ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997 TAG: 9704140079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY THE ROANOKE TIMES
Gretsch, Slingerland and Leedy were among the names displayed at the Roanoke Valley Drum Show, the area's first, Saturday.
A vintage drum show's not for the hearing sensitive or the drum dumb. If you think a Ludwig is a Beethoven, you didn't belong at the Salem Civic Center on Saturday. But you might have learned something.
The 1963 Ludwig Classic drum set Mark Leonard had for sale represented what the Roanoke Valley Drum Show was all about.
Leonard, a Farmville, N.C., vintage drum collector, was asking $1,350 for the grouping.
Its original price?
"Four hundred ninety-five dollars," said Justin Wolf of Charlottesville, who wore a T-shirt featuring jazz drummer Art Blakey. A few minutes earlier, Wolf had made the Ludwigs, and the Salem Civic Center Community Room, vibrate in one of the day's many impromptu performances.
Wolf knew the price because he owns a copy of the original catalog in which the drumset was featured.
"Plus, I was there. I turn the Big Five-0 this year," Wolf said.
Those were the years - from the '50s to the '70s - when drums were drums and Saturday's show-goers were more boy than man.
Ringo Starr played a Ludwig.
William F. Ludwig Jr., son of the founder of what became Ludwig Industries, was Saturday's guest celebrity. The company his dad started in 1909 was sold to The Selmer Co. in 1981. Ludwig now travels and lectures on the history of drumming.
He leaves next week for a speaking tour of six European countries.
Gretsch, Slingerland and Leedy were also drum big names of the period and some of those were on display, or being traded or bought or sold. Ludwig estimates that there are 25 million drumsets in existence from the period.
Vintage drums have become one of nostalgia's hot buttons. The trend toward collecting the wider head drums began about a decade ago, said Roanoke Valley drumming instructor Myron White.
The wider heads - the head part of the drum that the cover sits on - just have a better sound, White said.
White orchestrated the gathering, the first in the area, after attending similar shows in other states. He is a member of the Roanoke Valley Community Band, the Virginia Highlands Pipe and Drum Band and the First Baptist Church instrumental orchestra.
He likes to play drums. And he likes to talk drums.
White teaches the 26 Standard American Drum Rudiments: A drum roll is two beats with each stick. A single paradiddle is executed with a right-left-right-right-left-right-left-left.
Some of today's young drummers don't know the rudiments, White said.
But never mind, he added, because rhythm matters more than anything else in drumming.
And current music has some superb drummers too, said Ed Pilegard, a juvenile probation officer from Stuart.
Pilegard, who said drumming keeps him in touch with young people, especially admires the drummers in alternative rock bands like Live and Collective Soul.
As with most of the show's exhibitors, drumming is a hobby for Pilegard. However, civil engineer Jack Lawton turned the hobby into a business a few years ago.
The Sunbury, Pa., resident works full time restoring drums like moviegoers saw in "For the Boys," a film about big band entertainers.
Lawton's most famous work, though, was to build a drum on which a collector could display an original Beatles Ludwig bass drumhead.
The drumhead was part of The Beatles' 1964 debut on the ``Ed Sullivan Show'' and a collector paid $44,000 for it at an auction conducted by Sotheby's in New York.
"I didn't know how much he paid for it when I was handling it," Lawton said Saturday.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON THE ROANOKE TIMES. Trinette Sniderby CNB(left) and her fiance Joe Kirkman came from Winston-Salem, N.C., to
attend the Roanoke Valley Drum Show held Saturday at the Salem Civic
Center. color.