George Carroll: Marching and Field Percussion Historian

Interviewed by Jeff Hartsough and Derrick Logozzo

G
EORGE CARROLL IS A we have quite a big collection of old drums
respected drum maker, histo- going back two hundred years that we
rian, author and researcher use as models. We sell these to reenactors,
in the marching and field per- and people who want to play historically
cussion idiom. In the recent movie accurate drums. I am the co-founder. My
Gettysburg, Carroll’s fife and drum corps, business partner is Pat Smith. Mainly, I
the CSA Field Music, was featured along manufacture the drums myself and Pat
with others playing classic Civil War pe- does most of the finishing on them as
riod music and calls using drums made by well as some clerical work.
George’s colonial drum company, Cousin
Sally Ann. His numerous credits include What types of teaching have you done
membership in the Black Watch Band of related to your research?
Canada and the U.S. Army Band, through After I finished my enlistment in the
which he established an association with United States Army, I spent about ten
the famous drum teacher and maker years in Colonial Williamsburg, where I
Sanford Moeller. Carroll is also known for inaugurated their fife and drum pro-
founding the Old Guard Fife and Drum gram. I was the first drum major music
Corps, the Colonial Williamsburg Fife and master that Colonial Williamsburg had.
Drum Corps, the International Association I also did a lot of research in early drum- books of the early 1800s. I teach the use
of Field Musicians, and the Yorktown Fife ming and implemented that with the of the “tap,” mostly utilizing your wrist,
and Drum Museum. corps. We got to play for some interest- and the “blow,” as Colonel Hart’s book
ing people. President Nixon went down called it in 1862, which was an accented
When did you start playing and on what there and we were photographed in stroke where you use more of your arm.
instruments? newspapers and magazines playing for My teaching is mostly based on these
I was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia, Canada him. Also, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia historical works because they seem to do
on December 27, 1932, and started when visited Williamsburg when we were the job on rope-tensioned drums very
I was about ten or eleven years old on there. So we played for him with the fife well, and they are good basic training for
trumpet and cornet. Like most kids in and drum corps as well. I also started playing modern percussion, as you know.
Canada, I grew up on ice skates playing an 18th century band there.
hockey. I had a hockey accident and ru- After I finished at Colonial How and when did you meet Sanford
ined my embouchure. I couldn’t play brass Williamsburg, I went to Walt Disney Moeller? How would you describe him?
anymore, but I really wanted to play World for about seven or eight years I wrote to [Sanford] Gus Moeller in the
drums anyway. I was too short for the and taught the fife and drum corps. I 1950s when I was teaching a fife and
drum line, in what were called drum and also taught at Jacksonville University drum corps in Alexandria. I was a mem-
bugle bands in Canada at that time, so and played with the Jacksonville Sym- ber of the Army Band at that time, and
they stuck a bugle in my hand. I had to phony Orchestra, eventually becoming this little corps was trying to get going
play that for about a year while I was the principal percussionist. I inaugu- with fake rope drums. The corps had
practicing on the drums. I continued to rated four or five other corps around the rod drums with little ropes on them.
practice on a coffee can with a pair of state of Florida, as well. And all this Also, they were playing their fifes in the
chair rungs, and I eventually got Gene time I was doing research on old drum- lower register. Since they were strug-
Krupa’s book, Science of Drumming, and ming. Then I came back to Virginia af- gling along, I tried to give them a hand,
V.F. Safranec’s Manual for Field Trumpet ter the Disney job and got a job at the so I sent a picture of this corps up to
and Drum and practiced the rudiments. Pentagon working for the National Gus and he didn’t take it too well. The
I never had a teacher as such, because Guard Bureau in the capacity of mu- fact that they were using glockenspiels,
there were no teachers in my hometown, seum heraldry and history work. I was mouthpiece fifes and fake rope drums
so I took the method books of Safranek the editor and founder of a newsletter of didn’t go over with him very well at all.
and Gene Krupa and worked on them as history, heraldry and museums. I acted He came back with kind of a blistering
though they were holy writ, and was able as sort of a staff curator for the Army letter saying that the corps was not in
to accomplish most of what I needed to and Air National Guard. the spirit of the age and style. He was
do. So I am pretty much self-taught. very adamant about how they should
What philosophies that mark your change. I showed this letter to the corps
How did Cousin Sally Ann get started? styles of playing have you taken directors and tried to make some influ-
What does the business do and what from your teachers and applied to ence on the corps. In that particular
is your role? your own teaching? case, it didn’t work.
Cousin Sally Ann is the name we picked for I’ve studied the old style of playing from Eventually, Mr. Moeller came down
our drum-building business. We make the early records, the Bruce and Emmett to see the Army Band and we were us-
rope-tensioned snare and bass drums book and the Hart book, both of 1862, ing a couple of his snare drums that we
that are replicas of museum models. And the Howe book of 1861, the Robinson had gotten earlier. They were his Grand

30 PERCUSSIVE NOTES • APRIL 1996

 Republic model, which was 17 inches by breaking the ice up there in New York. of the Civil War methodology, where you
21- or 22-inches deep. We also had a He also marched from New York to Bos- hold the stick with your little finger and
couple of rope-tensioned bass drums. He ton playing a rope-tensioned drum to let it play through the hand. He could
eventually made a whole new set of draw attention to that kind of playing. draw a tone from the drum by this
drums for the band. Unfortunately, they As you well know, he was the teacher of method of stick-holding that other people
were made right at the end of his con- a lot of good percussionists like Gene couldn’t get. Instead of contacting the
struction career, after he’d had a stroke Krupa and Jim Chapin. head and pushing down on the head, he
or two, so he was never able to finish played in constance with the vibration
them. Consequently, he had to turn them How did Moeller teach drum strokes and of the instrument, and his pupils played
over to Buck Soistman, who finished related motions? the same way.
making them. Moeller’s grip was a bit unique. It was We had John Cain and Vince Batista
On a winter day, I drove to Baltimore drawn from the old drum methods and in the Army Band who were both Moeller
and picked these drums up for the Army styles. Ed Olson, a good fifer and one of pupils. They could draw a beautiful tone
Band, and photographed them before the founders of the Company of Fifers from a snare drum using the Moeller
the band started to use them. Mr. and Drummers in Connecticut, told me method. He also advocated the upstroke
Moeller talked to us and gave kind of a that Gus used to go around to the old and the downstroke, where, as your hand
lecture, or masterclass, on the care and Civil War drummers’ homes with bags started to rise in the air, you utilized a
feeding of rope drums as well as how to of tobacco and pick their brains as to tap with a swing of the stick. He taught
play the double-stick bass drum. He was how they played back in the old days. the use of the accent on learning the roll.
a very dedicated teacher with high stan- This is reflected in what he taught about Moeller was not against the idea of uti-
dards. Of course, he was completely in how to hold the sticks. He used a very lizing the arms, although he didn’t use
love with the idea of the old drumming. relaxed grip and he figured that you the so-called “waterfall system” that a lot
He was a very respectable person. could not play a drum with any muscu- of drummers used up in the Northeast.
He never drank or smoked and was a lar stiffness. You had to relax. His grip That was a high rise of the stick. Instead,
member of the Polar Bear Club; he used for the left hand was more or less con- Moeller’s was mostly a wrist and forearm
to go swimming in the wintertime, ventional, but his right was straight out technique, rather than a full-arm tech-

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PERCUSSIVE NOTES • APRIL 1996 31

32 PERCUSSIVE NOTES • APRIL 1996
 nique as was advocated by drummers of vibrate—do its job. A big enough stick with a lot of mechanical motion to play
the 18th and early 19th century. held far enough away from the drum in on a drum, and they don’t draw a very
When Moeller came down to the Army the initial strokes would bounce so that good tone out of the instrument or play
Band, he was very kind to us and very you didn’t have to force it into the head. with a large variety of dynamics. All the
respectful of what we were doing. I think Then, you allow the stick to bounce and rudiments were taught in the 19th cen-
he really liked the Army Band and the do its full job. You dampen the stick with tury to be played with at least one ac-
idea of making drums for the United a little pressure to make sure that the cent, but always with just one accent as
States armed forces. The body position accents come in on the double strokes of the NARD codified in the 1930s. Fre-
that he taught was erect with the left the roll. Then, you dampen out the ac- quently, a drag paradiddle would have
heel at the right instep, as the old drum cents to get a smooth, even roll. one, two or three accents, and some were
instruction books taught. Also, he al- The fulcrum on the stick was the of varying textures. So the drumming
ways advocated playing standing up be- wrist, of course, and a rolling forearm had more variety as far as hills and
cause he figured that it was the proper with a little up-and-down motion when dales of dynamicism and intensity. It
way to address a field drum. Further- it was needed. For large accents, you was a lot more interesting to listen to in
more, Moeller taught one to move the applied a little more up-and-down mo- my estimation.
sticks in a uniform fashion with fan- tion along with the entire limb, from There have been many good drum-
like motions. He allowed no jerkiness or the shoulder all the way down to the mers who have played extremely clean
mechanical movement. wrist at one time or another. But mostly, on rope-tensioned drums with old styles,
Although Mr. Moeller was kind enough it was a wrist motion. and I have been fortunate enough to
to say that he wished I lived close to New play with some of those at past Yorktown
York so we could work together, I didn’t Do you think that rebound is used in Musters. We had a drum section that
get a chance to do a whole lot with him, modern drum corps drumming as was as clean as a whistle. The rudimen-
because I was in the Army Band at Wash- much as it was thirty years ago? tal content was highly evolved. It wasn’t
ington D.C. His stay with the band was Back in the days of the skin heads there simple drumming. It was played very
brief. It was just long enough to visit, was a limit as to how much rebound you well, and it sounded good. The old drum-
put on a little demonstration of how he could utilize on the heads because they mers used to say that in the Lancraft
played, and discuss the new drums that were a lot slacker than the modern Fife and Drum Corps of New Haven,
the band was ordering. heads. The modern drums have been Connecticut, you could take a gun and
I did, however, work for quite some tightened down so much that if you had shoot off the tip of one drumstick and
time with his successor, Charles Buck that same tension on a skin head, it catch them all [in the line]. They took
Soistman of Baltimore. Soistman’s fam- would break. So the tone of the drum great pride in that corps in playing very
ily had a long tradition of making drums. has gone past what a real drum would precisely and very cleanly. But there
His great-uncle made drums in Phila- sound like with a skin head on it. Mod- were still no mechanical or stiff motions
delphia for the Union Army during the ern drums have gotten into the realm that, today, are attributed to the mili-
Civil War. He had quite a big drum com- where they do not really have a drum tary, although they really did not ema-
pany there. Soistman started making sound anymore. In many cases they are nate in the military. They emanated in
drums for the Army Band when Moeller more like a machine sound. And of an overzealous attempt to try and get a
started to fail, and I went over to see course, there is so much tension that militant style in the playing.
him. So we broke him in on making there is a lot of rebound available from
drums for the Army Band, and then for the stick against that tight surface. It You have done extensive research about
the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. makes it very easy to do things that you rudimental drumming. Describe how
have to work a lot harder to get on a and when you started doing research,
What did you teach players about stick slacker head. and how much information you have
positions and fulcrums? acquired.
Most of my influence came from pre-Moeller. Various people have said that older styles Well, I have a whole walk-in library—a
The system looked very similar to of rudimental drumming are not very room of file cabinets full of informa-
Moeller’s, but it wasn’t identical. It was precise. How would you respond to this? tion on so-called ancient rudimental
a loose grip, as Jim Chapin calls it, a I don’t think that a lack of precision is a drumming. I started when I was in
flesh grip, so that the stick has lots of component of any particular style. It is the Royal Canadian Navy back in the
opportunity to vibrate. Also, a bigger stick just sloppiness of execution that one may fifties, researching to try to find out
was used so that its mass and weight be hearing. Although a rope-tensioned where the rudiments came from and
were utilized more than the muscles in drum with a lower tension can sound what significance they had from a mu-
playing on the instrument. The height of resonant, and the resonance can cover sical and military point of view. I think
the stick was utilized as well for accents up a lot of sloppiness in playing, it I have been able to answer quite a few
and regular strokes. The height above shouldn’t be relied upon to do that. Un- questions in that regard.
the drum was increased so that the fortunately, a lot of drummers utilize We were using a flam-tap to double
weight of the drumstick and the arm that resonance to cover up the fact that time the sailors of the Royal Canadian
were applied rather than muscle to play their execution is not very good. Navy. So the flam-tap was one of the
the heavier dynamics on the drum. The On the other hand, many modern first rudiments that I was interested in
idea was for the stick to have freedom to drummers use a lot of tension frequently tracking back. That subject, the history

PERCUSSIVE NOTES • APRIL 1996 33

 ever since. It sounds very strongly synco-
pated. Whereas the other countries didn’t
do that, particularly Great Britain.
In Switzerland, the Basel style of
drumming is very possibly a derivative
of the French style. There was a Papa
Beuller, in the French Guard during the
War of 1812, who came back to Basel
after that and taught a lot of drummers
in the city. It’s a strong possibility that
he brought back a lot of the French ru-
diments, and they were the basis of the
Basel Swiss drumming.
The army drumming that they did in
George Carroll and CSA Field Music the hill areas outside of Basel was a
rather simple style that did not really
of the rudiments, is a long and heavy is a stand-alone article and I intend to exemplify the complexities of the Basel
one. I am working on getting out a glos- do more on that for the Percussive Arts drumming. French drumming has a lot
sary of the rudiments now. The amount Society. more double strokes than either Ameri-
of information is quite large, and I prob- Basically, the American style was de- can, British or Swiss drumming. But it
ably have more information than most rived from the British style back in the has a lot of the figures such as the
anybody else on American rudimental late eighteenth and early nineteenth pataflafla stroke, sautes, couais and
drumming and all its antecedents, in- centuries, as far as we can tell. The many of the figures that we have yet to
cluding French and Swiss. research is pretty solid in that direc- reckon with here in the United States.
tion. There is no doubt that our Ameri- So it is one of the world’s most complex
What is the time frame of your research? can drumming started in England. Early styles of drumming.
It is from the time of Charles II, which is on, the two styles started to go in differ- I understand from recent readings
roughly the 1630s, to about the 1890s. ent, divergent directions. For instance, that it was revived almost from the point
Charles Stuart Ashworth, who was an of extinction by Robert Goute, who used
What topics in the history of rudimental Englishman, came to America and was to be the French Air Force drum major.
drumming have you researched? the second leader of the United States They had a Napoleonic drum corps in
Style, content, the instruments themselves, Marines School of Music and band in the French Air Force Band. He has
particularly the kinds of drums on which Washington, D.C. He had a big fife and started a whole wave of interest in play-
they are playing, the sizes, their con- drum school with about thirty-six indi- ing the old French Napoleonic styles
struction, and also medieval notation. viduals involved. His style of drumming that are so beautiful and so exhaustive.
I’m heavily involved with translating was, of course, English, but he started This has caught on in France and has
the old notation from the early book. also playing some of the American rudi- become quite the tradition. There are
Lastly, I’ve researched the uses with ments, which became the foundation of corps there of up to a hundred mem-
the military. the Bruce and Emmitt book that came bers, and they play this great style.
out in the 1860s. So he was kind of a The American system, or systems, are
How many international rudiments have crossover type. He came from Britain, all similar. For instance, the Connecti-
you found in your research, and from then he ended up in America. cut River Valley style is played in a very
which countries have you found them? The flam accent was coming in dur- slow, open method, with big snare drums
Over two hundred rudiments from Swit- ing the War of 1812 in America. There is that are deep and wide and with big
zerland, France, England, Holland, Ger- no evidence of that ever being used in barrel bass drums. The rudiments are
many, Denmark, Norway, Spain and, of Great Britain. George Barret-Bruce ap- played slow and extremely open on
course, the United States. parently was influenced by the black rather slack drums. The heads are just
drummer Juba Clark, from the Western a couple of notches above being flabby.
What are the different styles or methods School for Practice, which was out in However, the sound is huge. Although it
of drumming that you have found that Jefferson Barracks, Kentucky. He obvi- might be lacking in finesse, it has a
can be labeled by time period, coun- ously taught the syncopated rhythms thunderous quality. It’s very moving to
try, region and group? that were so prevalent during the 1860s hear a whole drum corps driving down
That’s quite a long study, but to make it as in all kinds of music, and started some the street with the fifes cutting through
short as possible, the different styles of the rhythmical figures [in that me- all that drum sound. It is typical of some
could be consolidated by nationality: dium] that we know of as ragtime and of the older New England fife and drum
American, British, Swiss, French, Ger- jazz today. This was as early as the corps.
man and Dutch. Each has its own body 1860s and probably a little earlier. The majority play a much more
of rudiments and history, and that is a That kind of drumming did not evi- modern style now, and in some cases
long, hard study to put it all down in dence itself in any other country. It put an they have taken the entire repertoire
one survey like this. In other words, it indelible stamp on American drumming of the drum and bugle corps and just

34 PERCUSSIVE NOTES • APRIL 1996

 translated it straight into the fife and It doesn’t all have to be technique. It the tempo picked up with the long lin-
drum idiom. There are also all kinds doesn’t all have to be speed and razzle- ear sounds of the bugle, and the drum-
of way-station stops between those dazzle. It can be balanced. If some of mers couldn’t execute some of the rudi-
two extremes. Then there are, of the drum and bugle corps composers ments used for things such as the
course, those who try to restore old would look at and listen to their compo- breakfast call or the dinner call. The
fife tunes and write drum beats that sition from the point of view of balance, double drag and the single drag had the
go with them, or resuscitate the drum they could learn something from the tempos required with the bugles, so they
beats from the old books. Swiss and the French. weren’t played anymore. About half of
Again I harken back to my back- our rudimental repertoire has gone by
How do the modern drum and bugle ground, which is military music. I like the wayside because of the pickup of
corps of today compare to the groups marching music to sound like marching tempo, and because of the different ap-
in which you have played and/or music. I don’t have any heartburn with plications of drums with bugles.
taught in terms of technique, musical- playing marches and music that was I don’t want anyone to think that I
ity and style? composed for the field, for the camp and look down my nose or cast any asper-
Well, I think that the “Timeline” that you for marching itself. The marches of sions on my colleagues in the drum and
did with a little help from myself and a Sousa and Kenneth J. Alford are still bugle field. My tastes happen to go in
lot other people brought out that there the best I have ever heard. When you another direction, but it is not to dis-
have been some great changes through take a pop tune, Broadway show tune, parage the other activities. I will say
the history of the drum and bugle corps or a jazz or rock tune and try to shoe- this in respect to the drum and bugle
movement. It would be remarkable if horn it into some of these marching corps: they bring a lot of discipline and
it hadn’t changed—if it stayed the way scenarios, some of it works, but a lot of application of hard practice into their
fife and drum corps have stayed. It is a it doesn’t. A lot of it sounds like trying art. I have yet to see any other folks in
different kind of an animal and change to make the particular sound of a swing any kind of activity put so much effort
is frequently very good, but sometimes, or rock band, but with inadequate in- into what they are doing. And it is usu-
a regression. My heartburn from the strumentation. That is just my particu- ally not as a profession, it is usually
point of view of purely a military mu- lar view. Everyone, of course, has the done because they love to play. That
sician all my life is that I think the right to their own taste, and they shows in the accuracy with which they
drums are overused [in today’s drum should. I am not trying to change that play and the precision with which a lot
and bugle corps]. Every square milli- aspect of things. of the groups perform. The fife and drum
meter of a measure is filled with some corps would do well to emulate the drum
kind of figure. Why do you think that various traditional and bugle corps in that respect.
The original idea behind that, of aspects of military drumming have left
course, was to balance off the lack of the modern drum and bugle corps? What would you like to see happen with
harmony instruments in a band situa- I don’t think they were absorbed by mod- PAS and research efforts like yours?
tion where you didn’t have bass, bari- ern drum and bugle corps because the I would like to see maybe a sub-commit-
tone, tenor and alto voices very fre- military drumming, as such, really tee or a parallel organization set up in
quently. So, for the lack of the harmonic went with the fifes. When the bugles the Percussive Arts Society that would
progressions that band instruments came in, the drumming was an accom- address the history of all drumming,
bring to their art, the drum and bugle paniment. If you look at your history of all percussion, not as a side issue, but
corps and the fife and drum corps use the fifes and drums, the drum beats as a main thrust. There is a lot of ma-
rhythmic devices to fill in some of the themselves could be used as calls in terial from the past, and if it isn’t
gaps that would otherwise be done by the camps 150 to 300 years ago, and gleaned, it is going to go into the ground
other types of instruments. they frequently were. The fife added with the people who have it in their
This has gone about as far as it can melodic interest, but it wasn’t the real heads. So there is a great need to set
go as far as complexity is concerned. I melody of the call. something up so that what we know so
think there is a great imbalance some- With the aspect of the bugle, the drum far is retained, and further research
times between the drums and the went out the door as a field-music in- can be done and published.
bugles. The drums have gotten so busy strument. When it was brought back in The style of fifing and drumming in
and there are so many of them playing with the bugle, it was an accompani- America has lasted for well over two
all the time that there is no release in ment instrument that no longer played hundred years, and much of that is
the art. The way it was described to the actual calls. So that aspect of it was intact. But there is a slow erosion that
me, all kinds of art has to have tension turned completely around. The drum- is bound to go on in the move to make
and release. A personification of this is ming that went with the fifes, the single things more modern. Folks that are
in the French and Swiss drumming. drag and double drag played straight eroding it don’t even realize what they
No drum style in the world is more up and all the variations thereof, and are doing because it is on such a long
complex than their style. Yet, they will the seven-stroke roll were left behind, basis, such a slow motion. The Com-
slow down the amount of figures that because the tempo had increased with pany of Fifers and Drummers has a
they put into a piece or a composition. the bugle, and the bugle could not play museum up in Ivoryton, Connecticut,
They will play simple figures to comple- quick 16th-note figures of complexity as and they are doing great work, hold-
ment the music. the fife is capable of doing. Therefore, ing on to the more recent past. More

PERCUSSIVE NOTES • APRIL 1996 35

 research has to be done, I think, and
implemented as to what was done in
the early days. We need to find out
who the heroes were back then, as well
as today. PN

Jeff Hartsough is the

Director of Percussion
for the Spirit of Atlanta
Drum and Bugle Corps
and Escape indoor
marching percussion
ensemble. He was per-
cussion caption head
for Magic of Orlando Drum and Bugle
Corps 1990-92 and was a percussionist
with the 27th Lancers and Suncoast
Sound Drum and Bugle Corps.
Hartsough is president of Perfection in
Performance, a percussion consulting,
arranging, and instructing business, and
is an accomplished performer, clinician,
and private instructor, as well as an ad-
judicator for the Ohio Music Educators
Association. He is General Manager and
Percussion Educational Specialist for
Columbus Pro Percussion, Inc. in
Columbus, Ohio. Hartsough has studied
with Robert Breithaupt at Capital
University’s Conservatory of Music. He
received the NAMM Scholarship and
holds two Bachelor of Science degrees
from Franklin University. He is also a
member of the PAS Marching Percussion
Committee.

Derrick Logozzo stud-

ies and teaches at the
University of North
Texas in Denton, Texas,
where he is completing
a master ’s degree in
performance. He re-
ceived his Bachelor of
Music Education degree at Capital Uni-
versity in Columbus, Ohio. His teachers
include: Robert Schietroma, Robert
Breithaupt, Ed Soph, Brad Wagner, Ed
Smith and Chris Allen. Currently,
Logozzo is an active performer and
teacher in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area,
playing in various jazz, orchestral and
chamber groups. As leader and founder of
Kalimbe, the Caribbean Ensemble, Der-
rick performs regularly on tenor steel
drum. He also instructs the jazz band and
teaches music theory at Krum High
School in Krum, Texas. Logozzo also
serves on the PAS Marching Percussion
Committee.

36 PERCUSSIVE NOTES • APRIL 1996