Ludwig Drummer

ludwig drum vintage drum black beauty snare drum William F. Ludwig Clay T. Greene ludwig drums

Ludwig & Ludwig enjoyed their first one million dollar year in 1926.  The following year, 1927, saw about the same sales volume and there existed a very great optimism throughout the organization.  A massive building program under the supervision of Mr. Danly had been launched and completed by 1923, which more than doubled the size of the factory.  Two sons of Mr. Danly joined the engineering department- George and Philo Danly.  The three Danlys turned out mechanical inventions of such stupendous originality that Ludwig & Ludwig easily captured the lead in sales and approval of the drumming fraternity.  My father had only to de-scribe to the Danly engineering team what the drummer would like to have for his tools and they created the answer with their magical strokes of engineering drawings and metal magic.  So massive and advanced were their designs that most are still in use today and have been copied by every drum company almost one hundred years later.  This era 1921 through 1931 was truly the great era of drum inventions and can easily be said to have been the birth of the modem percussion industry as we know it today.  There I was, a boy, in the middle of it!

The next spring (1937) on April 1^st my father organized and opened for business his second drum company, the William F. Ludwig Drum Company. That summer I reported for duty in the office and was shocked at how empty it was. Little machinery, and just a handful of employees. Just six or so in the office and a mere two dozen in the factory. There was little in the way of tooling as well. Most, if not all, was used equipment since capital was extremely limited to say the least. My father was bankrolling the entire operation with the sale of his C.G. Conn stock which he had seen erode from one million dollars in 1930 to one hundred thousand in 1937. He had sold Ludwig & Ludwig for $1,000,000.00 in stock and a non-compete clause for five years. Now seven years later it was worth no more than $100,000.00!  He and my mother had debated long and hard over starting up again in the drum business. It was a toss-up whether they would put money into an apartment building in Maywood, one of Chicago’s oldest suburbs, live in it and maintain it, or build drums. Thank goodness they chose drums or I might be pumping gas today and even that is drying up due to self-serve pumps now. That is what stared me in the face in 1937!