Gene Krupa: The “first rock drummer” and Neil Peart’s personal favourite
The late Gene Krupa may not be a household name, but his work and those he has inspired changed the art of drumming forever. Not only did Rush’s Neil Peart describe Krupa as the “first rock drummer”, but Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham once referred to him as “God”.
Krupa rose to prominence in 1937 when he appeared on the Benny Goodman hit, ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’, built around his contribution to the track. For the first time, a commercially successful song featured a drum solo which rewarded the musician with notoriety, leading to Krupa outshining Goodman and exiting his band after four years.
Later, he became a star in his own right who sold-out venues across America as a band leader and also appeared in various Hollywood films, including his own biopic, 1959’s The Gene Krupa Story. Additionally, Krupa performed alongside fellow drumming virtuoso Buddy Rich in drum battles, attracting thousands of attendees.
For Buddy Rich, it was an honour to be associated with Krupa and to be mentioned in the same breath as his hero. He told Metronome Magazine in 1956: “As everyone knows, anybody who knows anything about drums-and this is not going to sound like an Alphonse and Gaston type reply-uh…Gene is absolutely the first man when it comes to drums”.
He added: “The inspiration for every big-name drummer in the business today, I think. I think at one time every drummer wanted to play like Krupa or wanted to win a Gene Krupa drum contest. This is the big inspiration for drummers and naturally it has to be the same way for me.”
While Peart didn’t become a professional drummer for another two decades after Rich’s comments, they were both as equally inspired by Krupa. “Gene Krupa was the first rock drummer in very many ways. Without Gene Krupa, there wouldn’t have been a Keith Moon,” he once said of his idol.
Speaking to Zildjian in 2003, Peart further added of the powerhouse drummer: “The first time I remember feeling a desire to play the drums was while watching the movie The Gene Krupa Story, at the age of eleven or twelve.”
He continued: “I started beating on the furniture and my baby sister’s playpen with a pair of chopsticks, and for my thirteenth birthday. My parents gave me drum lessons, a practice pad, and a pair of sticks. They said they wouldn’t buy me real drums until I showed that I was going to be serious about it for at least a year, and I used to arrange magazines across my bed to make fantasy arrays of drums and cymbals, then beat the covers off them!”
After Krupa infiltrated his life, it was clear to Peart what he wanted to do for a living, and he made a pact with himself to imitate his hero. If he’d never seen The Gene Krupa Story, perhaps, Peart wouldn’t have ever realised it was his calling to be a drummer.
