Hi All, first time long time...

I got this set from a family friend for Christmas in C. 1977. He was an attorney in Brooklyn and was approached by singer Barbara Belle (of "A Sunday Kind of Love" fame) who had found herself in some legal trouble. Part of her issue was financial and for the work that he did (Arthur Munisteri ESQ.) for her pro-bono, she gave him this drum set and a piano from, I believe, the Blue Note in NYC. His son was a piano player, so he got the piano, Arthur knew that I was a fledgling 12 year old drummer, and gave the set to my parents to give to me.

About 15 years ago when I was having some financial issues myself, I put it on ebay to sell. I ultimately found another solution to my financial problem and didn’t go through with the sale. I did, however, meet some very interesting people through the “questions” format on the site.

After a number of questions about authenticity, and the fact that: “Buddy never played with that style of badge on the bass drum…” a fellow directed me to The Kraft Music Hall Sounds of the Sixties program from January of 1969 where he said he saw a badge identical to this one. This was before youtube, so I went to the Museum of Broadcasting in Beverly Hills (I was living in LA at the time) pulled the show, and took digital pictures of the screen to show the nay-sayers that he did use this badge and given it’s “rarity” this was in fact, THAT drum set. This all aligned also with the time that Barbara was part of Buddy’s entourage.

Through ebay also, a drum tech to Gene Krupa contacted me. We actually had a couple of phone conversations and he pointed me to a couple of things which made him believe that the set was authentic. One was the fact that the shells are clear on the inside, the way Buddy would have requested them and not with the brown wash that Slingerland used at this time, the other was the change in location of the bass drum mounted cymbal holders, along with the height of the throne and no mufflers. Another interesting detail is that there is no serial badge or badge hole on the 9" x 13" ride tom, another characteristic I have noted on other BR kits. In any event, he put me in touch with Kathy Rich. Initially, she was happy to talk to me… well, I guess I wouldn’t say “happy”, but she offered to put the set on BuddyRich.com to sell. We had another conversation about it, and on the third conversation she went cold and asked me not to call her again. I really didn’t know why, but by that time my financial problem was solved, and I put them back in the cases where they have been for the last 15 years until yesterday. Mr. Krupa’s tech asked me about cymbals, it came with hi-hats and a heavy crash but my parents told me they were thrown out in a house clean up in the 80’s. He told me that was unfortunate because Zildjian would have monogramed the cymbals just below their logo. This was a detail I unfortunately didn’t catch as a teenager.

Anyway, that's the deal. They are going to be up for sale again either through ebay or by private broker. We are just trying to work out if there is any meaningful provenance that we can put to them other than

the story and obvious clues.

I have LOTS of pictures as I know this will likely open lots of questions.

Enjoy the pics:

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