My Playing

I started playing drums at the age of nine in the Chicagoland area. My life progressed into the music world as a young drummer and I took private lessons from two very influential teachers. My first teacher was Joe Varhula who taught me from grade school through high school. Jake Jerger taught me in my college years. I was accomplished in all aspects of percussion. I performed recitals as well as entering many different drum clinics and percussion evaluation contests.

I played a variety of styles and started teaching at the age of 16 and continued for 10 years in the Illinois suburban area. I played with numerous concert bands, symphonies and was a steady drummer in the Polynesian drum circuit.

My Collection

I have a collection that consists of 4 complete sets of vintage drums, a Musser Marimba, Premier vibes, conga drums, toys, bongos, magazines, catalogs, parts, 20 or so snare drums, and hardware. I also own a vast drum book collection that includes every percussion instrument, ensembles and charts of various jazz arrangements. I also collect cds, tapes and records of early jazz drummers. I used to go to the old NAMM shows from which I've collected all kinds of stickers, promotional items and just a hodgepodge of percussion collectibles. (My basement is full!)

This Web Site

About 4 years ago my collecting was becoming a bigger part of my life and I would like a drum that I saw on Ebay so I would go to the search engines and try to find more information about it. I wanted to make sure the drum had the correct hardware and see what year it was from by the drum badge. I was finding it rather difficult and the majority of the info was scattered. I thought a more centralized resource would be very handy for myself and other collectors that buy and sell drums online.

I slowly started putting this web site together and was having so much fun building the web site I could not wait to add more drum related memorabilia. The site was originally going to be called The Vintage Drum Guide