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Author Archives: robinengelman

A Painter’s Drummer, Chapin Family Update.

I received a letter from Ms Dana Chapin concerning my article, A Painter’s Drummer. Ms Chapin is the daughter of drummer Jim Chapin and the grand-daughter of painter James Ormsbee Chapin. Her letter contained important facts about the Chapin family that I had not uncovered or about which I had been mistaken. I apologize for those errors and, in the hope of informing those who have already read my original article, reprint Ms Chapin’s letter below.

Mr. Engelman,

I so enjoyed reading your piece on visiting the Phillips Memorial Collection and seeing one of the Marvin paintings done by my grandfather James O. Chapin. I will have to get there myself one day. Another Marvin portrait was recently included in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum called Portraits. George Marvin and his daughter Edith I think. The Marvin paintings are a very special American series that not too many people know about.

I felt I must correct you on some points of family history. My grandfather had one child with his first wife Abby Forbes, my father Jim Chapin. But their marriage was relatively brief for the times. He remarried a woman named Mary and had two other sons, Elliot and Jed. They were of draft age during the Vietnam War and had to head to Canada to avoid the war. He and Mary followed them and he became a Canadian citizen before he passed away. Elliot Chapin has two sons and lives in Toronto and Jed has two sons and lives in British Columbia. The family runs to sons. Dad had seven sons and three daughters by three different women.

The Chapins have a further connection to Canada. My half-brother Steve Chapin bought Ovens Park in Nova Scotia over 20 years ago and he and his family run it seasonally. They host a music festival every August where many musical Chapins perform along with local talent. My other half-brother Tom and his wife bought a home near the Ovens and their daughter Lily (James O.’s great grandchild) will get married there this summer. Canada is a very special place to all of us.

My grandfather never seemed to hit the big time although he was widely known and admired. Sometimes his illustration work and drawings show up on eBay. I was so glad to run across someone who appreciated his work.

All the Best,

Dana Chapin, NYC

Approve Trash | Mark as Spam

Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake, Merseyside.

01 Jul

‘Hoylake, blown upon by mighty winds, breeder of mighty champions’
Bernard Darwin

Tiger Woods survived back surgery and a 109 day layoff. He’s rejoined the PGA tour to get himself competitively fit for the Open, The British Open that is, scheduled 17-20 July, Royal Liverpool Golf Club aka Hoylake (1869). This past week Tiger was playing in the Quicken Loans National, a terrible handle to lay on the majestic Congressional Country Club. (Sooner or later, someone will offer the PGA tons of money to name a contest the “Venetian Gold Sequin Jock Strap Open”, and they’ll accept.) Tiger missed the Quicken Loans cut. Even so, whether from respect, curiosity or schadenfreude, his two rounds attracted by far the largest galleries of any golfer in the field and his picture takes pride of place on the web sites of both the British Open and the PGA. The number of television viewers and tournament ticket purchases fell dramatically after Tiger announced his hiatus from golf. Irrespective of his score, Tiger’s name on a tournament list attracts countless millions of viewers and dollars. That’s fame.

Before his death, the great comedian George Carlin suggested turning all the golf courses in America into housing sites for the homeless. Carlin hated golf saying, “It’s elitist and as boring as watching flys fuck”. I understood this point of view, but some of the acreage set aside for this fascinating and ancient game should be preserved. Golf courses such as Augusta National, Pine Valley and too, Wentworth and Hoylake, should always be with us. I used to play a lot of golf. Couldn’t get enough of it. I’m partial to Hoylake because I played there on 5 consecutive days.

The day of my 1st round, I walked onto the 1st tee and couldn’t determine where to hit my ball. Seriously, this was flat open land with almost no distinguishing features. As I saw it, I could not hit to the left, that was the club house, and the three remaining choices provided me no clues. I put my driver against my golf bag and walked towards what looked to be a caddie shack. Nothing there, so on to the club house whose door was wide open. No one was about, not a soul. My God, I thought, I’ve come all this way to be met by silence and nary a clue about where to go. God dammit, I’m hanging about one of the most venerable courses in golf history, and I don’t even know where to aim my first shot! After looking around for a bit, Allen appeared, no last name, and asked if I wanted a caddie. Allen showed me in which direction to hit and off we went.

In those days I liked to play fast. At Carrying Place Golf Course just a couple of miles north of my old country home outside Toronto, I could carry my bag and play 18 holes in an hour and a half. Those were the days before golf became popular, really popular. On this day at Hoylake there was no one around to slow us up or to see how badly I played. My goodness, seaside or links golf is truly different from the upscale courses in America that Jack Nicklaus characterized as “Better Homes & Gardens golf”. Besides not knowing the direction of the next hole, the seemingly featureless landscape also demanded a caddie who knew what club to hit.

This was golf as I’d only suspected it to be. A feast for the senses. To stroll idly among freshets of sea air, dip among ageless dunes clothed in wild grass and shadows, emerge on an elevated sun washed green almost touching the sea, negates thoughts of score. Retrieving my golf ball was only an excuse for continuing my journey. I felt as a child again. The sound of my spikes crunching into Hoylake’s sandy soil, a wind whipped flag or a crisply struck ball were excitingly new. Everything new and everything possible. Allen and I agreed to meet the next day at 10 AM. And so it went.

Despite its name, the Royal Liverpool Golf Club is located in the small town of Hoylake, at the northwest corner of the Wirral Peninsula, which is separated from the city of Liverpool by the estuary of the River Mersey. The golf course extends between Hoylake and the neighbouring town of West Kirby. Consequently, the course is often referred to as Hoylake, after the town. Hoylake hosted the first Walker Cup between the top amateurs from the United States, Great Britan and Ireland in 1920 and Hoylake was the course where in 1930, Bobby Jones won the second of his four victories earning him the “Grand Slam” of Golf, the US and British amateur, and the US and British Opens. Jones is the only golfer to win all four in the same year.

At the time I played Hoylake, the course was most easily accessible from Liverpool by train. After a couple of rounds Allen began carrying my bag to the train station. The station was just a short walk from the course and Allen and I use those walks to get to know each other a bit better. Allen played organ in a local pub in the evenings and would occasionally caddie during the day. Our fortuitous meeting proved my golfing boon. Alan knew the course intimately, spoke very little and thus proved to be a perfect golfing companion. He also complimented me on the speed of my play.

Very seldom has Hoylake been a part of the Open Championship rota. The town could not accommodate the ever-growing numbers of people interested in attending a great championship. When I visited, Liverpool’s waterfront was being modernized. One of its reformations was the Liverpool International Garden Festival. This festival had brought me and Nexus to England’s west coast in 1984. Today, I remember my golf more readily than our music.

After one of our rounds, Allen told me about an Open at Hoylake when the wind off the sea was so strong, golfers could not control the ball. Players complained, but were met with resistance by Royal and Ancient officials. The Brits take pride in the fact that no Open Championship had ever been postponed or even delayed because of wind. “Nay wind, Nay golf” is the heroic homily that has come down through the years. So, the golfers took the R & A officials to the practice ground where a 9 iron was snapped directly into the wind. The ball was driven backwards over everyone’s head and the round postponed.

This year, 2014, golf will begin on Royal Liverpool’s 17th hole and finish on 16. 2006 was the last time the Open was played at Hoylake and the Champion Golfer of the Year was awarded to Eldrick Tiger Woods.. Dear Mr. Carlin, with respect, I’ll watch all four rounds of this year’s Open. Unless I’m dead.

Post script: Tiger played well, but Rory Mcilroy from Hollywood, Northern Ireland was the Champion Golfer of the year. A week later he won the World Championship tournament at Firestone Country Club and Tiger had to withdraw after straining his back. At age 25 he is the new kid on the block. This week, August 7 through 10, the PGA Tournament will be played on Valhalla Golf Course in Louisville, Kentucky. It’s the last major of the year. If Mcilroy wins this and next year’s Masters, he’ll complete a Grand Slam, whatever that means, joining Sarazen, Hogan, Player, Nicklaus and Woods. Due to scheduling, Bobby Jone’s feat can no longer be duplicated.

View from the par 4, 9th tee with Allen and me in the distance. This is the beginning of the five sea side holes, 9 through 13. Hoylake, 1984. Photo by William Cahn

Right bunker on the par 3, 11th hole. Beyond the flag is death. Photo by William Cahn

Allen and me on the par 4, 12th hole. Photo by William Cahn

Allen and me on the par 3, 13th hole. Photo by William Cahn

Royal Livrpool Golf Clup score card. The links truly begin at the 9th hole

http://www.pga.com/openchampionship/course/2014/tour/18

A Ruff Death, (1634-2008, Requiescat in pace)

26 Jun

During the winter of 1778, as George Washington’s infantry rehearsed the manoeuvers of Baron von Steuben,[1.] it was the sound of an English drumming tradition that filled the parade ground of Valley Forge.

Over time the hand to hand beats played by English drummers had been grouped into short rhythmic patterns, given names, codified and passed on to colonial drummers. Some of the patterns signaled soldiers to perform camp duties such as getting fire wood or water, whilst other patterns directed their movements in battle.

In the hands of creative drummers, these patterns could be combined to enliven popular melodies which eased a soldier’s weariness or emboldened fighting men in the face of an enemy. Drummers were required to practice these patterns assiduously.

Eventually they were known as the Rudiments of drumming and the drumming style, Rudimental.

The word rudiments first appeard in a drum book in 1812. On page 3 of A New Useful and Complete System of Drum Beating, Charles Stewart Ashworth wrote, Rudiments for Drum Beating in General. Under this heading he inscribed and named 26 patterns required of drummers by contemporary British and American armies and militias. The word Rudiment was not used again in US drum manuals until 1862. George B. Bruce began page 4 of Bruce and Emmett’s Drummers and Fifers Guide with the words Rudimental Principles.

Beginning with the long roll, Bruce listed 35 patterns concluding with a paragraph titled Recapitulation of the Preceeding Rolls and Beats. On page 7 of his 1869 Drum and Fife Instructor, Gardiner A. Strube wrote, The Rudimental Principles of Drum – Beating, and followed with 25 examples, each named Lesson.

The National Association of Rudimental Drummers (“N.A.R.D.”) was organized in 1933-34. The men of the N.A.R.D. were well known teachers, performers and composers. Some of them had studied drumming with Civil War veterans, whom they referred to as The Ancients. The N.A.R.D. was formed to enhance, preserve and disseminate what in their minds was an endangered style of drumming.

They combined Gardiner Strube’s 25 lessons, added the long roll and perhaps for the first time in history, unambiguously declared each heretofore lesson, pattern, beat, or principle, a Rudiment. They called the first 13 rudiments “Essential”. These were used to test applicants seeking membership in the Thirteen Club.

Another list of snare drum rudiments was compiled in 2008 by a group of drummers from the Percussive Arts Society (P.A.S.) Marching Percussion Committee. Their compilation contained 38 rudiments of unspecified origin including 24 of the “Hybrid” variety, and the 26 N.A.R.D. rudiments, making a grand total of 64 rudiments.

Drummers can become attached to a rudiment. Its appeal can be historic, or the feeling in the hands when its played. Even the onomatopoetic nature of its name may endear it. The Paradiddle and Ratamacue are examples of the latter. If one repeats these names, one can imagine how they’d sound played on a drum. [2.]

Along side the Flam, my favourites have always been the Ruff and its relative, the four stroke Ruff. These rudiments are to my mind, the most elegant and useful beats in a drummer’s repertoire.

The Ruff’s soft R suggests a variety of nuances. The four stroke Ruff, played as a roll can substitute for the five stroke roll. However, the Drag’s consonant D, limits expressions. Even so, the P.A.S. committee changed the name of the Ruff to Drag.

Had the N.A.R.D. made their list to read Ruff, Ruff tap and double Ruff Tap, the P.A.S. committee may have followed suit, allowing a continuance to the life of Ruffs.

In May of 2011, a group of very good drummers began a contentious and sometimes humorous exchange of e-mails after one of them was criticized for using the word Drag rather than Ruff. If the statute of limitations runs out before I die, I may publish their correspondence.

Perhaps all this Tea pot tempest could be ameliorated by shifting the conversation to Strokes. As the inimitable John S. (Jack) Pratt said,

“Drum rudiments are exercises. The rudiments of drumming are strokes”. [3,]

Without preamble I asked a group of friends, all prominent teachers and performers, how many strokes were used in snare drumming. Their answers ranged in number from 1 to 11, and one person replied, “Is this a trick question?”

If no agreement exists among some of the best drummers in North America about the number of strokes needed to play a snare drum, might not arguments about Ruffs and Drags be considered akin to bickering?

Today, within the ranks of Fife and Drum corps drummers, the Ruff’s proud name, it’s romantic evocation of history and onomatopoetic pedigree survive, but outside that cozy womb of nostalgia, in the brittle, frenetic world of Kevlar heads and carpal tunnel syndromes, the Ruff is only a memory, if that.

Now, after its first appearance in print 370 years ago, the Ruff is no longer a part of an academic drummer’s lexicon.

The Ruff is dead, Viva la Ruff!!

N.A.R.D. rudiments 8, 9, and 10.

PAS Rudiments 31, 32 and 33

Notes:

[1.] Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben was of Prussian birth and a soldier, though he seems to have awarded himself the title. He knew19th century infantry tactics, taught them to the Colonial Army and authored an illustrated compendium of his military learning, popularly known as the Blue Book because of its cover’s colour, but officialy entitled Baron von Steuben and His Regulations.

[2.] In fact, the verbal repetition of onomatopoeia was sometimes used to teach musically illiterate young drummer boys. Today it is still used as a kind of verbal short hand.

[3,] Jack Pratt used the English language carefully. He took a Master’s degree in English with a thesis about poet John Keats. He was a published member of the New Jersey Society of Poets and taught English in a local New Jersey high school until his retirement. Jack is also a virtuoso performer and prolific composer of drum solos in the so called Rudimental or military style. His carefully drawn manuscripts bear witness to his meticulous nature. Jack’s lengthy and detailed Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame acceptance speech is the stuff of legends.

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Posted by robinengelman on June 26, 2014 in Articles, Commentaries & Critiques, Fifes & Drums, History

Tags: Baron von Steuben, Bruce and Emmett's Drummers and Fifers Guide, Charles Stewart Ashworth, Drag, Gardiner A. Strube, George Washington, John S. (Jack) Pratt, National Association of Rudimental Drummers (“N.A.R.D.”), onomatopoetic, Percussive Arts Society (P.A.S.), Rudiments, Ruff, the Thirteen Club, Valley Forge

Robin Engelman