Gene Krupa was sprouted from a beanstalk in Chicago, Illinois during the cold month of January. January 15th 1909 was the day a legend was born. The nature of drumming would never be the same after this legend picked up the drumsticks. Gene 's father passed away from cancer when he was in elementary school. His mother had to support his family as a milliner. She made hats for a living and earned a steady paycheck that way. All of Gene 's eight brothers and sisters worked from a young age. His mother Ann and father Bartley were hard workers as that trait passed down to all of their children. Gene for his first job worked as a chore boy in the Brown Music Company. In elementary school, Gene was unruly but took up the saxophone and then later devised a plan to conquer the drum set. Drums were …show more content…
Gene Krupa was to be mounted as the very first percussion soloist. Drummers of his time were usually kept under the hand as they did not get the spotlight. He entertained the crowd to tremendous lengths to where other musicians got to interact with his drumming which had not been done yet. Gene exhibited his Chicago styled jazz scene in 1927 with some recordings by the help of Bix Beiderbecke and Red Mckenzie. These hits were known as “China Boy”, “Sugar”, “Nobody’s Sweetheart”, and “Liza”. His perfection doesn’t stop, he wanted to aid other talent on stage while making his drumming role within the band. This man is also coined as the father of the modern drum set. Gene made friends with H.H. Slingerland who owned a drumming company at the time. Gene then at this period had the company pursue a new product which was tunable Tom-Toms, in which they made a very distinctive sound. In the past, Tom-Toms had tacked heads in which the sound was stale and unable to change. The new product which was released to the public in 1936 was the separate tension tunable Tom-Toms. Throughout all of Gene 's career from 1936, until he had passed, he was a loyal supporter of H.H.’s