For this article in NSMD, I thought I would write about another cool story that happened to me while hunting vintage drums down in the 90’s. It may sound like I am relaying old war stories or reliving glory days but so much has changed since I started looking for old drums and I find it much more difficult these days to stumble on to finds like I used to. Back in the mid 90’s I was having a fair amount of luck finding drums via the for sale ads in the newspaper, hitting the yard sales and looking through the Want Advertiser. For some reason my luck with auctions only happened the two times I talked about in my previous article. It’s hard to believe now but in those days, I was finding so many things that I actually got a little lazy when it came to following leads. My Grandmother was an avid yard sale junkie and I had her on the lookout for drums as well. I actually got a few great finds because of her and one such find was a 50’s WFL Porta Pak snare that cost me a whopping $15.00! There were definitely cool things to find but I was usually coming across a lot of Ludwig Acrolites. It amazes me now what people are paying for a vintage Acrolite as I would routinely find them for $50.00 or less and I actually stopped buying them as I didn’t want to be sitting on a pile of them. One particular Thursday evening I was looking through the local newspaper and I stumbled upon an ad that just said “Slingerland Drums; $400”. Because the ad was so vague, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to call the number. With no pictures or any kind of description in the ad, these could have been anything.
I called the number right after seeing the ad and a person with a gruff voice answered the phone. He was not all that great with descriptions but said that he bought the set new in 1973. I asked him what the color was and he had said they looked like a kind of purple-ish metal flake. He said it was hard to tell as the set was dirty and needed a good cleaning. After realizing that the set was at least 45 minutes away, I kind of passed, thanked him and told him I would think about it. My laziness was starting to take over but that next day, I kept thinking about them. Though I had heard of Slingerland making a purple sparkle, I was not a big Slingerland guy and the chances of this being that seemed nearly impossible to me. Still I had this nagging feeling about the set and called back that Saturday. Surprisingly no one else had called and I was given the address to where I could look at the drums. I made sure to bring cash with me in case I was looking at something great and off I went. As I drove the 45 minute drive, it felt like I was getting further and further away from any civilization. Whoever this person was lived pretty far out in the middle of nowhere. As I approached the house, it was kind of a run-down farmhouse and there were chickens and other livestock roaming about the yard. A big guy with a long white beard and a pair of overalls came out to greet me. His hands were permanently blackened as he explained that most of his life was spent as a brick layer. He actually reminded me of Uncle Jessie from the Dukes of Hazzard and explained that because of his line of work, his hand were messed up and he had not played drums in years.
The house was dirty inside and there was an old staircase that lead to a basement. The guy said that he had the drums down there and we should go have a look. I had to brush cobwebs away from my face as we made our way down the wooden stairs but once we got to the bottom, lots of pieces of a drum set we strewn about the floor. I realized there were two bass drums, three toms, two floor toms and a chrome snare. The 18” floor tom served more like a trash can as it held a lot of hoops and various parts to the set. The whole set was filthy and covered with a layer of dust so when I grabbed the 13” tom and wiped my finger across the front panel, I was shocked to see this beautiful purple sparkle finish gleaming back at me. Looking more carefully I realized that the whole set consisted of two 22” bass drums, 12”,13”,14” mounted toms, 16”,18” floor toms, a 5x14 chrome Krupa snare and all the Slingerland stands and pedals. I was blown away and couldn’t get to my wallet fast enough. As I was bringing drums out to my car the guy casually mentioned for me to not forget the cymbals. Cymbals?? He had a full set of Zildjian cymbals from the 70’s leaning against the wall near the furnace towards the back of the room. There was a 22” rivet ride, 20” crash, 18” crash and 14” hi-hats. I made sure I grabbed everything including every last tension rod and washer that I could find and then made the trek home. Everything was so dirty that I had to vacuum all the drums before I would even bring them into the house. Fortunately nothing had been water damaged or dilled for extra holes. I also had almost all of the parts as they were all piled up in that 18” floor tom.
Now came the arduous task of cleaning the set properly. I knew how the lazy side of me worked and just knew that if I cleaned on of the bass drums, the 12” tom and the 16” floor tom I would have enough to fool with and the other drums would remain dirty. My thought was that if I started with the 18” floor tom, the 14” tom, the left side bass drum and eventually the other pieces, I would get the whole set finished. I would say it took the better part of a month as I would routinely clean up one drum over the course of a night while I watched TV. The end result was totally worth it as the drums looked and sounded fantastic! The only things I really had to buy were new drum heads as the old ones were trashed. The set still had the original Slingerland logo heads so that was also a big bonus. I fooled around with the set for a while and after a few attempts at selling the set at the New England drum show, I finally decided to drive them out to Chicago for the Chicago drum show. I was able to sell the set there and had a fun trip as I was able to stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along the way. I also ended up keeping the cymbals and I still have them. It was a real lesson back then to follow up on all of my leads as you may never know what is out there. It’s much harder to find deals like this today because it’s very easy to list things for sale online and easy to include pictures. I never would have had the time to “think about them” if this were today as those drums would have been scooped up very quickly. My only lasting regret is that I didn’t take better pictures.