleans wanted their music either "hot" (fast and "dirty") or "blue" (slow and "lowdown"). Louis Cottrell, Sr. played for both the Excelsior and Onward Brass Bands. Contemporaries who heard him said he was "the best that man could roll a drum." (Marquis, p. 84) An obvious conclusion to draw is that the drum roll was still an important element of the rhythmic feel. Contrast this with what was said of the leader of the Reliance Band: "Jack [Laine] was all over the drums" (Jazzmen, p.44) This seems to indicate that Laine concentrated less on snare rolls and more on playing different timbres in combination. The Olympia was a New Orleans orchestra started by another influential early New Orleans musician, Freddie Keppard. "The drummer of the Olympia was "Ratty" John Vean the first to introduce the four-beat bass drum part, the bass drum being played by his right foot Meanwhile, both hands performed incredible feats of virtuosity on the head of the snare drum, the rim, and various traps." (Jazzmen, p.19) The four beat bass drum part was borrowed directly from the military brass band drumming tradition, and probably not as revolutionary as the author indicates.

The Invention of the Drum Set and its Use in Early Jazz, 3

The historic 1917 recording of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band is the first known recording of a drummer, Tony Sbarbaro. However, as late as the early twenties, a drummer's contribution to a recording was negligible. Paul Whiteman wrote that paying each of his orchestra players equally "wasn't very fair. For instance, in making a record, the drummer, who might strike his cymbal once in an entire number, got the same" as any other band member (Whiteman, p.59). However there was a later recording of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and in that session, on "the recording of Lazy Daddy, Sbarbaro's incessant, buoyant rhythm [was] laying down four beats in a bar" (Jazzmen, p.50)

A picture is emerging that is confirmed by another historical recording of an interview with Baby Dodds, in which he demonstrated some drum solos. In a section of the recording, he played the kind of beat used in early New Orleans drumming. He played quarter note beats on the bass drum and, for two different beats, played rolls that lasted one-half and three-quarters of a four beat measure, respectively. Dodds also demonstrated the "kick," where a cymbal is hit and quickly damped. The kick is one of the few authentic New Orleans devices that can be heard on early recordings. It was used to accent important musical phrases and to end a section of a piece.

So, despite some authors claims that there was an overnight shift in playing style when the drum set was invented, early drumming was highly derivative of its closest relative, military rudimental drumming. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, the"first drum-set players performed parts originally written for two or three drummers," but since the parts were relatively sparse, a drummer who had developed some limb independence could play them simultaneously. However, this so-called "fundamental New Orleans" style of drumming had died out by the 1930's, replaced by a style derivative of the Chicago tradition. The brief popularity of the fundamental New Orleans style accounts for the inaccuracies in later reports about it. This short-lived style represents the first played on the newly-invented drum set.

The Invention of the Drum Set and its Use in Early Jazz, 4

Bibliography

Berendt, Joachim E. The Jazz Book. Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992.

Brunn, Harry O. The Story of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960.

Condon, Eddie. We Called It Music. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1947.

Dexter, Jr., Dave. The Jazz Story. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964.

Hart, Mickey with Jay Stevens. Drumming at the Edge of Magic. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1990.

Kernfeld, Barry, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. London: Macmillan Press Limited, 1988.

Marquis, Donald M. In Search of Buddy Bolden. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.

Ramsey, Jr., Frederic and Charles Edward Smith. Jazzmen. New York: Limelight editions, 1985.

Tirro, Frank. Jazz: A History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Whiteman, Paul and Mary Margaret McBride. Jazz. New York: J. H. Sears & Company, 1926.

The Invention of the Drum Set and its Use in Early Jazz