Gene Krupa

Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa
	Gene Krupa in 1944
Background information
Birth name	Eugene Bertram Krupa
Born	January 15, 1909; Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	October 16, 1973 (aged 64); Yonkers, New York
Genres	Jazz, swing, dixieland
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer, bandleader
Instruments	Drums
Years active	1920s–1973
Associated acts	Eddie Condon, Benny Goodman, Louie Bellson, Anita O'Day

Eugene Bertram Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973) was an American jazz and big band drummer, band leader, actor, and composer. Known for his highly energetic, flamboyant style and for his showmanship,^[1] Krupa was important for his musical contribution to jazz music and his influence extends to this day.^[2]

His drum solo on "Sing, Sing, Sing" (1937) elevated the role of the drummer as a frequently used solo voice in the band, making him one of the first major percussive soloists.

He is also known for defining the standard drum kit used today in collaboration with brands Slingerland and Zildjian. Krupa is considered "the founding father of modern drumset" by Modern Drummer magazine.^[3]

Early life[edit]

Gene Krupa was born in Chicago, the youngest of Anna (née Oslowski) and Bartłomiej Krupa's nine children. Bartłomiej was an immigrant from Poland. Anna was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, also of Polish descent. His parents were devout Roman Catholics and had groomed Gene for the priesthood. He spent his grammar school days at various parochial schools. Upon graduation he attended Saint Joseph's College for a year, but later decided it was not his vocation.

Krupa studied with Sanford A. Moeller and began playing drums professionally in the mid-1920s with bands in Wisconsin. He broke into the Chicago scene in 1927, when he was picked by MCA to become a member of "Thelma Terry and Her Playboys", the first notable American jazz band—all-girl bands excepted—to be led by a female musician. The Playboys were the house band at The Golden Pumpkin nightclub in Chicago, and toured extensively throughout the eastern and central United States.

Career[edit]

Krupa made his first recordings in 1927, with a band under the leadership of Red McKenzie and guitarist Eddie Condon. Along with other recordings by musicians from the Chicago jazz scene such as Bix Beiderbecke, these recordings are examples of Chicago style jazz. The numbers recorded at that session were "China Boy", "Sugar", "Nobody's Sweetheart", and "Liza". The McKenzie-Condon recordings are notable for being early examples of the use of a bass drum and snare drum/cymbals on recordings, at least for the studio where these recordings were made. Some of Krupa's big influences during this time were Father Ildefonse Rapp, Roy Knapp (both teachers of Gene). Later, there were cylinder recordings of African drumming that Gene intensely studied. Drummers such as Tubby Hall, Zutty Singleton and Baby Dodds contributed to Gene's developing his own sound. Press rolls were a fairly common technique in the early stages of Gene's development and, stylistically, this technique was, to some degree, evident in Krupa's playing well into the late 1940s and early 1950s. Gene assimilates these influences into his own style very early in his career. There were many other drummers (Ray Bauduc, Chick Webb, George Wettling, Dave Tough) whose work influenced Gene's approach to drumming and other instrumentalists and composers (Frederick Delius, for one) who strongly influenced Gene's entire approach to music.^[4]

Krupa also appeared on six recordings made by the Thelma Terry band in 1928. In December 1934, he joined Benny Goodman's band, where his featured drum work made him a national celebrity. His tom-tom interludes on their hit "Sing, Sing, Sing" were the first extended drum solos to be recorded commercially^[5] However, "artistic and personal disputes" with Goodman prompted Krupa to leave the group and form his own orchestra, shortly after the famous Carnegie Hall concert in January 1938.^[6] He appeared in the 1941 film Ball of Fire, in which he and his band perform an extended version of the hit "Drum Boogie", sung by Barbara Stanwyck (whose singing was dubbed by Martha Tilton), which he had composed with trumpeter Roy Eldridge. As an encore to this piece, he plays a tamer version of the same song using matchsticks as drumsticks and a matchbox as a drum, while Stanwyck and the audience sing along. In 1943, his arrest for possession of marijuana forced the breakup of his own orchestra and he rejoined Goodman's band for a year.^[6]

As the 1940s ended, large orchestras fell by the wayside: Count Basie closed his large band and Woody Herman reduced his to an octet. Krupa gradually cut down the size of his own band in the late 1940s, and from 1951 on he led a trio or quartet, often featuring the multi-instrumentalist Eddie Shu on tenor sax, clarinet and harmonica. He appeared regularly in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts. He made a cameo appearance in the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives. His athletic drumming style, timing methods and cymbal technique evolved during this decade to fit in with changed fashions and tastes, but he never quite adjusted to the bebop style of jazz.^[4]

Krupa performing in New York, 1946

In 1954, Krupa returned to Hollywood to appear in such films as The Glenn Miller Story and The Benny Goodman Story. In 1959, the movie biography The Gene Krupa Story was released; Sal Mineo portrayed Krupa, and the film featured a cameo appearance by Red Nichols.^[4]

During the 1950s Krupa often appeared at the Metropole, near Times Square in Manhattan. He continued to perform in famous clubs in the 1960s, including the Showboat Lounge in NW Washington DC. Increasingly troubled by back pain, he retired in the late 1960s and opened a music school. One of his pupils was Kiss drummer Peter Criss,^[7] whilst Jerry Nolan from The New York Dolls was another, as evidenced by the drumming similarities between Kiss's "100,000 Years" and The New York Dolls's "Jet Boy".

Krupa occasionally played in public in the early 1970s until shortly before his death. One such late appearance occurred in 1972 at a jazz concert series sponsored by the New School in New York. Krupa appeared onstage with other well-known musicians including trumpeter Harry James and the younger jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. The presumption was that the 500 or so audience members were drawn by Mulligan's contemporary appeal, but when, during the second tune, Krupa took a 16-bar break, the room erupted, the crowd leaping to its feet and creating a deafening roar of unanimous affection. In effect, Krupa remained a seminal performer up to his death, even while playing for a huge audience perhaps half his age.^{[citation needed]}

Krupa-Rich drum battles[edit]

Norman Granz recruited Krupa and fellow drummer Buddy Rich for his Jazz at The Philharmonic concerts. It was suggested that the two perform a "drum battle" at the Carnegie Hall concert in September 1952, which was recorded and later issued on vinyl as The Drum Battle by Verve.

Further drum battles took place at subsequent JATP concerts; the two drummers also faced off in a number of television broadcasts and other venues. and often played similar duets with drummer Cozy Cole.

Krupa and Rich recorded two studio albums together: Krupa and Rich (Verve, 1955) and Burnin' Beat (Verve, 1962).

Personal life[edit]

Krupa married Ethel Maguire twice: the first marriage lasted from 1934 to 1942; the second one dates from 1946 to her death in 1955. Krupa remarried in 1959 to Patty Bowler and they were divorced within 10 years.

In 1943, Krupa was not arrested for possession of two marijuana cigarettes. He was charged with local and Federal "Contributing to delinquency of a minor" charges and was given a 90-day jail sentence for the first one and (initially) convicted of the second. He served 84 days of the local sentence (time served for a crime was was acttually not guilty of). He was exonerated/acquitted of all charges when it was subsequently proven that the entire episode was a trumped-up "frame", as the prosecution's key witness (John Pateakos) had been paid to falsely testify against Krupa. It was a set-up "bust" from the beginning and Pateakos returned to prove a) he, in fact had not been a minor, b) was dodging the draft at the time, was instructed by the Federal agents to 'disappear" after the first conviction and, ultimately, recanted his entire testimony. That whole process took over a year but the damage to Gene's career had been considerable.

In the early 1970s his house in Yonkers, New York, was almost badly damaged by fire. He continued to live in the parts of the house that were habitable.

In 1973, Krupa died of heart failure (but also suffered from Leukemia and emphysema) in Yonkers, New York, aged 64. "Drummer Gene Krupa, whose flying sticks symbolized the swing era, died Tuesday after a lengthy illness.|newspaper=St. Petersburg Times |date=October 17, 1973 |accessdate=2012-10-16 }}</ref> He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Calumet City, Illinois.

Legacy[edit]

Gene Krupa Drive in Yonkers, New York

In the 1930s, Krupa became the first endorser of Slingerland drums. At Krupa's urging, Slingerland developed tom-toms with tuneable top and bottom heads, which immediately became important elements of virtually every drummer's setup. Krupa developed and popularized many of the cymbal techniques that became standards. His collaboration with Avedis Zildjian developed the modern hi-hat cymbals and standardized the names and uses of the ride cymbal, crash cymbal, splash cymbal. He is also credited with helping to formulate the modern drum set, being one of the first jazz drummers (for that recording studio) to use a bass drum, in a recording session in December 1927.^[8] One of his bass drums, a Slingerland 14 X 26, inscribed with Benny Goodman's and Krupa's initials, is preserved at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.^[9]

In 1959, The Gene Krupa Story was released theatrically in America. In 1978, Krupa became the first drummer inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. The 1937 recording of Louis Prima's "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)" combined with Waller's "Christopher Columbus" by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra featuring Gene Krupa on drums was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1982.

Krupa has been cited as an inspiration for drummers including Creedence Clearwater Revival's Doug Clifford and Kiss's Peter Criss.^[10] Rhythm, the UK's best-selling drum magazine, voted Gene Krupa the third most influential drummer ever, in a poll conducted for its February 2009 issue. Voters included over 50 top-name drummers.

Discography[edit]

Krupa's version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay released as a 78 rpm shellac record (Brunswick)

As leader[edit]

1938–41 Drummin' Man (Charly) with Roy Eldridge, Anita O'Day, Benny Carter, Charlie Ventura
1939 Live: Americas Favorite Drummer
1940–41 Drum Boogie (Columbia)
1941–1949 Uptown (Columbia)
1945 Town Hall Jazz Concert, Gene Krupa-Charlie Ventura Trio (3 selections) (Commodore, reissue Atlantic, 1973)
1949 Lionel Hampton/Gene Krupa (Forlane) with Don Fagerquist, Frank Rehak, Frank Rosolino, Roy Eldridge
1952 The Drum Battle (Verve) with Buddy Rich
1953 The Exciting Gene Krupa (Enoch's Music) with Charlie Shavers, Bill Harris, Willie Smith, Ben Webster, Teddy Wilson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Israel Crosby
1953 Timme Rosenkrantz' 1945 Concert, Vol. 3
1954 Gene Krupa, Vol. 1
1954 Gene Krupa, Vol. 2
1954 Sing, Sing, Sing
1954 The Driving Gene Krupa
1955 The Gene Krupa Quartet
1955 The Jazz Rhythms of Gene Krupa
1955 G. Krupa–L. Hampton–T. Wilson
1956 Krupa and Rich (Verve) with Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Buddy Rich
1956 Gene Krupa Big Band: Drummer Man featuring Anita O'Day & Roy Eldridge (Verve)
1957 Krupa Rocks
1959 Big Noise from Winnetka (Verve)
1959 Hey...Here's Gene Krupa
1959 Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements (Verve)
1959 The Gene Krupa Story
1961 Percussion King
1962 Burnin' Beat (Verve) with Buddy Rich
1963 The Mighty Two (Roulette) with Louis Bellson
1963 Classics in Percussion
1964 Featuring Charlie Ventura
1964 The Great New Gene Krupa Quartet Featuring Charlie Ventura (Verve) also Nabil Totah and John Bunch
1973 Live at the New School (Chiaroscuro, 1973 [2002])

As sideman[edit]

With Benny Goodman

1950 Live at Carnegie Hall (1938)
1955 The Benny Goodman Story, Vols. 1–2
1956 The King of Swing, Vol. 2
1956 Trio Quartet Quintet
1997 The Complete RCA Victor Small Group Recordings (RCA Victor, 1935–39 [1997])