By Bruce Klauber
“In the neighborhood of 4,000 visiting cats scratched and clawed for points of vantage in the Marine Ballroom of Atlantic City’s Steel Pier on Saturday, April 16, 1938, and then, once perched on their posts, proceeded to welcome with most exuberant howls and huzzahs the first public appearance of drummer-man Gene Krupa and his newly-formed jazz band. The way the felinic herd received, reacted to, and withstood the powerful onslaughts of Krupa’s quadruple “f” musical attacks left little doubt that Gene is now firmly entrenched at the helm of a new swing outfit that’s bound to be recognized very shortly as one of the most potent bits of catnip ever to be fed to the purring public that generally passes as America’s swing contingent. – George T. Simon, “Metronome magazine,” May, 1938.
That was not the first appearance of Gene Krupa, the legendary percussionist who made the drums a solo instrument, at the Steel Pier, nor would it be his last. He played the pier as early as 1932 with the Mal Hallett big band, was featured with Benny Goodman’s orchestra at the pier four years later, and played his last dates with his jazz quartet in the Marine Ballroom in the summer of 1967. But the April 16, 1938 appearance was his most historic.
Gene Krupa joined the band led by clarinetist Benny Goodman, aka “The King of Swing,” in late 1934 and helped put swing music on the map. By late 1938, tensions were mounting between Krupa and Goodman. As the band became more successful, audiences wanted more and more of Krupa’s drum solos and frenetic showmanship, ala his tom-tomming on “Sing, Sing Sing,” which was the first extended drum solo ever recorded. Goodman not only detested sharing the limelight with anyone, but Gene and Benny were, quite simply, musically at odds. Krupa’s extrovert, over-the-top drumming can be heard to good advantage on the famed Goodman Carnegie Hall Concert of January, 1938. Everything came to a head at Philadelphia’s Earle Theater.
Those who attended some of the shows during the one-week Goodman engagement at the Earle (February 26 to March 3) claim that the leader and Krupa were openly feuding on stage. The crowds were screaming for Gene to “go” from the moment the band hit the stage. Krupa responded with some bits of gesturing directed toward Goodman, obviously meaning, “I’m not allowed.” The audience booed, and whenever Krupa did a solo bit, Goodman seemed to go out of his way to appear half asleep.
Gene Krupa quit on March 3. It was a resignation that shocked the world of music. Less than six weeks later, Krupa staffed, rehearsed and opened with his own swing band at the Steel Pier.
Audiences saw an older and slower Gene Krupa at the Steel Pier in the summer of 1967—he was 58—whose drumming, by his own admission, was like that of “a knuckle-baller in baseball who carefully picks his spots.” And he no longer led a big band. In 1951, he shut down his large ensemble, and from then on, appeared with trios and quartets. The pier’s George Hamid loved Gene Krupa so much, that he didn’t care if Gene appeared with 100 musicians or three. In fact, Krupa’s small group was the only small jazz ensemble ever to work the Pier’s Marine Ballroom regularly.
Though Gene Krupa may not have been in vogue by 1967—more modern drummers like Elvin Jones and Tony Williams were winning the jazz polls by then—he was still the legendary Gene Krupa, the first matinee idol to ever come out of the jazz world, and just about every drummer of every age in our region headed down to the Steel Pier in that August of 1967 to see and experience the man himself at work. I was one of them, and I truly didn’t know what to expect once the teenage crowd from Ed Hurst’s “Summertime at the Pier” television show was cleared from the Marine Ballroom to make way for Gene’s group.
Another drummer in the audience was a young Timothy Laushey, who was and is one of the top big band drummers in our area and beyond. He never forgot the experience.
“I remember August 6, 1967 like it was yesterday,” Laushey recently told me, while on a break from touring nationally with a Bobby Darin tribute show. “I had just graduated from high school, and two of my friends from school went to Atlantic City for a week; the same week that our hero, Gene Krupa, would be playing in the Marine Ballroom on the Steel Pier. Though I had seen Gene before, this time was different. I knew I would be as close as I had ever been to him. I watched him walk to the pier from his hotel — the old Chalfonte Haddon Hall, now the site of Atlantic City’s Resorts Casino Hotel — a couple times, but I was too scared to talk to him.
“But on that day at the ballroom, I was standing right in front of his bass drum, looking up at him. He looked larger than life in his powder blue tuxedo jacket. I could hardly breathe. I saw three shows that day and noticed that he wore a different color jacket for each show. He looked sharp. Anyway, I was close enough to take great pictures with my instamatic camera. I could see him sweat. He was magical as his sticks effortlessly spun their web on his Slingerland drums.
“After the third show I went through a door leading back stage with no problem. I asked a guy if I could see Mr. Krupa. As if on cue, there he was. I couldn’t breathe again. We took a picture and talked briefly. Yes, it is autographed. Four years later, I was the drummer and road manager for Lee Castle and the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. Lee and I went to the Krupa home in Yonkers, New York, and that’s where he signed that photo.
“My life was different after seeing Gene and after meeting him. It’s hard to explain. His kindness to me as a kid and as a fan taught me more than how to play a paradiddle. He was one of a kind, on stage and off.”
Gene Krupa retired shortly after his last stand at the Steel Pier, and in 1969, the Marine Ballroom, the Water Circus and other portions of the Pier were destroyed by fire. The following summer, the ballroom was replaced by a geodesic golden dome that was christened the Golden Dome Theater. Though George Hamid died in 1971 at the age of 75, big swing bands still occasionally performed at the pier. Cab Calloway made an appearance in 1971, and in 1976, Woody Herman became the last bandleader ever to perform at the Steel Pier.
Gene Krupa ended his retirement in late 1969 and came back, as the saying goes, bigger and better than ever. The elder statesman of the drums had triumphant appearances with the original Benny Goodman Quartet at Carnegie Hall and other prestigious locations, with Guido Basso’s big band at the Canadian National Exposition, and was inductioned into Down Beat magazine’s “Hall of Fame.” But he never appeared at the Steel Pier after that August of 1967. No matter. Those who were in the audience during that week just never forgot it.
Bruce Klauber, a working jazz drummer and singer since childhood, is the biographer of jazz legends Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich in books and Warner Brothers films; contributed to dozens of national music journals such as Down Beat and Jazz Times magazines; and served as Technical Advisor on the Oscar-winning film, “Whiplash.” He was recently honored by Drexel University for his “contributions to music education through journalism and performance.”
