 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I am joined by Jeff Nichols who is a incredibly esteemed author, drummer, educator, all around great guy. Jeff, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you. What a nice introduction. We're here to talk about kind of a broad picture of the history of some British drum brands, which as an American I'm kind of fascinated by because it's it's sort of a parallel to a lot of what we had going on here in America. Yes, it is. I think we it's parallel, but we obviously were we were a bit behind. Well, actually, we started ahead because we've been making drums in Europe and Britain for hundreds of years, obviously. And that goes back to the military side drum and bass drum and so on. But then things changed drastically at the turn of last century when I suppose that's very much due to the arrival of jazz in America. So people started to take the drums a lot more seriously. And then we had the invention of the drum kit as we know it, you know, we all know the the history of that. And we were very much enamored of America. And the British companies did slavishly copy the American companies in the early years of last century. So, you know, that's that's where it is, really, you know, so we're already building drums, obviously, but they were pretty outdated. And then we had a whole history of I think you had like, for instance, you know, in America, you would have Vorderville and over here, we would have music hall. Sure. Yeah. And then and then popular music was a lot of orchestra, a lot of dance orchestras were in the hotels. So we had hotel orchestras and they were like the pop stars of the day. And the music they were playing was pretty crummy, you know, it was pretty outdated and sort of naff, if you know that expression. You know, so once we started to hear American music, we started to follow American music, obviously. And then the drum kit started to, you know, really take off in America and we started to follow those designs. So in a way, that's where we start. That's fascinating because it's in the jazz scene early on, I know that the hotels were heavily involved with the, you know, early jazzers like Gene Krupa and stuff. When he would play and they would a lot of radio companies would broadcast from the hotel. And that's what people would listen to, say live from whatever hotel. And so it's just interesting that that's also been happening in different parts of the world, the involvement of hotels, which that that went away. Boy, you don't there's no real, you know, relevancy with hotels and music now. No, no. Well, I suppose that's due to the arrival of the radio and cinema, you know, the talk is disappeared. And, you know, so all that all that pre war sort of, you know, traps and sound effects and all that sort of stuff. It was all part of part of the music. And the war is the big thing, really, over here, as you can imagine, the biggest thing that's ever happened. And that changed it. But before that, things were getting going. I mean, I in terms of the development of British drums, I should speak out. I mean, when I first became interested in this, which is, I suppose, in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a fellow in London called Lou Dias, that's D-I-A-S, Lou Dias. And Lou wasn't a drummer, but he owned a drum shop called Supreme Drums in Walthamstone, North East London. And he was really into books. And I suppose he was a bit of a scholar. And he was the first person that I know of who decided to, you know, to set this down, to write it down and work out, you know, where had British drums come from and, you know, the ones that survived, particularly the strands that we're going to talk about, and which I think are probably of interest to most people are the ones that survived the war years and came through in the late 40s, 1950s, and went on to be used by, you know, all the English drummers, the UK drummers who became international stars, you know. So the drum sets that were available to your T-Ringos and Charlie Watches and all the rest of them, there was a series of them. And I could say that the company that obviously is known internationally is Premier. So whereas, you know, in America, you had, you know, Gretch, Slingerland, Ludwig, Rodgers, and so on, you know, leading before that. In Britain, by the time the 60s came around, there were still several strands, but the only one that really survived became international was Premier. So what Lou did, what Lou did was he recognised four strands, and nowadays we tend in the UK, I think, I think I'm safe in saying this, that in actual fact, there are five strands. And can I just, just before, you know, for a mention all these, I'll just say that other people also, I mean, there's a guy called Alan Buckley, you know, of Alan Buckley. No, he was the sort of, he's the doyen of collectors in this country. He almost by accident, he went out into the 80s and hoovered up every old drum set that was lying around to the point where he'd got this little house in the Midlands with 80 drum sets. And when I say 80 drum sets, yeah, I mean, I mean, this is the old stuff. This is the stuff that little old, you know, widows had found themselves left with after the war, you know, where their husbands finally died off and they'd left this junk. And Alan, who's a sex cleaner character, I mean, he's an obsessive character, Alan, and he's very well known to Rob Cook as well. And he, he went and hoovered the whole lot up and he just couldn't stop himself once he started, you know, we get obsessive about collecting. And like I say, you go out and do his house and he'd literally have 80 drum sets. He's a very small house, by the way, he just sheds in the garden, he got them in the cold cellar he got. And like I said, a lot of these kids, they were big old kids, you know, with consoles and, you know, dance bands, bass drums, twig range, bass drums, you don't know as well. So he, and he was a great help to me when, when I wrote the drum book. These, if you, if you see the drum book, which a lot of people like because of the pictures, the, the first half of us and kits, which make the book are all Alan Buckley's kits and they're really old kits from the 30s through to, you know, a Gene Krupa kit and so on. And, and then the third person I really want to mention is Dave Saville, who for 16 years ran, I think, all the old drummers club over here with a newsletter. That just had this amazing amount of information. And so those are the people who I was relying on in particular, lots of other guys as well. And maybe I'll mention a few names as we go along. Those guys really sort of got me interested in the history of it. And anyway, to get back to these strands, if you're okay with this, I'll just reel them off. Um, okay. So here we go. Number one is John Gray. Now this goes back to, oh God, this goes back into, I think around 1830, where a guy called Solomon came up from the West country to London and started to uh, part of his company had a sonny law called Barnett Samuel, I believe, and he started to import musical instruments from all over the world. So a lot of these companies just started out as musical instrument importers and distributors. They weren't necessarily manufacturers to start with. So anyway, this, um, this strand leads to a made up name called John Gray. They used the name John Gray because it seemed innocuous and English. Eventually, you know, without going into too much detail, you know, there's a lot of anti-Semitism, obviously, there always has been. And so they just thought, if they call themselves John Gray, rather than Solomon or anything, they, they, uh, they would do better business. And that leads on to, uh, Shaftesbury and Rose Murray. And did you know the Rose Murray company? No, Rose Morris, you say? Rose, Rose and Morris, R-O-S-E, Morris, M-O-R-R. Anyway, that's John Gray. I'll just listen first and then we'll come back to them and, uh, a little look at, you know, you know, okay. So the second one is, uh, John Dallas. So we've got two Johns. We've got a John Gray and a John Dallas and John Dallas. Um, uh, same thing, same thing. Importers, uh, John E. Dallas, J-E Dallas is generally shortened to Jed's son. So John E. Dallas and sons led to Jed's son. Does that make sense? Yeah. Company called Jed's son. Okay. So their free world drums are called Jed's son. John Dallas and sons led to Jed's sons. Yeah. So just one word, J-E-D-S-O-N. So Jed's son, you'll see Jed's son drum. That leads onto Carlton drums, which you may have heard of and Heyman, which he'll certainly will have done, uh, Carlton Heyman. And then eventually to, uh, Arbiter, Auto-Tune. I don't know if you've seen Auto-Tune drums. Yeah. I've seen them. And Arbiter, yeah. So that, that's, that's the second thing. Okay. The third one is Boozian Hawks. And again, Boozian Hawks, you may well have heard of, because to this day are one of the major, uh, music publishers in the world. They, uh, they publish a lot of modern classical music. They own the copyrights to that. But Boozian Hawks, um, owned a thing called Ajax drums, which again, you may have heard of Ajax. And they, uh, they had other subsidiaries, Edgeworth and Stratford, and also they made a thing called Roger, English Rogers, I should say. So they actually, this is a really extraordinary thing. They made Rogers, actual Rogers drums under license in London, um, in the 60s. Wow. And then they finished up with a thing called Ajax New Sound, uh, before they finally gave up the ghost. Um, the fourth one, just to make things a bit easier, is Premier, Premier, uh, and their, and Olympic. Do you know about Olympic? Yes. Yeah. It was like sort of a, the cheaper version. It just, but like the shells were the same. Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly right. Exactly right. But a budget Premier. Um, okay. So all those four strands, John Gray, Dallas, Ajax and Premier, pretty simply, um, they, they were all in, in London because I should know we're a very London centric country. Um, and then the fifth one, which Lou didn't sort of include in his initial treatise, uh, is a company called Beverly. And Beverly comes from the north, far northeast of England, and they made great drums. And again, they made it over to the state. So you may possibly have come across Beverly drums. Yeah. Um, and the point about all this lot is those are the five strands that made it through to the late 40s, 50s, uh, and were around when, you know, when that generation, the great generation of British drums were growing up. There were lots of other companies, obviously, you know, sure. Of course. Uh, there were companies, uh, I know Birmingham is the UK second city and there were companies like Windsor, uh, Peerless and Parsons, mostly that they were around. There were other companies in London, AF Matthews, Scarth, Boyle, Warwick Supremes, Foots, which is the drum company. And, you know, there are loads of others. But basically those are the ones that were around before the war. And so less interest to us, perhaps. I mean, I can go on. I mean, there are other companies like after the war, like Reno in Manchester who made very strange monstrous drums with incredible internal tuning mechanisms. They were up in Manchester, believe it or not. There are legendary characters in London, Duck Hunt, Vic O'Brien, um, Eddie Ryan later on, um, do you know what I mean? So, and, and, and there's been a revival in British drum making in the last, you know, since the turn of this century, funnily enough. Um, so we now make fantastic drums, uh, talk about that another time perhaps, you know, the new stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the new stuff. So, you know, it's, it's wonderful, you know, Natar, which is Jim Marshall, you know, um, that's his legacy and the British drum company said again, the British drum company, you make some of the best drums in the world. Yeah, they're awesome. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. So those are the five, those, uh, and just another quick shout, um, Mike Ellis, who I believe he talked to, uh, has done really good spotted histories of these five strands. So if you want to go into detail, you can go online and see, I mean, this is the wonderful thing about you just Google all this stuff now. And you will find them, you'll find these, these companies there and, you know, the detail and, and, and also a lot of the catalogs. I mean, it's all about, I mean, this is the, it's amazing. Uh, uh, another good friend, Andy, you will start in a site called Drum Archive. Do you know Drum Archive? Oh man, I love it. That is, that is how I've found most of these like about most of these companies because it's so cool because you see the logo and then you see the little flag of the country next to it. And you go, okay, what's up with Beverly? Okay. What's up with Ajax? You know, you can, you can actually buy countries or what's going on in Italy? You know, you can see these companies. So he's done an amazing job putting those together. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So you sort of don't need, I mean, when I was doing the, the drum book, because none of this existed. So, you know, it's, I mean, nowadays it's all there. So if anyone wants to write the next drum book and try to collate the entire history of the drum set, um, yeah, it's nothing stopping you anymore. Yeah, it's, it's all there. You know, you sift through and obviously the forums and stuff are amazing. You know, but, um, sure. So there you have it. I think the thing about, um, these companies, you look at the catalogs very, very early on and they started off with rope tension drums and then they went to single tension and then they went to tube lugs and so on. And then once they got past tube lugs, you'll notice that all of them, and I think, I think I'm right in saying in all of those five instances that I've just mentioned, they, they all started to copy Leedy lugs. Okay. Um, and what happened was, uh, that something very strange happened, which is that in 1926, I believe George Way, uh, of Leedy, as most people know, I think, uh, he actually made it over to, to, to the UK, uh, along with another chap called Jack Roof. And they brought Leedy products with them and they made a huge impression on everyone who was making drums at that time. So people saw these Leedy drums and they were so far in advance of anything that you could get in the UK at the time, uh, that they were just copied, absolutely slavishly copied. And I think in a way that's probably a little bit like, you know, when the Japanese started off in the, exactly sixties and so on, and they saw American drums and their first attempts were absolute slavish copies. Yeah. And I suppose the Japanese went on to improve on them in, in many ways, because of, you know, that's the modern era and technology and all the rest of it, you know, um, uh, and then the, you know, eventually the American companies fought back and, you know, uh, we are where we are. But, uh, I think a similar thing must have happened then that, uh, because in the 1920s in the UK, people did start to become, you know, we had the roaring twenties as you did, you know, and like I say, you know, everybody were having great old time, you know, dancing around the hotel, or at least the middle classes where this is very much a middle class and upper class thing. Yeah. Not so fine if you're not a middle class. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The average person didn't really have access to these wonderful hotels and all their marvelous orchestras with, you know, any number of big name, um, you know, big name band leaders, Geraldo, Bert Ambrose, I don't know, Jack Hilton, Victor Sylvester, Henry Hall, they're all sorts of, and, and drummers, by the way, some of the early English drummers, Max Abrams, Joe Daniels, Max Bacon, Ozzy Noble, Boris Pertill, I'm just reading off a list there, Jackie Green one, these are nice, you know, from the thirties and, and to, you know, through the war as well, through the early forties and so on. These are the names that we saw in the catalogs. They were aware, and also, Drew Callington and Louis Armstrong actually made it over here in the thirties and were there, where people are of that, that, you know, the British musicians, because it was pretty lightweight stuff, you know, it was, it was a mixture of, you know, vaudeville and dance, you know, you had strict dance tempos, but whole European things about woolsies and quadrilles, whatever you, I don't even know, you know, um, and it was pretty, pretty sad, really, a lot of that stuff, and I, I think the British musicians did gradually become aware that there was something happening over in the USA, and, uh, they were lucky enough, people were, the people who were hip enough did actually see, you know, Drew Callington, uh, you know, the reviews of Allington when he came over. Yeah, yeah. I think probably as early as 1933, uh, people were just floored by this, and of course, the other thing was that, um, they didn't quite know which way to go because, you know, jazz was seen as a fad, same as when rock and roll came along in the fifties, people thought, oh, it's just a fad, it'll go away, you know, it'll go away, the big bands will come back, you know, no, they won't. I feel like Americans a lot of times, um, forget sometimes that the biggest, one of our biggest exports was jazz music at that time, like that's what really are, are like, yeah, our thing that kind of changed the world was jazz music. Yeah, yes, absolutely, absolutely. I know, you know, we've been in install to America for that throughout, throughout the last century, certainly, and probably still today, but, um, that's absolutely determined the way drums were going to go and the way music was going to go, both in the, you know, the twenties and thirties and then again in the fifties and the sixties. Yeah, um, this is a very loose thesis, a similar sort of thing you can make, I'll give you a what's going on in the case, but certainly what happened with the drum companies was they took the leady samples. I mean, you could buy leady drums over here before the war and they, you know, you could buy, uh, case Ilgen's over here before the war. They were expensive, but they, they, they were, they obviously were around. I mean, occasionally a leady, you know, a beautiful leady snare drum will turn up. I know someone discovered one in the junk shop two or three years ago to their odd disbelief and, um, bought it for next to nothing. And it turned out to be the real thing. So where, where does it come from? But it worked. They were over here. But if you look at the early catalogs of, uh, uh, Premiere and, uh, all, all of the companies, um, Ajax and so on, um, you'll see, uh, John Gray and so on, uh, you will see that the, the drums were exact copies. I mean, they, they started off with the, you know, they've achieved blog or whatever. And then before you know it, they're, they're doing, um, you know, the little leady press lug, you know, with a little four, um, four screw attachments. And then immediately after that, they would move to the X, what I call the X box lug. Um, and this happened in the thirties. And you see that I'm Premiere, Dominion and Dominion ACs and Cotton Kings and so on. Again, I don't want to go in too much because I, I forgot more than I ever knew. I forget what's in the names of all these drums. I've got them all down there. I've been doing, I've been doing a vintage column in Rhythm magazine for the last 30 years. So we've done them all, you know. Yeah. Um, I've read it and we'll talk about it more at the end, but you, you are obviously a great author. What we'll kind of hit, like talk about all of your stuff you're working on. But, um, now, so out of all of these brands. So like, let's say the Beverly, the Ajax, they're all kind of competing with each other, right? Was there, was there a ton of drummers? I guess it's, it's like in America where post-Ringo. Yeah. Post-Ringo, the world blew up with that. But, um, let me back up real quick before we get into that. So during the war, I always ask this question when we're talking about brands like this, because I like to get a little bit of that history. Were these companies, I know Premiere was, were these companies then like, like, did it say, okay, you guys are now making, um, like with Premiere I think Mike Ellis said it was like the, the scopes or the sights for guns. Yeah. Were they all basically transitioned during wartime to other things? As far as I know, but the, the awful thing is, is that we know the history of Premiere pretty well. Um, we don't know so much history of what happened to the others. So, um, certainly, I mean, I haven't given you, I'm being very remiss here. I could give you a lot more history on, on each of these companies and what they were up to. And, you know, maybe I'll give you a little bit more if we've got time, um, but they all had to go on to other sort of work. There was a very limited, um, use for, uh, instruments. You know, I mean, so, uh, certainly drums. Um, and they pretty much shut down, uh, the drum production during the war. I mean, I should say that by the end, you know, we, you know, saying that during the thirties, they, they slavishly copied Leedy and Ludigar's as well. And some of those drums, if you find them, by the way, they're fantastic drums. They're just as good, you know, they're beautifully made drums and they're survived and they're certainly worth searching out. But by the late thirties, they'd already started to go their own way. So by the late thirties, you'll find all of them, you know, Carlton, Dallas, Premier and so on, all, uh, diverging their own, uh, Art Deco style lugs. And they're very beautiful. And, uh, they, they, you know what I'm saying is that they'd already deviated from the American model to come up with their own versions. They, they, they were steaming ahead. So there was a huge, as far as I can make out, there was a huge need for the, you know, there's a big market for all this sort of stuff. And they were all doing pretty well as far as I know. And they were, they, like I say, they were all pretty much based in east of London, the northeast, down toward the docks, east central of the city. And where the people know London, most of those companies were there. And they were most, mostly manufactured there. I should just very quickly mention Beverly, by the way, because Beverly is in the northeast of, uh, of England, which is the heavy, heavily industrialized area. And Beverly was important because they had a huge factory there, a huge factory. They churn out all sorts of stuff. And they, their big thing was they made, uh, consoles. So, and this is something that was very big in this country. I think partly because of the hotel thing, people didn't do touring. You know, like in America, people would tour, I suppose, because, you know, the huge distances were here. You tended to set up in the hotel or the theater and leave it there. So they sort of stick these huge drum kits on consoles, console being an advance on the traps tray. I'm sure you're aware of this. Sure. And, you know, and Beverly made these consoles for it, for most of the other companies. So, you know, like for instance, Premier Swingster console was very famous. He was actually made by Beverly up in the northeast. And, you know, um, Chick Webb famously had one of those with his Gretch Gladstone kit. So, you know, those famous pictures of Chick Webb playing that amazing kit he had. And if you notice, he's got this big console and that, that I believe is a Premier Swingster. And that would have been made by Beverly up in the northeast. So, um, so that was going on anyway. So just thought I'd just throw that one in there. Yeah, it's fascinating. Um, Carlton, Carlton from the house of Dallas, John E. Dallas and Sons, which is cut down to Jedsson. Jedsson drums were made by, oh, well, this is a bit of a, I'll be careful, I don't have too many tangents here, but they were made by Premier earlier, early on. But they, after 1935, they started to make their own drums under the name Carlton. So, Carlton's a big name. And Carlton, the name Carlton came from the Carlton Hotel, which was a huge landmark in the west end of London. Uh, very famous hotel. It was very posh. It was run by Cesar Ritz. You really know the Ritz, the name that you probably know. Of course. You're putting on the Ritz. Yeah. Um, the Sotelian, he, he said Chef was a scoffier. Who was like the greatest French chef of, of, of the day. You know, so, so they call them Carlton because it was at the time. And it was a bit of an hour in here, which is that, um, that the Carlton Hotel is not there anymore. It was, it was, it was bombed in 1940. Uh, when we had the Blitz in London, you know, the German Blitz on London. It was badly bombed and badly damaged. And so it's finished in 1940. And, um, the irony there is that's exactly the same time that the Premier Factory was blown up in 1940. God. Um, and the Premier Factory, by the way, in standard road is, is literally half a mole from where I'm sitting here now. Wow. Or it was before it was blown up. Um, that, that's, uh, that's where I am in that sort of Northwest London, Wembley sort of area. People have heard of Wembley, that sort of area. So, there's a connection there. Um, scary. So, so yes, I think that the Premier story is, is pretty well known. And I think Mike's probably giving you a good account of that, hasn't he? Um, so they all shut down. I mean, what happened with Premier was that, uh, as I just said, they, they gradually moved from the West End of London as they got better. Premier were very successful right from the very beginning. Premier is the last of these companies to be formed in 1922. Um, and, uh, Albert Delaporte went straight in to produce the best. I mean, if you think of the name Delaporte, which is DP, if you put that backwards PD, that's Premier Drum. Um, and he specifically did this because he wanted to make Premier Drums. The, his son told me this, by the way, quicker Delaporte, who was an amazing person, I got to know a little bit. Um, and he wanted to make the best drums right from the very, very start. So he started out making drums, you know, like, for instance, they, they supplied drums to, to Jetson for a couple of years. Um, but very quickly he decided that's it. We're going to make Premier Drums. They're going to be the best. And he never dropped his standards throughout his entire life. So they are wonderful drums all the way through. And they moved from, you know, started off right in the middle of London in Soho and, and gradually moved out until there's a big industrial estate just down the road from here. And obviously that was a target for the Germans in the war. So they blew it up and they, they just, they just got this. They've been in there for a few years actually, but what was a state of the art drum factory. Um, and it was, it was burnt to the ground basically. As far as, you know, Clifford told me that the only thing that left was like a, a metal box, like a metal safe, which luckily had. God, that's awful. Yeah. So luckily it had various papers and patents or whatever, you know, in, in the, you know, these, these deeds of ownership or whatever. And, and the other thing that was interesting is you talk about, you know, I would be shutting down during the war. Premier, as you rightly said, was, was assigned. You have to get a job from, if you want to stay in business, you have to get, do something for the war department. And it just happened that Premier got this job to make bomb sites for anti-tank aircraft. And they, they were completely bombed out. So if the deal was, if you didn't get yourself back up and running within 10 or 10 days or two weeks or whatever, very short space of time, you would lose that contract. So he would lose the company. So he got, got on the train with a chap from the war department and they went north. They thought, well, we've got to get out of London. So they were on the way up somewhere. I'm not sure where they were on the way, but they, they dropped off in Leicester almost by accident, was told. And they got off Leicester and they found these terrible old Victorian factories that were in a dreadful state, you know, sand on the floor or whatever. And they said, okay, this is it. And off they go. And, you know, within 10 days, two weeks, they'd managed to, to, you know, get electricity in and get roofs on them. And they were back up in production. You know, so this is serious stuff. But that, that's the thing. And, and then from that period again, you know, Clifford Delaporte said to me that the Ajax and Beverly with the two companies you mentioned, he said, they, they actually were gearing up for, for drum production towards the end of the war. So they were ready to get going, you know, as soon as the war finished and Premier didn't, they were working on these, you know, this war department stuff. They were a very altruistic company, Premier certainly Albert Delaporte was and Clifford Delaporte's son. So they were working on this right up to the end. But by 1947, they completely resigned. And then all the companies did, they all came out of the war and completely redesigned the drums for the, for the modern era. You know, by that time, you know, we'd had the Stingland Radio King and so on. And again, as I'm sure Mike would have told you, but I'll just very quickly say, the thing about Premier was because they'd been engaged on this very exacting work for gun sites. This was much more accurate than the work they needed to knock up a drum. So they developed this expertise in die casting, which is why immediately after the war, Premier emerged with these amazing die cast Art Deco designs. Albert Delaporte's son, Clifford, Delaporte did an engineering degree and came on board in 1946 and set up a design department. And they just carried on this idea that we're going to make the best. And that's why those post war, and you know, everybody else followed. I mean, you'll find, you know, maybe which is what I should do is give you a list of characteristics of British post war drums. One of the big things is this expertise in die casting, which Premier had. And that's why, you know, those beautiful Art Deco curvy, the classic Premier full length flush brace lug, another one I'm talking about, that appears in the 40 straight after the war and that ran right through to the 70s. And along with die cast hoops, so these are the characteristics of all the UK drummers really from 1950s and 60s that they nearly all had die cast hoops. That's interesting. They often had these die cast flush braces. Yeah. And the die casting then extended to like things like stand bases and tom brackets and so on. So if you look at all those, you know what I mean? They're solid casting. Yeah. Stink casting. Yeah, exactly. Very, very sturdy and well made. Yeah, they are. Yeah. And you know, Premier obviously, you know, he's very famous for the chrome plating, which they took a lot of care with. They did all their own chrome plating in those factories. They had three or four facilities in Leicester. Yeah. Leicester's here where they were based. But the other companies did as well. You know, like, I should probably get on with this. I can see we're not going to get much further. Well, let's jump ahead to like I said with, all right. So after that kind of the war, obviously, and that's something here in America that we don't have that history of factories being bombed and having to recover from that, things did change during the war effort. But then let's talk about sort of the post war, you know, the British invasion. I mean, it just swept the country. You guys were the coolest thing that's ever happened. You got Ringo, like you mentioned, Charlie Watts. You have all these John Bonham, Keith Moon. You have all these amazing musicians who just took America by storm. Who were the, I mean, obviously Premier was, you know, you have Keith Moon playing Premier. You have Bonham who played Ludwig, which American brand. But how did companies like Beverly, Jedson, Heyman, Ajax, how did that, how did they fare after the war? And who was their major clientele? Okay, well, no one had any money. And we were totally in awe of everything Americans. So Premier definitely had with the market leaders. But the Ajax were probably second to Premier. And Ajax was a very cool company. If you look at an Ajax set from post war, 47 onwards, right through to the 60s, they always look to me very similar to a Gretch kid. They've got bullet lugs. And they've got die cashed hoops. And the other important thing is that they, I think I'm right in saying this, I'll be careful what I say here, because things do vary a lot. But they also have international American sizes, because as you know, one of the big problems with British drums, particularly with Premier up until about 1968 is that they have, some of the drums have what's known as pre-international sizes. So I, a standard, Remo weren't fit. And that's all due to the fact that over in Europe, we run on a metric system, whereas in America, I mean, funny enough, Britain again, again, because we've got these so-called special relationship with America. I think we do have a special relationship with America. We're a halfway house, you know. So everybody here now, everybody here now, all the kids, we talked about meters and centimeters and kilometers. But we still measure our distances in miles. The same as you do. I mean, so we're in a sort of a mess. Yeah, and the drums in the same sort of mess, you know. So before I get governed too much of another tangent, Ajax drums were very, very, very cool. And a lot of people played Ajax drums. And like I say, if you look at them, they look very, very similar to Gretsch. They all look sort of Gretsch to me. They're the ones, you know, when I was saying that most of the companies had full length, frost brace, you know, premium style lugs. Ajax didn't. They had these bullet lugs with, and because everybody had die cast hoops, therefore an Ajax set looks very similar to a Gretsch set, you know. And people I think, some people anyway, were aware of that. So a lot of the big pre rock and roll stars, certainly played Ajax. But it didn't seem to, you know, and people played them when they were young. I'm just trying to think of the name, you know, people like Ginger Baker played Ajax drums. Everybody at some stage played Premier. The thing that Pete was started out on, because people had no money. I mean, we were really impoverished in the 50s when these guys were starting up. So one of the names that everybody will bring up is Gigster. I know you've come across Gigster. No. But Gigster was the cheapest version that you could possibly get. Just about everybody can think of started out with a Gigster. I mean, Gigster said they were awful. I mean, they were just single-headed things with terrible. The beginner, that's your starter. A real cheap beginner's drums. But there were a lot of them about. There were a lot of them about. So that was, this was Jedson's, that was their cheapest, you know, Dallas's, Johnny Johnson's, Jedson's cheapest thing was Gigster. But at the top, you know, like in everybody, you know, like all your, anyone you want to name, you know, Phil Collins, Bill Bruever, pretty much anyone you can think of, I imagine, started out on a Gigster because it was cheap, you know. And then they would very often move up to a Premier Olympic, Olympic, you know, Premier's budget version. But as we know, I think this is very similar to America as well. They had the same shells as Premier's, you know, a drum company would just make one shell, that was it. It's a drum shell. No one knew what they were. Most British ones, by the way, were birch. That's interesting. And before the war, they were ash. There was a lot of ash wood about before the war and then after the war, people tended to be birch. So, you know, most of these companies made three-ply birch with solid reinforcing ranks, you know, which quite often were beech. So birch and beech, you know, these are the, you know, where you had maple or whatever, organic in America. A few people played other things like, like for instance, Carlton. Carlton, they weren't terribly well known, but they were around and they would occasionally get an endorser, you know, like Carlton's big thing in the 60s was the guy called Bobby Graham. They had a kit called the Big Beat, which had two big top toms, which no one had back in the day. You know, he had a 12-inch and a 14-inch top tom, you know what I mean? Two toms in the Baystram, which hardly anybody had at that time. Very innovative. Yeah, and he influenced Dave Clark, who people will know about Dave Clark 5. Of course. He influenced Dave Clark to have two toms the wrong way around on his Rodgers set. Does that ring a bell? Yeah, exactly. But Bobby Graham is very important. Bobby Graham, you know, will be done for slander now. Bobby Graham is the guy who actually played on those Dave Clark records. I mean, Dave Clark was a pretty, Dave Clark, a very clever man who produced that stuff. Sure. That's common. That happens. Again, going slightly off. People know it, it happens, yes. And Bobby Graham's also got the distinction that he played on, you know, You Really Got Me by the Kings, which is, you know, generally recognized as the first heavy riff record way back in 1964. Definitely. So he was, you know, the top session guy in this country. Jetson, their thing was called Autocrat. Have you come across the name Autocrat? I've seen, just on drum archive, just again in catalogs. Because a lot of these, it's just interesting. Kind of a side note is these don't, like I'm speaking for myself in my limited sort of, you know, I'm not in, I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is not a hub for, you know, finding crazy vintage drums. There's stuff around. But it's not a thing where you go and you see, you know, you come across like an Ajax drum set somewhere. They are in America, you know, around a little bit, I'm sure. But you don't find these just sitting around, like even in music shops, you don't see these very often popping up, which is just an interesting kind of side note that is that the same for you guys with, let's say, is it more rare to see like a slinger lens set sitting in a shop than it is, you know, some of these? Yeah, I mean, one of the great tragedies of all this is that what happened was, because, you know, once Ringo came along, everybody wanted a Ludwig. Yeah. Everybody wanted anything that was American anyway, because it just appeared to be so much more, it's the same as they wanted a Fender guitar. But there was a good reason to want a Fender guitar because you couldn't get anything close to it over here. But we did have great drums and the irony is that, like I say, those drums from the 1560s, they all had very thin shells with reinforcing rings and they had die cast hoops and, you know, really well made die cast lugs. And so they're actually very good drums, but they look terribly outdated and sad and old. And, you know, we had this terrible image problem, you know, so like an autocrat set, if you've seen an autocrat set from the 1660s, they've got these premier style full length flush lugs, but they're sort of very bulbous. And if you look at it, you suddenly think, well, hang on a minute, that's exactly like the reissued Yamaha recording custom, you know, that was reissued in 2016. Yeah. I don't know, people are familiar with this, you know, great drums. But they made that famous recording custom lug, which obviously, by the way, he's copied directly from Premier, so a Yamaha that might be saying that. That's a compliment to Yamaha. I love Yamaha, by the way. Yeah, I'm a Yamaha player. I think Yamaha, fantastic, a great company. But that lug, you know, which Premier, you know, used for years and years until it became, it started to look out of fashion. So Premier stopped doing it just at the moment that Yamaha started doing it. Absolutely. But anyway, an autocrat kit has got these bulbous versions of that lug. And if you look at it, you think, well, like I say, it's very much like the latest recording custom design and we all know these are terrific drums. And they are out there. And what happened with them is they were all thrown away. People just dumped them in skips. And it's only in recent years that people, you know, through, you know, we have a vintage show here run by Simon John, Simon John by Gustav de Simon John. Vintage show that Rob Cook comes over to. You know, we have that in the Midlands every year. And these drums turn up there. And we do now have a lovely set of people who realize the value of these drums. And I mean, I would advise anyone, if you see one, grab it. Grab it, hang on to it. You know, the same with Beverly drums. I mean, Beverly drums from, Beverly was bought by Albert Delport, a premier in 1958. So from 1958 on as Beverly drums, that were actually made in the premier factory. But they were made very, but it was a separate company. And Beverly, they used to advertise themselves as American style drums. And so they got a premier shells, which are great shells, but slightly more Americanized, you know, slightly more hip hardware. So if you see a Beverly kit, these are great sets of drums. I shouldn't be telling you really, it should be a secret, you know. And we're going to be buying them up. Everybody's going to be buying them up. So just quickly say about Heyman. I mean, Heyman came about because Ivor Arbiter, who's the guy who sold Ringo, his first Ludwig, he used to own Drum City in London. Ivor Arbiter bought Carlton. Okay, so the Carlton by that time was dying on his feet. Again, because he had this old fashioned image. So they gave up the ghost and also Ivor joined with Dallas. If you remember, that's the parent company of Carlton. And he formed a company called Dallas Arbiter. And Ivor was always very much into drums. And he was a very interesting guy. She talked to Bob Henry about him. And he decided to make, because Ivor had had the Ludwig. Either was the guy who brought Ludwig into Britain in 1962. And ending up with Ringo buying them, so on. Still everybody knows. But he lost that dealership and he decided he was going to make a British drum to rival the American drums. Because up until that time, it was just Premier. And Premier by that time was starting to look rather old fashioned at that time. So he got together, he bought the Carlton factory down in Kent. And took over the whole Carlton thing. Just said, right, we're going to just make something much more American. You know, so that's how Heyman came about. And they designed a lug. Jerry Evans, who was working with him, had had a George Way kit in the 60s. With the round lug. Exactly. And they were thinking, well, what sort of lug can we have? We've got to have separate lugs. We can't have this Nonsense Slush Brace Premier stuff. We've got to have American separate lugs. And they looked at it and Jerry said, well, I like this round turret lug, the famous turret lug. And the engineers down there said, well, that's the easiest thing to do. Just we can knock up a circle. So if you look at the Heyman lug superficially, it's a little bit like the DW lug. But it's actually simple. It's just a circle. So they made that. And that immediately made them look fabulously modern. And then I've had this crazy idea about lining the shells with metal. You know, he actually had the pasty dealership at the time. And he used pasty, simple metal to load. Because the idea then was 1968 we're talking about before my king had really taken off properly. And so they wanted to make the drums loud. More production. Yeah. Premier as loud as, they aren't as loud as Ludwig. Everybody wants a Ludwig. So how can we make them loud? Oh, see, we'll light them with metal. So he did that. And of course, it became ridiculous. So then they said, well, why don't we we'll paint the inside like Ludwig's Rezacote? So the Heyman Vibrosonic lining is just white paint. But it's really thick white paint. It's very reflective in a surface. And it did make those drums loud. And they also had a 13 inch tom because we didn't have 13 inch tombs back then. We all had 12 inch tombs. As you know what I mean? So that's why Heyman took off. And Heyman was a real last stab attempt by the British drum industry to cover. And it was very successful. I mean, lots of people play Heyman drums. Like 60s, early 70s. Yeah. The most famous is probably Simon Kirk with free. You know, if you should see the footage of free at Lila White Festival in 1970 with this battered Heyman kit. I mean, people only had one drum kit in those days. I mean, the heads on the kit are absolutely battered to death. You know, and there's Simon thrashing away, playing all right now. It's a wonderful sight. And that is a Heyman drum kit, you know. And again, those drum kits are gold dust again. Now, I shouldn't be saying this because up until very recently, you could pick them up from next to nothing. But I think probably the same way as you can get a slingling kit, as you say, cheaper in America than we can here. If we want to buy a 60s slingling, it's going to cost us a lot of money to get over here. Whereas you probably pick them up still over there fairly cheap. Yeah. Same thing here. Everything's getting pretty expensive. I mean, that's I think, and I'm probably not helping by having a podcast about vintage drums. But the interest is growing. Which I think is a good transition to so before we end, I'm assuming that like many drum companies, they just got beat by the global market of obviously Premier went on and then they're still around. I know it's more of, you know, being made in the Far East. But so it's kind of different. But I would just imagine, right, that these these went the way of just they couldn't keep up with, you know, They all went. They all went except for Premier. So, you know, of those five lines, Premier ended up making Beverly drums, and Beverly drums are fabulous. And if you see those get one. And all the others, they just threw in the, threw in the towel, you know, Ajax, Boozy Hawks gave up. I mean, Ajax, Boozy Hawks, you know, major company, they eventually started to take drums from Premier also. So that they all went to a Premier did, was already way ahead of everybody else. And they actually did really well. I mean, because the beat boom was so big that even though everybody wanted a Ludwig kit, most people couldn't afford one. So, you know, Premier kit was two thirds of the price of a Ludwig kit, you know, so people still went on buying Premier's and limits. And they're good drums. And then Premier went through, in fact, Premier made this massive factory with newly built in 1977, which is right at the end of, you know, it's almost like their troubles started from the moment they moved to this massive factory, but they've had several, you know, revivals ever since. I mean, every decade, Premier has reinvented. I mean, what happened, of course, was that the original family, the Delaportes, were finally, you know, the same way as Ludwig sold out and Slinglin sold out and so on. The Delaportes family being altruistic, they probably stuck it out a little bit too long to the point where, I mean, they could have, they could have sold up earlier and taken the money, but they didn't. They stuck with it up to the point where they were losing so much money that they were ousted. So that's another story. That's noble. But, you know, they were ousted out of the family. Yes, they were ousted from the company. And from that, and that, by the way, is when the whole Premier image changed completely. So you went from the classic Premier that we all know and love to the Signia and the Janista range. Yes, sure. Which are also very much to do. I don't know whether, again, I don't know whether Mike told you about this, but Yamaha bought Premier. Okay. And I've got a lot of time for Yamaha as they come here. They actually did Premier a huge favour. I mean, they, you know, kept them from going completely under, modernise the factory, put in all their air seal moulds and stuff. And then when they left, they left them there, you know, so that Premier could then modernise. And they came up with the Signia range, which is their first maple drum set. You know, they made a wonderful drum set in Britain before. You know, and, you know, they went on and then they reinvented themselves several times. I mean, it's been very much a rocky road, as we know. But, you know, quite a few generations of Premier drums after that are really terrific drums, you know, right up until very modern times. And then in the end, of course, they ended up, you know, shipping it all to the Far East, as they did with everybody else. But that is another long, complicated story. Well, Jeff, why don't we tell people here at the end where they can find you? Because we didn't mention this at the beginning, but you obviously are a very esteemed author. People can find the drum handbook and the drum book, which is like just the cover of that alone is very like you see it. It's like if you search, I don't think you did it on purpose, but you sort of like you tricked Google, because if you ever type drum book, you come up right away. Yeah, it's a drum book. So yeah, you have no idea how much hassle that was. Yeah, no, the drum book is the first edition is 1997, and then 10 years later, 2007, there's a second edition. And I had 10 years more knowledge, I suppose. But what we did was the second edition. I mean, look, go on and buy it, because I can say this in all honestly, because I don't make any money out of it, because any money I made out of those books I made at the time, you know what I mean? So I'm saying this very simply. Yeah, so I just feel that. Yeah, get them, because they're a full of wonderful picture. It's called the drum book, and it's called the history of the rock drum kit, but it isn't. It's the history of the kit. It was a misnomer. It's basically 100 years of drum development, and it nearly killed me. I mean, I did my utmost to put the entire history of the drum set into one small book, you know, a smallish book. Sure. And then the illustrations, the photography in there is wonderful, I can say that, because I didn't do it. Really, obviously, illustrated. And then what I did do was, in the back of this book, there's a potted history of 80, about 80 drum companies. So that really did nearly kill me. And it pretty much stands up. I mean, obviously, there are mistakes here and there, but all the stuff I've just been talking about, most of that is in there in much, much, much more detail. So it's a really nice read. Well, mine is in the mail, and I'm excited to get it. And like you said, you're not making money on it anymore. You can't find it. I think I found it for like $6. So really, people can just Google it and find it. Yeah, get secondhand ones. I found a source of, I nearly bought a dozen the other day, because I thought, oh, I love them. Give them to people. Yeah, so you can pick them up. The drumhand book, by the way, is about the actual, what a drum kit is. It's not about the history. There is a bit of history in there, but it's about how a drum kit is built and all that sort of stuff. So I'll just say that a lot of that, I was inspired by John Aldridge's book, you know, the very first one. And Harry Kangani, you know, the Harry Kangani book, the first one was a beautiful little book, the history of the American companies. And then Rob Cook has done this incredible, you know, thing, you know, collating the whole of, you know, just absolutely amazing. But this is the entire issue of the drum set. So I say it nearly did for me, but I'm glad I did it. Someone had to do it. Oh, that's awesome. Well, and then before we go, people can also check out John Bonham, The Thunder of Drums, which is just a famous book, which you wrote with Chris Welch. And also, and you wrote a cream book. And then there's also BBC's Rock School, which I've posted videos of, which again, I think we can talk about that for an hour. But people can search that on YouTube and check it out. Oh, I'm just going to add one thing, which is an also Rhythm magazine, which I've written for the last three years. And please subscribe to Rhythm because in these difficult times, if it disappears, it will never reappear. So, you know, we're going, you know, and I've written a vintage column in there for, I think I've done 230 vintage columns now. We do one every month. And yeah, and they're fabulous with huge help from all those people I mentioned and many more. So it's a tragic show. So yeah, Rhythm. Rhythm, Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. And I really enjoyed talking with you and getting to know you over the last couple weeks of getting ready for this. So I'm excited to get my drum book in the mail and start digging in. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, and thanks for asking and I hope there weren't too many mistakes. Oh, you did great. All right, good luck to everybody. Keep safe. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, speak to you soon. If you like this podcast, find me on social media at Drum History and please share, rate and leave a review. And let me know topics that you would like to learn about in the future. Until next time, keep on learning. This is a Gwynn Sound podcast.