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Swing-Era Dossier

Gene Krupa

1909 – 1973

Born

January 15, 1909, Chicago, IL (South Side). Given name Eugene Bertram Krupa. Youngest of nine children of devout Polish-Catholic parents — father Bartłomiej (Bartley) Krupa, a Polish immigrant, and mother Anna, born in Shamokin, PA, of Polish descent. Father died while Gene was a boy; his mother worked as a milliner. Took a job at the Brown Music Company through an older brother and was drawn to the cheapest thing on the shelf — a drum kit.

Died

October 16, 1973, Yonkers, NY, age 64. Heart failure; had been treated for leukemia for years and also suffered from emphysema. Buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, Calumet City, IL.

Instruments

Drums (primary, and his whole identity). Largely self-taught as a boy, then studied percussion formally with Chicago teachers Roy Knapp, Ed Straight, and Al Silverman.

Drum kit / gear

The architect of the modern kit. He pushed Slingerland to build tom-toms with tunable top and bottom heads — the "Radio King" line — and worked with Avedis Zildjian to standardize the hi-hat and the modern cymbal vocabulary (ride, crash, splash). The drum set virtually every drummer now plays is largely his specification. Endorsed Slingerland for decades; his name sold drums to a generation.

Nicknames

  • "The Ace Drummer Man" — his standing press/marquee billing through the swing years.
  • "The Chicago Flash" — early billing tag from his Chicago origins and flashy style.
  • (Both are billing names rather than intimate nicknames; bandmates mostly just called him Gene.)

Bands / years

  • The Frivolians (1921) — first paying job, a summer-resort band.
  • Chicago jazz circle / "Austin High Gang" orbit (mid–late 1920s) — running with the young white Chicago jazzmen.
  • McKenzie–Condon Chicagoans (1927) — the December OKeh/Brunswick session ("China Boy" / "Sugar") cited as the first jazz recording to capture a full drum kit including bass drum.
  • Moved to NYC 1929; Red Nichols and His Five Pennies (c. 1929–1933), including Broadway pit-band work (Gershwin's Strike Up the Band, Girl Crazy). Also Irving Aaronson, Russ Columbo, Mal Hallett, Buddy Rogers.
  • Benny Goodman Orchestra (late 1934–1938) — the band that lit the Swing Era; Carnegie Hall, Jan 16, 1938.
  • Gene Krupa Orchestra (1938–1943) — his own big band; Roy Eldridge and Anita O'Day join 1941.
  • Rejoined Benny Goodman briefly, then Tommy Dorsey (1943–1944) after the drug bust dissolved his band.
  • Gene Krupa Orchestra, reformed (1944–1951) — bigger, with strings and a bop-aware book.
  • Jazz at the Philharmonic (Norman Granz, late 1940s–1950s) — the Krupa–Buddy Rich drum battles.
  • Gene Krupa Trio / Quartet (1950s–60s, often with Charlie Ventura). Largely retired by the late 1960s on health grounds.

Active

c. 1921–1973.

Signature tunes

"Sing, Sing, Sing" (with Goodman, 1937), "Drum Boogie" (1941), "Let Me Off Uptown" (1941), "Drummin' Man" (1939), "Apurksody" (his theme, 1938), "Leave Us Leap" (1945), "Wire Brush Stomp."

Famous compositions

Krupa wrote or co-wrote several of his own band's features:

  • "Drum Boogie" (1941) — co-written with trumpeter Roy Eldridge; the showpiece performed in the film Ball of Fire.
  • "Drummin' Man" (1939) — co-written with pianist/bandleader Tiny Parham.
  • "Apurksody" (1938) — his theme song; the title is a play on "rhapsody" over his own name reversed ("Apurk" ≈ Krupa).
  • NOT his: "Sing, Sing, Sing" (Louis Prima, 1936 — the famous chart welds it to Chu Berry's "Christopher Columbus"); "Let Me Off Uptown" (Earl Bostic & Redd Evans, 1941).

Interesting facts

  • He invented the drummer-as-star. Before Krupa the drummer kept time in the back; he dragged the kit to the front of the stage. His extended tom-tom feature on Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing" (1937; immortalized at Carnegie Hall, Jan 16, 1938) was the first drum solo to become a genuine pop sensation. Buddy Rich called him "the inspiration for every big-name drummer in the business"; John Bonham idolized him; he is routinely called the first rock-star drummer.
  • First full drum kit on record. The December 1927 McKenzie–Condon Chicagoans session is cited as the first jazz recording to include a bass drum — engineers had warned that its vibration would bounce the cutting needle out of the wax groove.
  • The showman. Gum-chewing, hair flying, sweat spraying, eyes wild — he turned drumming into theater. Matinee-idol looks made him a bona fide teen heartthrob, a first for a sideman.
  • He almost became a priest. His devout Polish-Catholic mother groomed him for the church and enrolled him at St. Joseph's College, a seminary prep school in Rensselaer, Indiana (1924). He left in 1925 to drum.
  • The 1943 bust. Arrested in San Francisco in January 1943: a misdemeanor marijuana-possession count, plus a felony for sending his 17-year-old band valet to fetch the marijuana from his hotel room (contributing to the delinquency of a minor). He served 84 days; the felony was reversed on appeal in 1944, and the case is widely regarded as a frame-up. It broke up his band and briefly wrecked his career.
  • Roy Eldridge and Anita O'Day. In 1941 Krupa featured Black trumpeter Roy Eldridge as a full front-line star beside white singer Anita O'Day; their flirtatious interracial vocal trade on "Let Me Off Uptown" was a daring integration statement — and Eldridge endured ugly racism on the road that the band repeatedly had to fight.
  • The Krupa–Rich battles. His "drum battles" with Buddy Rich at Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic (most famously Carnegie Hall, September 1952) were legendary showdowns — the two were rivals and close friends.
  • Left Goodman March 3, 1938 — weeks after the Carnegie triumph — amid friction, partly because Krupa's crowd-stealing showmanship rankled the bandleader. They later reconciled and Krupa sat in again in 1943.
  • On screen. Featured as himself or as a player in Ball of Fire (1941, the "Drum Boogie" matchstick scene with Barbara Stanwyck), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and The Benny Goodman Story (1956). Sal Mineo portrayed him in the 1959 biopic The Gene Krupa Story.
  • Drum school. With drummer Cozy Cole he opened the Krupa–Cole School of Percussion in New York in 1954.

Sources

Clips