 Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm very happy to have my old friend back Rob Cook. Rob, welcome back to the podcast. Of course, you are a distinguished guest who has been on many times, but you have so much information. You've written a lot of great books with Rebeats, your company, but today we're zeroing in on Frank's for the Memories, a history of the legendary Chicago drum shop and the story of Maury and Jan Lichon. So basically, we're talking about Frank's drum shop in Chicago, which is a famous iconic shop. Andy Dwyer, I'll give him a shout out right off the top in Liverpool ADC drums. People have probably heard me mention him on the podcast before. He was really pushing this. He said, you got to talk to Rob about this. This is a great topic. There's a lot to it. A big passion of yours. So why don't we just hop in and maybe before we even get to the history going back to the thirties and earlier, why should people be interested in Frank's drum shop? Why is it so special? Creating that's a general question about if you're unaware of your history, you're doing the repeated that kind of somewhat that there's a lot to be learned. And I think as we talk about drum shops and the ones that have come and gone, the ones that are coming up now and we have reason to be really optimistic there. We'll talk about that later. There's some great new shops coming up. But anyhow, I think really, this one sets the bar. I'll talk about two or three others. But man, back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, there were about four shops that really set the bar high for what a drum shop should and could be. And I would have to, if it was a horserace, give the nose's edge to Frank's in Chicago. And there's some cool, people always like to hear the names being dropped and who was involved, what drummers did what and so on. And then they're all involved with these four shops. There was a professional drum shop in New York, Frankie Belitos, Frank's drum shop in Chicago, Mose in Las Vegas, and Pearl Drum in Hollywood. And I can't line up all the dates. I'm not sure when the other three were going, but I have a pretty good hand line on the history of Frank's. I think it will be interesting and useful information. Because people have to put themselves in that time period where this isn't like the drum set had been around forever. It's still really early. And I feel like it would be almost, I don't want to say a novelty, but you'd talk to someone who wasn't a drummer and they'd go, oh, a drum store? Is there that much that they can sell? And the technology is so hugely different. I mean, the environment that these people were working in, you have to remember this, what there was no internet. There was no Google. There were mail order stores, but man, you had to do it the old fashion way, call them on the phone or write them a letter or go there with your options. Yeah. So that's pretty important. And even when I did, thanks for the memories, there were no scanners. There was no desktop publishing. There was no internet then. So it was all done with writing letters to people calling them on the phone. And the printing was done with the tractor feed, FSNN, yada yada. So things, our whole life around us has changed so much because of the technology. But it's something to keep in the back of your mind as we're talking about these shops and what changes they were going through in the early part of the 20th century. Yeah. So another angle of this is your documenting of this shop, which was really important and a big part of history. This book was released, Frank's for the Memories was released in 1993. So like you said, that's a part of this is the pulling all of these things together was much harder. So there's a lot of angles. All right, without further ado here, why don't you just take us back to the beginning and how did Frankstrom shop? What's the story with it? Well, it's called Frank's. And it's not a mistake that there's no apostrophe in Frank's on the cover of the book. That was one change that when Mori Lashan bought the shop that he made, he took out the apostrophe. He wanted to keep the name Frank's drum shop, but the apostrophe he felt designated ownership. So it was kind of a tip of the hat to Frank Galt, although it was Mori's drum shop, Frank's drum shop, but without the apostrophe. But the fact that it was named after was Frank Galt. And Frank Galt, interesting guy, interesting family, musical family. Frank Galt was actually born in 1890, he was born and born into a very musical family. Not too many years ago, I was contacted by a granddaughter of his who somehow came up with my name and wasn't familiar with the book. But she was trying to find out more about her grandfather, Frank Galt. And she sent me a couple photos I'd never seen before. And one is the Galt family band. And there are eight members, and they all appear to be adults or near adult age with a whole variety of instruments there. There was a flute in there, two or three strings and so on. And actually Frank Galt was a trombone player. She sent me another picture of Frank and his three brothers. One was George, I can't remember the other two names. But they had a brass quartet. Well, and they became professional musicians. George Galt was one of three partners that started the Dixie Music House. And Dixie Music House was a huge music emporium in Chicago that did all sorts of instruments. They had a percussion department, and they did strings and brass and so on. And incidentally, one of the partners was named Daryl, and it was a brother of Florence Daryl of the evolution trials fame. But George Galt was one of the three partners. And Frank Galt, his younger brother, started working at Dixie Music House at the age of 13 in 1903. And he worked there for a number of years, and well, actually until it burned down later, but he was kind of pushed into the percussion department. Like I said, he was a trombone player, that he ended up knowing much more about drums, drumming and percussion than most drummers will in a lifetime. Some of the pictures I have of him from the later days, I've got one where he's leaving a symbol at Zilgen, and other pictures of him with operas and Armand and so on. So he became the guy. But while working for Dixie Music House, he became familiar with drums and drumming and the drum department. They had a big fire in, let's see, 1937. And it destroyed the building altogether, and it left Frank without a job. And it only took him about a year to realize that he could keep on doing what he had been doing at Dixie, but on his own. So that's when he started Frank's Drum Shop in 1938, one year after the big Dixie Music House fire. So in 1938, I should also start mentioning Nori Lecham, because he's going to end up being the owner of Frank's Drum Shop. But he was a good customer at Frank's from the earliest days. We won't go all the way back to Nori's childhood and so on. That's all in the book with the pictures of Nori and his dad and so on. And Nori was also born into a very musical family. I don't know much about the formal musical instruction that either Frank Gullip or Mori Lecham had, but certainly by the time he was in his early teens, Nori was pretty much playing the part of a professional drummer. As a young man, he had a little combo that played the family gatherings and at church and so on. But by the time he was a teenager that had grown into gigging at clubs and so on. And actually by the mid-30s, he was pretty well established. He had an older brother, Henry Lecham, who was even a light-yearer or two ahead of Mori in a musical career. And he had a big band, a big society band, one of these things where 20, 30 members and they're only tuxedos and playing the society gigs and the big clubs, nightclubs and so on. So Mori had his wits about him in terms of the musical landscape. But so he was a good customer of Frank Gullip's and developed a love for Frank and the shop. And one of the themes that I'm going to probably keep coming back to is the strength of a personality on the business that they run. And it's pretty obvious when they don't match up and you get a guy that's got maybe some business acumen but doesn't really like people and figures it's a way to make a buck that just doesn't work out. But Frank Gullip and Mori Lecham were devoted to drummers and drumming. And the stories just keep coming through the decades. And one that comes to mind that typifies Frank and the way he treated people, when I went down to interview Mori about helping out with the book, he told me this story about when he was playing in big bands and was a customer at Frank's. And he went in there and gone through the cymbals and he said, you know how a cymbal sometimes just sounds right and turns down the lights and boom, it's there, that's your cymbal that talks to you. And I knew exactly what he was talking about. I haven't had that magical moment that often. But I knew what he meant. I mean, cymbals are so different. And there's so many different things you can do with them and so on. But I knew what he meant. He said, he was going through and this one cymbal just, I think it was an 18. It just lit up for him. And he says, I got to have this. He knew what it could do for him or what he could do with it. So he tried to stash it at the back of the pile. And the cymbals that Frank's, even in those days, were displayed the same way they were decades later when I met Mori at Frank's. And that's on edge, kind of leaning up against each other. So you have to kind of paw through them. And when you saw something you wanted to give a listen to, you pull it out. Like a tree where we have now where they're coming off. Yeah, they were just on edge and so Frank saw Mori hiding this one at the back of the stack and trying to tuck it down behind the other cymbals. And he asked him what was going on and Mori explained, this is going to be my cymbal someday. And I don't want somebody to get to it before I do. So I'm putting it back. And Frank insisted that he take the cymbal and Mori said he couldn't pay for it. He said, well, we'll work something out. And at one time he had a count receivable of, it was in the tens of thousands of dollars. And you couldn't just walk him off the street and say, I'd like to charge this. It was all personal favors for people, relationships and so on. And Mori never forgot that. And I've heard similar stories one, you know, decades later, one that comes to mind is Aldo Mazza. He was at Frank's drone shop and Mori insisted that he take the morimba living that he couldn't afford to buy. That's expensive. He paid him back over time. But that was just the way they did business. You know, they trusted each other, they wanted to help each other and so on. It just makes me think, too, of nowadays, I feel like there is a big, there's a big sense of community that people really like with drone shops of like, we're all in the community together. And I think you and I both love it. And most drummers do of like, you know, it's, we're all in this together. We are brothers and sisters in drumming. And it sounds like that's the same thing back then where it's this community. And I'm looking at pictures in the book throughout, you know, the 30s and 40s. And like I said earlier, there's parties. I mean, these guys are all having, you know, a great time. There's their huge smiles on their faces. The parties, though, the tables are completely full of like booze bottles, which probably helps with all the smiles and stuff. So it's obvious that they would enjoy being with each other. And that same sense of community that we have now was definitely a thing then. Yeah. Yeah. And the shops were a hangout. Particularly, I'm jumping back and forth in decades. But again, I get this image of the four big shops. And those were shops that if a buddy or a gene or somebody was going through town and they needed something, they weren't going to send the tour manager or a golfer or something, because it was a hang. They wanted to go and see their old friends. And back to the same kind of hang as like the drum shows up today, where somebody's not going to get impatient with you if you're asking about a certain thread size or a funny ring in a buzz or something somewhere around your kit, you know, they're not going to roll their eyes and walk away. They're actually interested in that. Yeah, totally. Problem is that's related to progression. So eventually, Frank retired and he negotiated. He, Mori knew that Frank was going out and Mori was ready to move out of the performing and the recording and the things and thought, you know, Frank's drum shop would be a golden opportunity. And they came close. He had two partners. He was negotiating with Frank with and they all arrived to sign the papers. And Frank was kind of concerned and he sat down with the three of them and said he wanted to make it clear that when they signed this contract with three of them, that these other two partners were accepting responsibility for Mori and vice versa. And the two guys got cold feet and Mori said that was like a red flag going up when they looked like they didn't quite get it. And the whole deal fell apart right then. But the next day, Frank called Mori and said come on in. I want to talk to you and worked out what had to be worked out for Mori to buy it. It was a time payment thing and I think it had to be 10,000 down and Mori only had 2,500 that he could really afford and he borrowed the other 75 from his family, his musician brothers and stuff. So it was important for Frank called that Mori by Frank's drum shop. So he did in it was a little over 20 years. It was 1959 when Mori bought Frank's drum shop, which that's that's a long time. I mean, that's a very that 20 years for a drum shop is like an eternity, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And Frank stayed in the picture. He's in a lot of later images of Frank's that on the back cover of the book, there's kind of a collage of pictures and one of them is the opening day at Frank's in 1938. And years later on the 30th anniversary of Frank's in 1968, tried to do a reproduction of that. They had a lot of the same people were there and and Frank was in that picture, I believe. They tried to all align in the same places that they were in that opening day picture. So 1959 is when Mori first became involved. It would be another year before they began the clinic program. They actually began having clinics there. There were a lot of impromptu clinics over the years, like I say, all these these people that that stopped in when they were in town either get something repair to just hang out or whatever. And quite often we start playing and if it was a gene or buddy, almost invariably, it was it was weird the way the news traveled. And all of a sudden, there'd be 3040 50 people there. And one of one of Jan LaShawn's favorite stories was that that happened with Buddy one time. They set up a kit and he was he was playing and the next thing you know, he was really playing and and Jan could see that he was soaking through his shirt and getting drenched with sweat and everything. And she had one of the the staff of Frank's run out to over nearby that they had an account with. And he comes back with with four shirts for Buddy. And and he gets done with his little gig, their impromptu gig. And he's telling himself off back in the office. And the guy comes in with the shirts. And Buddy says, what's this some chance that, well, if I could see you, we're going to need a shirt. And so, well, I only could wear one shirt. I only need one. Here's the top one. And don't you touch the other ones? So send them back. That's like a classic buddy. It's like even a nice act. It's kind of like just accept it, buddy. And just that's really nice, though. That's the community, though, of like, I feel like you can't like plan for it to be the hot spot for the top drummers to go. It has to kind of be naturally, you know, has to happen over a long time. You have to build the reputation. And I mean, really, for Gene and Buddy and these guys to come and hang there, that's pretty cool. That's that has to then add to the allure of the shop and make like everyday people want to come and buy symbols and sticks. Exactly. It was a fun place to hang out. I was from Michigan and didn't get done there that often. So whenever I was in town, I just wanted to go up and just kind of be there. Because, you know, I'd be there for 10 or 15 minutes and I remember one time the phone rang and somebody covered it up. So anybody know anything about Mel Tornay's snare drum? And somebody else yells out, yeah, I can't play it. Everybody breaks up that. And it was just always something happening, whether it was gear or people or whether the man. But when I first found out about it, it was actually about 1966. And a very similar experience to you, to what you'll hear from a lot of people about when you first go in there. Because I grew up in retail in my parents office supply store. We were in Chicago for a convention. And I had a leather drum kit on order from a furniture store in the little town I was from in Alabama. And it had already been six months. And this is 1966. I remember what was going on, you know, three shifts and selling all the drums they can make. And they were way behind. So and I was, you know, bargain the furniture store every week, where are my drums? And so we're walking down the street in Chicago on this office supply convention junket. And my dad says, wow, come check this out. And we're walking by this, this, it wasn't even a storefront, just kind of an opening. And they had one of these little registers with the little movable white letters on a black background with glass over it, like you see old doctor's offices and so on. And it said, thanks drum chef, you know, fourth floor. And my dad, knowing how into drums I was and everything, and he'd been putting up with an awful lot at home. Of course, as I practiced in the bass, and then my old beat up used kit, waiting to get my hands on my new leather. He said, come, let's go up and check it out. And I, I wasn't too excited. I thought if it's a music store, they're going to have a big display here, and it's going to be on the street. And, you know, it's going to look like a music store. Yeah, I don't want to go down that long hallway and get on to an elevator and go go up to Frank's drum shop and have it be a dusty old office. Yeah. My dad insisted he pretty much dragged me down the hall. Come on, let's check it out. We're going to town this long haul and get on the elevator and we tell the guy four door, it was always in attendance in the elevator. And generally, if he wasn't parked on the street level, he was parked at Frank's because that's where the action was. And always there with the door open, sitting on his stool in the elevator waiting, waiting for somebody. So you get up to four in the elevator door opens and it's a drum wonderland. I mean, all you see, I mean, 18 foot ceilings and sets are stacked to the two of the ceiling. Phil Stanger told me once that Mallory painted when they first moved into the fourth floor, they originally started on five. When they moved to four, he painted all the walls pink. And it was because he hated pink and he didn't want to see pink. And people knew they were supposed to have stuff stacked up to where you couldn't see the walls. Wow, to keep stock and keep the inventory. Yeah. Yeah. There was six inches of paint above the stack of drum heads, you know, somebody wasn't doing their job. They needed to get more stuff from the bedroom and stuff. And Mallory always talked about the kid who when the elevator door opened the 10 year old kid, he swallowed his gum and started choking. Because it would do that. I mean, there were literally hundreds of kids and all these Well, we did a lot of rentals for movies, not only backline and so on, but so that is big towels type drums and African drums. And then you get in the back where the sound effects were and they had chimes and everything. But you could just stand there and look around for the longest time and entertain yourself. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. And you bring up a great point though of like very early on in your book. I was kind of scrolling through looking for it. It's right. It's the first image is the front of it, at least before, I believe in the 60s, this is what it was. There's no markings. I mean, it's like, you walk by this every day. The little letters, exactly like a doctor or an office building where they, you know, you stick the letters on. How on earth would you know? I mean, it's a destination business where you kind of have to know it's there. I mean, basically on that, you're not going to like stumble into the fourth floor of a building in the back. I mean, that's to the fact that they were so successful. Unless you knew something was going on up there and you knew what you were doing, because I certainly didn't want to go up there. But the neat thing for me being in the right place at the right time was being with my dad there, because he was more of a people person and that being when we walked in, I was I was pretty shy kid, but in short order, my dad knew Mori, introduced himself and brought Mori over and introduced him to me. And this was the guy that owned this shop. I was, I was just well and over with. And, and he was really nice. He took, took me under his wing and took me back and showed me all the teaching studios at that time. And went down the hall from the retail area back to the rentals and parents' workshop. There were a bunch of teaching studios and the names on the doors were Roy Knapp, Bobby Christian, Bob Tillis, Phil Stanger, and Jim Ross Sr. And a lot of people aren't going to be familiar with those names, but, but every single one of them was, was already an icon in the profession community. Sure. Sometimes we'll do something on Roy Knapp. I don't think that time to get too deep into the Roy Knapp story. Yeah, we've talked about him a little bit about his teaching school and stuff like that. So another, another episode, but that's an impressive lineup right there. Yeah, it was just incredible. And so those were the instructors that were going on at Frank's Drum Shop. I mentioned a little bit about the rentals and so on, but obviously, when it came to the back line in Chicago, if it had to do with percussion, they were supplying, you know, timpani to the symphony and making runs to all the biggest clubs and hotels and, and so on, delivering stuff. There's a fellow that worked at Frank's for a long time named Paul Jackie. And I don't remember who did the interview with him, but it shouldn't take too much Googling to Frank, but he talks about working at Frank's. And he had some interesting stories that I hadn't heard even talking with Elmore and Jan about Frank's, and one of them was that there was always a beat cop on the street in the block of Wabash that Frank's was on. And that beat cop kind of watched out for loading and unloading on the behalf of Frank's because they were on again, on the fourth floor, a busy street, Wabash in Chicago. And what do you do when you get a call and you've got to have a four piece kit over on the street at some nightclub in 20 minutes or you've got to have a third timpani over to Symphony Hall in 30 minutes or something. Well, the beat cops always gave preference to Paul and he had no problem double parking. He always had the stuff ready. It was in the elevator ready to go. It wasn't going to be like a 20 minute thing, but it was ready to load. He went and got his car, he double parked, no worries with the cop and loaded up and he's off. So it was a kind of Paul Jackie's job to at Christmas time deliver a bunch of envelopes and bottles for more. And there were envelopes going to the beat cops and doorman hotels and man, you know, all the people you really needed to depend on to do that kind of job and get things where they need to be. That's pretty cool. I mean, this is like, I mean, we're talking Chicago in the 30s and 40s, we're paying off cops so we can load out our drums. We're working with the different symphonies, Gene Krupa and Buddy Richard hanging out. I mean, it's really the hot spot. And I guess also I'm just thinking too that you got it, like you said, there's the four shops geographically. I mean, so you have New York, Chicago, you said Las Vegas and then California and Hollywood. I mean, this is really the Midwest spot. I guess because as bands are going through, it's kind of centrally located. So it's not and there's no internet. So it is more of an event to go and these guys is the cool spot and it's just neat, you know, and I love this. I love their kind of bad boy. Another allusion to the bad boy, one of the stories in the first book that comes to mind is in Maurice playing days, you have to a couple of different eras in the mid 30s to late 30s. He was doing mainly big gigs, the night clubs, the follies, that kind of thing. In fact, that's where he met his wife, Jam. She was a dancer and her pictures of her in the book are amazing. She was a really good looking hooper doing these big production numbers, those would be thirdly kind of things where all the girls have rifles or tennis rackets or something and it's all a 4A brand. When Maury was drafted and he played in the service and I believe in the army band, but when he came out of the service, then he got more into the reporting and the things. He got a gig at WVB out and doing the morning show, which was all live at the time. So, you know, reading charts for whoever came in and doing much more of the recording rather than the live stuff. But while he was still doing the night club thing, a neat story is there was a monster named Nick Dean and the fun thing that the internet now is when I revisit some of these stories, this stuff all pops up in a heartbeat where back in the day, to research this kind of stuff, you were kind of bound to newspapers and that kind of thing. But anyhow, this Nick Dean owned a colony club and Maury was playing there and he skipped out to fill in for a drummer for part of a set at another club, the Michael Todd. And while he was there, the owner of the club he was actually supposed to be playing at the colony club, Nick Dean, was dancing and kept looking at Maury and then there was a recognition. He was obviously hurt and Maury thought, oh man, so the end of the set, he books it back to the colony club. And one of his bandmates said, hey, hey, where were you? Nick's looking for you. And he said, well, I know he's looking for me. I saw him. He said, well, I think you better look and not come in until we're ready for the downbeat. So he made himself scarce and came in and nothing happened. He didn't get rocked up or anything. It's kind of an end to the story. Maury said it wasn't six months later that Nick Dean killed his girlfriend. And it was kind of a famous murderer. Her name was Estelle Carey. And she was killed in a suspicious house fire. And if anybody even today, Google's Estelle Carey or Nick Dean, those stories pop right up. So it was kind of a notorious guy. So you had to be careful read this stuff. Yeah. I mean, you're like, but you know, I mean, you wouldn't know that walking in there that this is sort of a, you know, there's some stuff going on. Like you wouldn't want to step on the wrong guy's shoes or something. Because who knows what would happen. But that's kind of, I mean, us musicians, we sometimes like that element of danger, you know what I mean? Like it kind of adds to the cool level of the drum shop for having like mobsters and stuff hanging around. Another story from Maury's playing days that I wanted to cover. He was playing with a band leader named Jack Ridhell. And at one point, Jack came to us and said, come over. I've got something you have to listen to. And he had an audio thing. And he said, I'm giving up my playing career, my performing career. And I'm going to make this girl a star. I found her in Oklahoma. And she's a little overweight. She's got to lose about 20 pounds. Her name was Clara Ann Bowler. And he said, I need Jan to teach her some makeup tricks. So she comes to Chicago. She did lose the weight. Jan LaShon, Maury's wife, did help her with her makeup and showed her how to apply it and so on. And they changed her name. And her stage name was Patty Page. Well, Patty Page became a huge star that goes back to those early days, getting started with Maury and Jan. Maury played on some of her early recordings. One that's really remarkable is it was one of the first multitrack commercial recordings where Patty Page did a song called My Eyes Wide Open. And she sang all four parts, which in 1954 was kind of unusual. You know, Les Paul had done, you know, doing with multitracking since the 30s and so on. But, you know, it's pretty famous that it's widely known on people that are all into recording, but real multitrack recording didn't even really get started. And so the Beatles were pretty well along. It was a while before they were even doing quartets. Like Les Paul did multiple record players being printed to and then like, like how high the moon and stuff and doing his guitars. It was a different type of Yeah, different process. Well, Panasonic in the mid 50s there in Chicago came out with a way to record six tracks on a quarter inch tape. And they did this recording of Patty Page, with her singing all four parts of the harmony. Maury was really proud of that and having participated in some of those early multitrack recordings, some of the first commercially done recordings done by Panasonic in Chicago. Well, I mean, he seems like a, I mean, I don't want to say an unsung hero, but he seems like one of, there's a lot of them, but there's people who were at the right place at the right time when the world was changing, you know, getting the drum shop going or I guess buying the drum shop from Frank Galt, but like really making it a cool spot because now drum shops have gone up and down in popularity, but this was a really popular time recording, performing drums or drummers or movie stars with Gene Krupa and you got Buddy Rich, kind of everyone he's household name. So really the right place in the right time. Yeah, yeah. And another area that they really excelled in was largely due to, thanks to Jan. Jan, of course, worked in the shop at Maury from the earliest days. She retired from dancing when they got married and they started a family. They had two boys and a girl. Chuck Lashan was more of a song and dance man who grew up and that didn't really take part in the shop, that much. He worked there a little bit, but he was more into singing and dancing, stage productions and so on. There's something Marty did end up running the shop when Maury retired. But anyhow, when Jan started at the shop, she kind of gravitated to print music and she almost single-handedly built a world-renowned print music department. Almost every piece of print music that came out that was involved percussion, she would get at least a copy of and if it sold, she'd get two copies and build it up. But there were literally thousands of pieces of music in her print library and they became renowned as the source for scores, particularly for percussion. And along the way, that kind of strikes a chord in my memory with the Professor of Art Society, the early founders of PAS, this is where it was happening. They were having meetings at Frank's Drum Shop after hours and kind of getting PAS set up. So the founders were there, Bobby Christian. So many of the people who frequented the shop and helped the shop out in those early days, like Roy Knapp, Bobby Christian, Ludwig Senior and so on. So many of those guys were not only active in PAS, but have since become all of them members of the Professor of Art Society. But between not just supplying the goods, the actual merchandise, but doing all the rentals and service and repairs and so on, but then the print music department really made it a full service percussion center that sets the bar really high at drum shops. Well, let me ask you this though, because we're in, I mean, so it's basically 1937 through 1984, which we haven't really gotten that far. Obviously, we haven't gotten that far yet. But so in the kind of heyday of Ludwig and Slingerland, was their competition for like, you know, now you think of like a grocery store and it's like, the hardest thing is to get your product on a shelf in a good spot where people can see it. Was there similar, you know, battles for who gets their drums in Frank's because I'm naming those two because they're obviously Chicago companies, would they be like competing and would there be some envelopes going back and forth that way, you think to kind of get more floor space or anything like that? I don't think so. But there were some personalities and clashes and so on on the horizon. And as far as brands, I think Mary was strongest in, you carried everything. I mean, you could go up there. I remember seeing tricks on kids up there and Hollywood and then they had the tronic drums and everything you could think of, you saw there at one time or another. But he was really heaviest in Ludwig and Slingerland. And Roger's probably a distant third. Wasn't that much of a grutch guy? They did have some grutch stuff there. But when Maury bought the store in 59, one of his first hires was a guy named Bill Crowd. And I won't get into too much finger pointing and he said, he said, but there were some a couple different versions of what happened with Bill Crowd and Frank's drum shop. And the way Bill Crowd explained it to me, he had an agreement with Maury from the start, that if he stayed with him for five years, he would have an option of buying up to 25% of the shop buying in and becoming a part owner. Because if he was going to put his all into it, he wanted some kind of potential bail. I never asked Maury about that directly. But at any rate, by the time the five years were coming to a close, and Bill started hinting about it to Maury, it was clear that it wasn't going to happen. So whether it was an misunderstanding, I can't say. But Bill Crowd did split up and start his own competitive shop two doors down. Also up, I can't remember what floor he was on. But as it turned out, it was on the wall bash just two doors down. And he became a huge Gretch dealer. That was his main, he carried some other lines and so on. But Gretch at that time actually had a distribution office and sales office in Chicago, and their warehouse was like two floors below Crowdons. So Crowdons could sell a kit. Virtually anything that Gretch made at Bill's warehouse at all there, he could take his customer down there, give him the boxes and the guy was on the street with his kit. So crazy. And then Bill Crowdon, to add insult to injury, in terms of Maury LaShawn and Frank's drum shop, he married Gretch Ludwig, I'm sorry, the chief starter. So that didn't go real well with Maury, to have his competitor marrying into the Ludwig family. Related now. It's going to kind of grind against him. It's not like he dumped Ludwig or anything. But from that point forward, there were little wars between Maury and the chief. And I won't get into the more graphic ones and everything, but there was a lot of name calling and there was some pretty bitter competition. It was probably good for the drummers in general. You could go to both shops and they're knocking each other out with trying to give you the best deal and everything. Man, two doors down is just not really good for anyone. I mean, that's too close. One other thing to touch on real quick was the repairs. I don't want to give it a short trip. It was really important. Thanks always ordered kits in from all of those companies without hardware. And it's no secret that a lot of Dinosign or a lot of the swivel-natic hardware got put on other brands. And it was so common in the day that Maury was ordering Stegerman and Ludwig kits and Gretch kits without the hardware attached. They would still get the Tom Holder, but it'd be in a bag. And Clarence, who for decades was the go-to guy in the repair department at France, would pick out your kit and you'd either choose the standard mount that came with it, which meant Clarence would drill for that. Or if you had a specific desire there, the swivel-natic or whatever, Clarence could fix it up with that. But other custom things, change in the height of stands and so on, one of his first custom instruments that is Clarence was for Roy Knapp to play chimes. He had a chime mallet kind of tied to a drill handle, but Clarence made him a six-foot long chime mallet so he could hit the cues without having to get up out of his seat and so on. So it's a good reminder for being able to do the special custom stuff to accommodate any drummer. Man, could you order nowadays drums from these major manufacturers without hardware? I don't even think that's physically possible anymore. They'd probably say, what are you talking about? It'd probably be tough because in those days, they were assembling them and drilling each one and so on, but today, they have these spider drills that are drilling all the holes or plants. It'd be a special order these days to, say, leave off the time molded. It might take you months to get it done depending on the company. Yeah, jeez. That's cool though. That is a very, you're right, very interesting element to it of repairs. It sounds like it's like world-class repairs, lessons, hangout spot, shop in general with great inventory, and just customer service and from, again, the pictures. It looks like it's just the spot to hang out and they would have parties and things like that. I mean, it's just it's- They had an annual, there was a bar room at street level underneath, they didn't really have room for that kind of socializing in the shop, but they had an annual drummers get together down at the club on the ground floor and that became a pretty famous hang. Yeah. Well, all right, so like I mentioned before, I think we've talked a lot about the like, you know, the black and white era of like, Frank's where a lot of like, and I'm referring to pictures obviously of like, you know, it's 30s, 40s, 50s into the 60s, but like, so it went to 1984 as we get kind of closer to the end here. What happened with the shop as we get into more, I don't say modern, but you know what I mean, like the 70s and 80s was different. Yeah. Well, in 1974, Mori started running to health issues. He had a triple bypass and could see that, you know, he needed to kind of start planning ahead for retirement and he sold the Frank Strom shop to his son Marty in 1978. Actually, in about 1978, they would have been having their 40 year reunion. And I had started at that point, I graduated from high school in 69. So that was three years after I bought my drums at Frank's, but I stayed in touch with him and it blew me away because I was a junior high kid in Allen, Michigan time of 10,000. And I could call Frank's drum shop and ask for more and he would take my call and actually be glad to hear from me and say, how's the weather in Michigan? And I was just pulled over and they were selling stuff at generally about 40% off and I found that and I could, I could sell stuff to my classmates and friends for like 20% off and make it work. So, so through high school, I was ordering drums and cymbals and stuff and selling to my friends and but then I went off to college and then started in business in 72. And I'll pull up that time. I'd always visit Frank's whenever I could and I'd stay in touch with with Marty and they had actually already sold the shop to his son and I think he'd already retired to Florida when they had their 40th anniversary. I went down for that and took a bunch of pictures and I had begun writing for Modern Drummer Magazine in the first year or two they were out. I had a crime called shop pop and I do reviews of drum shops. So I did a special article on Frank's drum shop for Modern Drummer which I was in the January-February 1979 Modern Drummer and they had a clinic with Alex Acuna and Don Elias and it was a pretty big deal that I the reason I bring it up is I worked quite a bit with Marty and with Marty on the background of the shop for that magazine article. Gotcha. And they had that. Frank Galt had never really formalized that history of his days but he did at one point do a handwritten history of Frank's drum shop and Frank's drum shop letterhead actually. So I used quite a bit of that for that article. So I'd stayed in touch with with Marty and when Marty was in Florida he actually started a retirement ban called the second time around in his retirement and he got a bunch of these retirees in Florida people who used to be in big bands and so on and they started they started a big band of retirees called Second Time Around which was a really good band. I still got some cassettes somewhere of that but um thanks just didn't continue to bloom under Marty like it had under Marty and there's a lot of things you could point fingers at and maybe it was just the times changing but Marty was no longer at the helm and when he was there he was literally at the helm what a thing that always stands out in my mind was one time I was hanging out up there and everybody knew who was in charge. Marty could could go off on somebody in a heartbeat and it was never malicious but it was kind of like a bloody rich kind of impatience with people who weren't pulling their weight and so on. Sure. So when he yelled people listened. Well it was a really busy day in France I was hanging out people were answering phones people were shouting people were playing cymbal blah blah blah all of a sudden Mori yells hey everybody looks around and freezes and it got dead quiet and I was like oh god what did somebody do? I thought oh I picked the wrong day to come and everybody wants to see what he's yelling at and he walks over where a kid was standing with a cymbal on a cymbal stand and a stick and he grabs the stick out of his hand and says you never hit it like that and the kid had been coming straight down on this cymbal and and then he cooled off and almost right away the ambient noise picked back up with it oh it's okay it's okay it was safe but Mori proceeded then to give him a little lesson on how to get the sound out of the cymbal draw it out and then point out how this kid was gonna break a cymbal if he continued what he was doing yeah but that was kind of gone under Marty um and uh Mori when he was discussing the the demise of Frank's under Marty's kind of blamed it on the manufacturers giving stuff away he said man can't make the buck anymore all these endorsement deals that are going on and they're giving away gear and so on and but um I think it would it no longer had a friend go after Mori the shaman at the helm but yeah Marty then sold it and actually who buys it but Bill Croydon so so uh Croydon's uh he said at the time that it wasn't so much that you needed the inventory or anything but he didn't want the name biting him he'd had enough he wanted to retire the name basically sure and he did get a lot of parts and uh some uh the old rental drones and that kind of thing but it had been kind of driven into the ground by the time Croydon acquired it so then it was kind of Croydon's drones limited which was the name of Croydon shop dash Frank's drum shop they moved off a wall bash and over to Jefferson uh years are going by 1989 Mori gets named to the Percussive Arts Society of Hall of Fame uh 1991 Croydon sells out and moves to Texas and it was the same kind of deal there uh Bill Croydon knew enough about drums drumming the drum world and drummers to operate a successful shop the people that he sold it to it seemed like it was going to be uh a successful thing they knew the percussion world to an extent actually they were heavy into the Celtic music quite quite band drumming and that kind of thing but to to Bill's shock and and kind of disappointment he told them he would work for practically minimum wage you know a certain number of hours and make himself available as a resource to help him feel their way and get established and they never took him up on it he would never call once so jeez so he wasn't surprised at all when drums limited went out of business all together in 1993 at that point the Frank's drum shop name became uh it was almost like a game of uh pinball but uh who comes out with it in 1994 but uh guitar center of things and at that time there were only I think there were 17 guitar center stores in the whole country so it wasn't like today's guitar center the guy that did the deal was a guy named Richie Padanek and Richie Padanek is a pretty famous name in in the early days of guitar center and he was a Chicago guy he kind of voked with the deal for Frank's drum shop and they did end up with a lot of parts and stuff and by this time the Chicago drum show had been going for three years so Richie knew of the of the drum show and uh he I can't remember if the booth was in the name of Frank's drum shop or in guitar center but he came to the show for a couple years selling tons of old parts and everything that uh were part of the the whole Frank's drum shop legacy just to clear it out I'm not even sure yeah I'm not even sure now who owns it a couple of the early signs from thanks drum shop ended up at Maxwell's shop in Chicago interesting I'm over there it's so far after the fact though that like a name like that like this is really cool that we're doing this but it it's so far past the original heyday that you know opening Frank's drum shop your average 18 year old you know drummer isn't gonna know the background to go oh it's Frank's let me go in there so it's sort of kind of you know when when when as things do it went away yeah and obviously the value is going to depreciate it's not going to be worth a fortune anymore for for somebody to acquire the name but sure but Mary Lachan passed in 2000 uh the chief passed in 2008 Bill Crowden passed in 2013 so a lot of those guys are are gone now but uh it was a pretty good run yeah yeah and I mean it's really just it's an iconic store and I was looking back at uh Andy Dwyer mentioned when he when we were first talking about doing this he said that uh they were one of the first uh if not the first shop to have a clinic like you mentioned where a drummer would come in and present you know some ideas and stuff so I think that's pretty neat to to mention and I think it's cool that you yourself obviously are kind of a staple in the drum world and you've had retail shops and you've done things all these different things I mean to me hearing you tell the story going into Frank's with your dad has to be a huge influence on the trajectory of your life really I mean things turned out pretty drum heavy for you I was really fortunate then and oh most of my career to yeah my dad and also to Maury um Maury called me when he wanted to do his memoir and I think it was probably because I had done that uh history of uh Frank's for the uh the modern drummer thing and he knew that I had a put in history and he knew I was starting to do the rebates thing but actually Frank's for the memories was my first book and he called me in about March I think it was and said he wanted to do his memoir he wanted me to be involved with it and could I come down to see him so I I mean 48 hours or so I was in Florida with my camera and my tape recorder and everything and I'll always be grateful to him for involving me in it because it opened so many doors we basically sat with the tape recorder and he and jam told all the stories they could think of and showed me all their pictures and then I went home and tried to organize it and he said I want this out by November for Professor of Arts Society Convention geez and I thought okay we've got six months I've never done a book this is going to be interesting so we got it out and uh and it was pretty primitive we didn't have the technology we have today and I had never done this kind of thing before so it's it's kind of riddled with typos and so on that hopefully will be cleaning up in the print-on-demand version as I clean up the graphics and so on yeah but we did get it out for the PAS being and one of the neatest things for me personally was Mori said that he wanted to have a section of some of his best friends drummers from the uh the back in the day and he wanted me to contact the these people on the list and and tell him what I was doing and get a photo from back in the day and one from the current day sure and combine them and and then the list of people that he gave me was just insane and he gave me all the contact info the phone numbers that I needed and everything right uh Denny Sywell, Ted Reed, Gordon Peters, Lloyd McFaust, Larry Lincoln, Joel Bates, Jake Gerger, George Gaver, Steve Edelson, Vick Ferrer, Peter Erskine, Barrett Dehams, Bunny Carlos, Roy Burns, Al Dwayne, John Burke, Carmine the Trees, he's like everyone that's the dream and and most of these people had never heard of me I've been in the industry for a little while then but again just from my music store in Michigan but every single one of those people that I contacted took my call when they heard that it had to do with Mori and almost every one of them had nothing but the best to say about it again he he could have a temper he could go off on people but everybody that I ever met that knew him very well really wanted to measure up in his mind because you know if you would make a Mori happy you would kind of made it you made it to his standard sure uh and so many of those people that I contacted Carmine and Peter Erskine everybody all said Mori's like a father to me you know I'll do anything for him yeah and talk about opening doors I mean all of a sudden I knew all these people yeah and and they kind of liked me because of what I was doing yeah and yeah if not for my dad dragging me up there and Mori getting me involved in this project you know my wife would have had a very different trajectory totally I mean I feel very grateful I feel parallels to that of doing this and with talking with you very early on and getting you on and it's just like oh you're so friendly and helpful and I have so much information and I just think that the the kicker of it is to just go out and ask people and talk to people and it really you'd be surprised how many people are eager to help because you've given me a lot of guidance over the years some very very important some are just like you know don't do that and I immediately stopped doing it and it's like it's it's helped me a lot but um so this is just awesome I mean you're kind of you as we're wrapping up here why don't you tell people the best place to find the book obviously like you said print on demand so it's quicker and easier where can they order it really any bookstore now because the print on demand is through Ingram and Ingram doesn't sell direct but though almost every bookstore of any size has an Ingram account they're one of the giants in the book distribution business so really any corner bookstore I bet you could go in and order it but Amazon has it and Ingram feeds Amazon and in another country so if you're go that if you're in England you go to Amazon UK you should find it there and it's not going to be shipping from the United States and so on it's of course at the rebate site and I have it also listed on YouTube around that eBay and Reaper great yep but uh makes no difference to me where you find it but uh yeah be advised that it's it's going to be looking a lot better in the future as I scan these I mean this was done old school a badger the printer it was a backyard printer and he literally took pictures of each black and white photo that I had and then screen printed them and so on so I'm really looking forward to making a lot of those pictures stand out a lot better yeah yeah totally well this is just super cool I'll put the descriptions I'll find the easiest one to get to either Rebeats.com which is REBEATS.com or on Amazon I'll put it in the description all right Rob but this is awesome so um everyone listening Rob is kind enough to stick around and we're going to do a Patreon bonus episode and we're going to talk about kind of before we recorded Rob mentioned to be that like he really thinks and I agree with him that we are in kind of a an evolving golden era of drum shops because you kind of it's sort of a slow burn where you don't really notice what's happening right under your nose but there are drum shops everywhere I mean every big city has a drum shop that hasn't always been the case and no one knows that better than Rob who has seen shops come and go so if you want to hear that go to drumhistorypodcast.com click the Patreon link and you can join and hear those from people like Rob so Rob thanks so much for taking the time to be here and share all this great information and just be such a awesome returning guest on the show and really I see you as kind of a mentor in this whole drum history journey more than anyone else I'm happy to I'll say that you you and I have connected a lot and also thank you to Andy Dwyer of ADC Drums in Liverpool ADC.co.uk as his website so thanks to Andy and of course thank you Rob. Well thank you and thanks to Andy he's definitely one of the good guys I've been to his shop and actually stayed with me and his family a couple of times and visits to Liverpool but he couldn't find a nicer guy and a greater drum shop in England especially in Liverpool but thanks so much and keep up the great waterfall