Donn Bennett, as many of you will know, has long been a collector of celebrity drum sets and other gear. Now that he's sold his Bellevue shop and begun selling off his stuff, he has some of Buddy Rich's gear for sale currently on eBay and Reverb.
Buddy's daughter Cathy Rich saw Buddy's cymbals online for $30K and apparently got a hold of Donn recently and asked him to return them to the family, claiming they were stolen after Buddy passed.
Then, she got on Facebook and ranted about Donn and her interactions with him. Here's what she wrote:
"Several weeks ago I contacted Don Bennett who owned a music store in Washington state. He is selling a set of my father's cymbals that were stolen from us after he passed away. I tried to explain that the cymbals belong with my family, not being sold on Ebay for 30k, as he has been trying to do for quite some time. He pretended he didn't understand what I was saying..and I explained further. I was very nice and asked if after he was gone and vultures were selling off his property without permission, how he thought his family would feel? He left me a vm yesterday saying he was not going to give them back, and would continue to try to sell them.....I'm appealing to all of my fb friends to pass the word on this and NOT dignify this blatant disregard of me and my family and most of all Buddy's wishes! Thank you."
Unfortunately, Cathy's FB post is not public, so only her friends can comment on it or like comments in the thread. But Rudy shared it, that's how I heard about all this. The comment section is full of her facebook friends taking her word and her side, calling Donn a greedy scumbag, and oddly saying that God will help get the cymbals back. People are also going to the store's Yelp page and the trouble is spilling over onto Rudy, who now owns the store and has nothing to do with all this.
Now I very much doubt Donn would knowingly buy stolen gear. Cathy not only provided no evidence that the cymbals were stolen (on facebook, at any rate), but she didn't even provide any back story as to how or when they were stolen. She seems to have inherited her father's temper as well.
I don't know about you guys but I'm riveted. It's an interesting case and I'm very curious to see how it all plays out.
