I apologize up front if this is the wrong area to post this in but it seemed the most appropriate. A while back, I decided to write a book that would identify American rope tension drum makers; it is my hope that I will be able to establish time lines and include pictures of drums and label variations. As part of my research, I was granted complete access to the collection of drums at the Company of Fifers and Drummers Museum in Ivoryton Connecticut, this access including my own set of keys to the building. As a thank you, I offered to catalog the entire collection digitally and help bring them into the 21st century.
I have become friends with Ellis Mirsky, owner of the website Fielddrums.com and Ropedrums.com which is a blog site the helps to promote and preserve the art of field drumming. Over the past several years he has run countless blogs on many different drums, some just cool and others of tremendous historic importance. When Ellis found out what I was doing he offered to let me guest write a blog about what I was doing at the museum since having a running journal of cataloging and researching a collection like this is, in his words "Unprecedented".
While my thread here on VDF "Current Projects in the Works" I wanted to make this a separate thread because it will focus on the work I have been doing at the museum and on the book. I have recently been appointed as the assistant archivist/curator for the museum and will be maintaining and preserving the collection for future generations. I am going to repost my blog entries and pictures here as well as other photos and information, hopefully for your enjoyment. The following is the 1st blog that I had posted back in August of last year.
"For those of you that don’t know me, I am Matt Alling, owner of Connecticut Pro Percussion and Charter Oak Drums. I sell new and vintage drum gear and specialize in restorations. I am one of very few people in the country that still hand make calfskin drum heads and I also make some custom drum related products out of leather. As a third generation drummer I have had sticks in my hands since the age of two and tinkering with drums for almost as long. As an active member of the fife and drum community I am a member of the Ancient Mariners fife and drum corps in Guilford and routinely service and repair a lot of drums from people throughout the entire fife and drum world.
Over the last several years of working on vintage and historic drums it became clear to me that while there is a lot of information available to the general public on modern drum companies like Ludwig, Slingerland, Gretsch etc. the amount of information available on rope tension drum makers is both scarce and spread out over many different sources. Most of these sources don’t include pictures and the information is generally limited to drum makers that had military contracts or just limited period. These sources will regularly reference makers such as Ent, C.F. Soistman, Horstman, Zimmerman, Brown, Lyon & Healy and a host of others that use addresses on labels for dating drums. Unfortunately, many modern drum makers that produced rope tension drums such as Cooperman, Sanford “Gus” Moeller, Buck Soistman, Eames, Atwell and many others are not covered in any of these books. Because of this I decided that I am going to embark on a long journey to photograph as many drums and labels as I can and put all of this information in one source.
In preparation for this undertaking I have received permission from a few museums and several private collectors to photograph their collections of drums and labels. The project started in earnest last week when I started photographing the collection of more than 150 drums currently housed at the Company of Fifers and Drummers museum in Ivoryton Connecticut. After my project is over I will be staying on as caretaker of the collection and will maintain it and repair drums as needed and help to try and fill in some of the information holes on each drum. The first drum that raised such question was one that I emailed Ellis Mursky and Brian Hill about last week and Ellis was kind enough to post the pictures and my email here on his site to see if anyone might have some useful information. It was a few days later that Elis asked me if I had considered writing about what I was doing at the museum and was kind enough to offer to post my blog on his site. What I will be doing during this process is to highlight some of the drums and unique finds in the museum as well as the process of cataloguing all of the information and pictures. I will start with a few drums and pictures today as well as some information that I have found on them and I hope that everyone reading this will enjoy taking this journey with me. Ellis, thank you for the idea and opportunity.
The first two drums at the museum are appropriately catalogued by the Company as drums #1 & #2 in their collection. The drums have a slightly more modern look than anything else in the collection, sticking out in the crowd so to speak with their black gloss Slingerland shells, the snare drum have a 16”x16” shell and the bass drum a 32”x14” monster. The museum notes said that the drums were donated by Jim Flynn in 1976 and were played by the Morris County Militia fife and drum corps. The only problem with this is that the drums have black and silver badges on them with a serial number that would indicate they were built in late 1976 or 1977. Additionally, the solid gloss black color was not first catalogued by Slingerland until 1977. So, if these drums were donated in 1976 then they should have looked brand new but the condition of the drums was a stark contrast to that reasoning. These drums have quite a bit of wear on them with the ears and ropes showing considerable wear and a few small repairs to the bass drum shell. And so with this, my quest for information took off and the journey started.
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I posted some pictures of these drums and a few others on Facebook in a page for Fife and Drum friends and the response to some of the pictures and information was almost immediate, receiving numerous replies and private messages within the first 90 minutes of the pictures being posted. Within two hours I had received replies from several members of the Morris County Militia Alumni and was directed to their alumni page and then I was sent a private message by Jim Flynn Jr., son of the Jim Flynn that founded the corps. Jim told me that his father founded the corps in 1969 in their basement and that he and his father were both founding members and Jim Jr. was the only founding member to play with the corps from its inception to their last performance at the Westbrook fife and drum muster in 1981. I was told that the drums on display at the museum were the corps third and final set of drum and were made with Slingerland floor tom shells that were bought off the shelf with no holes drilled into them. The corps bought hoops and made their own ears and fitted them with Ludwig throw offs and butt ends and after the last performance, the drums were given to a lot of the drummers that helped to make them and played them for the last 5 years of their existence.
(Reb Blanchard Photo)
After the corps completed building their drums they were first used in their 1976 season. Reb Blanchard was the young man that carried the 32” bass drum and can be seen in the above picture circa 1981. The drum was used for the corps competition piece “New World Symphony” for its size and resonance and should be noted that the drum is wide open and free of any muffling. The Morris County Militia racked up numerous championships during their 12 years of existence including New Jersey State Champions for 9 consecutive years from 1972-1981, Northeast champions from 1975-1978 and national Champions in 1977 & 1978, the only two years they competed for national titles. So, for anyone keeping score, these drums were used to win and impressive 11 championships, quite a pedigree for some unassuming modern looking drums in a room full of much older looking counterparts.
The other drum that I want to discuss is a small drum, 14” in diameter by 13.75” tall (shell height), has hooks similar to what you would find on Lyon & Healy, with wheels on them and Civil War style ears. A twelve point star surrounded by 12 five point stars and bordered by tacks on both side. A single five point star to the left of the larger design in surrounded by 10 tacks and another row of tacks to the left of that at the seam on the drum.
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