Who started 'here' long before they went 'there'?

I played in the orchestra, in our school system you could be in orchestra at 2nd grade, but not band until 5th grade. I didn't start playing at school until 8th grade. Since I was in a city orchestra and we had percussionists there, they grabbed my attention and I didn't have a practice pad at home. Just a throw pillow and some old sticks.
 
For my 12th birthday I was given a cheap snare drum with a tin cymbal attached to it. I played that thing until it got ridiculous not to have a kit, so at 14 I got a Stewart kit from Sears for Christmas, and two years later my father bought a 4-piece silver sparkle Ludwig kit from a college student who needed the money.
 
Yes, I started with the same Remo practice pad.

And my first several years of lessons were on a set of pads.
 
keep it simple said:
I was taught by an elderly lady called Jean Webster. She was in her 70's when she started teaching me in a class of about 12 pupils. One hour/week, provided by the school. I had a very humble upbringing, & my adopted parents couldn't afford drum lessons, they had enough difficulty affording one pair of shoes each year.

By the time I reached my final year at the school, I was the only pupil left in this weekly one hour class. On my very last lesson, this purely classically trained diminutive old lady (I'm guessing she was under 5 foot tall & weighed under 70lbs) she brought in a drum kit. Not just any old drum kit, but a huge Ludwig kit c/w 26" bass drum, 14" mounted tom, 18" floor tom. She set it up in the middle of the vast school hall, & proceeded to hammer out some of the best rock drumming I've ever heard. Her hand/foot triplets were a joy to behold. Zero effort, minimal stick heights, huge technique, massive sound. My jaw hit the floor. She let me have a go, & I played my first ever money beat. She packed up the kit, said her farewell, & left me with this message - "remember Andrew, keep it simple". A few months later she passed away, & a month after that, I had my first drum kit.
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Wow what a fantastic moment in your life, Truely inspiring at so mant levels.... and quite moving in its own way....especially when you consider where you are today !!
 
I played a pad. Still do. It doesn’t develop my bass or hi hat skill though.
 
I went "there", "here" and then back to "there".
My brother brought a Beverly kit from a friends dad when I was 16. I started to make a noise when he was out but after about six months he gave up and sold the kit (not even a stick remained). I was by that time fully taken by the beautiful noise and would tap on any thing. By the time I was 25 I managed to build my own practice kit out of wood with bits of rubber glued on for pads, this was in a wooden garage with no heating or lights! but some how I did have a proper stool bass pedal and sticks. About a year latter I joined my first band as the rehearsal drummer, (there drummer couldn't get to all the practices) but I still didn't have a real kit. After about a year and one song in one gig I got my own kit, five different make drums in different colors with cymbals to match.That kit lasted a couple of years before I had to sell it and it took another 10 years or more before my next kit. This was all before e-bay and the internet. Now I have finally started to take lessons and am the proud owner of a PDP five shell Maple with Sabian XS 20s. I also have several pads, all pads and kit were from e-bay my favorite place to shop.
 
In the late 40's my sisters got a really cheap toy drumset....definitely a toy. It had a bent piece of spring steel for the bass pedal. We all used to play on it and that is where it began for me. By 1953 we had moved to a small town in Indiana and a neighbor also had a toy drum set. We used to take turns playing on it. In 1955 I got a Rogers 10x14 field drum with
zipped bag with carry strap. All the kids had those kind of drums back then as a first drum.
Single tension and one guy had a quick throw off strainer....the rest of us had to unscrew the
tensioner to drop the snares....calf heads top and bottom. In 1957 we moved to a larger suburban area which had a school music program and I began "band". The school had some equipment. In 1962 I received a Ludwig Pioneer Ducco Snare and thought I had gone to heaven. By the end of 1962 I had dug up a used 10x26 bass drum, used the 10x14 as a floor tom....built a working hi hat which I had cheap 10" cymbals on ....yes, built it from scratch and it worked! I also built my bass drum pedal and used it until 1963 when I bought a speed king pedal. I used a second snare as my rack tom and my main ride cymbal was a cymbal out of a scrapped pipe organ that had a 1/2" x 1/2" spot on it that I convinced myself sounded "good". I marked it and played that spot. By the end of 1963 I managed a matching Ludwig Ducco Set...5x14, 9x13, 10x14, 14x20..an 18" ride, a crash and some hats along with a cowbell. That drumset paid for itself many times over.
Very few families around me had money to buy a full set for their kid. We all got it in bits and pieces over time.
 
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