|
Legal | Salamidesign | Contact | Links |
||
|
|
Jim Chapin
is a New Yorker born and
bred. He was a relatively late comer to the drums, taking them up at
eighteen after two inconclusive years of college. Jim left William and
Mary in early 1938 after having cut classes regularly in order to obey a
massive compulsion to batter a set of drums that a classmate had left
set up in the gymnasium. Thanks to understanding parents, he was allowed
to buy a set that spring, and in June was fortunate enough to get a
summer job in the mountains with an eight-piece band called “Georgia
Dons” at the “Purling Palace”, a night club schedule: seven nights a
week, 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. weekdays, 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays
5 p.m. to 3 a.m. one had to learn something on jobs like these if only
general survival procedure. Jim was lucky enough to have excellent instruction almost from the outset. He studied first with Ben silver or New York and then with the fabled Rudimentalist, Sanford A. Moeller. Jim feels that he also was fortunate in that New York in the late ‘30’s was full of fine drummers whose playing was readily available to the ears of the young enthusiast. Jim recalls that during one brief period he heard Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton with Goodman, Dave Tough with Dorsey and Goodman, Ray Baudac with Bob Crosby, Cozy Cole with stuff smith, Jimmy Crawford with Lunceford, Sonny Greer with Duke, Jo Jones with Count Basie, Check Webb with his own band, Sid Catlet with Louis Armstrong, O’Neill Spencer with John Kirby, Slick Jones with Fats Waller, Arthur Herbert with Pete Brown, Buddy Rich with Joe Marsala, Bunny Berigan and Artie Shaw, Cliff Leemans with Shaw and Charlie Barnett, Razz Mitchell with the Savoy Sultans, Chris Columbus with his own band, Ben Thigpen (Ed’s father) with Andy Kirk, J.C Heard with Teddy Wilson’s big band and small band, Zutty Singleton, Tony Spargo, George Wettling and Danny Alvin at Nick’s in the Village (incidentally, Nick Rongetti gave Jim his first night club job as leader when he let him bring in a Kansas City-styled group on several Monday nights during 1939). |
|