GENE KRUPA

Gene Krupa was a jazz and big band drummer, band leader, actor and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style. Listen to him drumming away like a maniac in Benny Goodman’s orchestra on “Sing, Sing, Sing” and you’ll know why he's a drumming legend.
     Working at the Herald Tribune in the ‘60s, I took my dinner break nightly at 8:00 pm and often spent the 45 minutes wandering around Times Square, which was just around he corner from the newspaper building and even livelier and more crowded at night than during the day. One night I passed a famed jazz club you may have heard of called Birdland and heard fierce drumming exploding into the street. I peeked in and saw Krupa, then in his early 50s, beating up those skins pretty damned good. I was only 20 and certainly a Presley kid, but the love of Frank Sinatra I had inherited from my mother had turned me into a Big Band devotee, too, so seeing and hearing Krupa in person, if only from the crowded street, was a very big thrill for me.