[Dixielandjazz] For the drummers

[Stephen G Barbone]

Drummers visiting NYC might want to stop in and visit Steve Maxwell  
Vintage and Custom Drums. If only to see that $30,000 drum kit Louie  
Bellson gave to Sammy Davis Jr.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Boom Times for a Seller of Drums

by Rebecca Flint Marx - NY Times - Feb 16, 2012

WEDGED between a strip joint and a neon-fringed brasserie, the  
entrance to 723 Seventh Avenue does not demand attention. For a jazz  
drummer, however, it may as well be the gateway to Narnia.

A three-floor elevator ride above the dissonant grind of the theater  
district, Steve Maxwell Vintage and Custom Drums sits as calm and  
orderly as a library. The main showroom is a percussive playground:  
bass drums, tom-toms and snares neatly stacked four and five high,  
their shells lustrous shades of mahogany, indigo, copper and champagne  
sparkle, accented by winking chrome.

Leather stick and cymbal bags hang from the blond wood walls, waiting  
to be plucked by the people who weave among the instruments,  
appraising them with scholarly gravity. The frequent pop and sparkle  
of snare drums and ride cymbals emanate from two glass-fronted, sound- 
insulated demo rooms, a legacy of the third floor’s previous tenant, a  
recording studio.

“We’re very lucky,” Steve Maxwell, the proprietor, said one afternoon  
this winter. “When we rented this space, the soundproofing was already  
here. If we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t be able to have a conversation  
with a customer.”

Mr. Maxwell, 59, was in the former control room, a space that  
functions as a museum of sorts for rare and extremely valuable vintage  
kits. A yellow Gretsch kit that the jazz drummer Elvin Jones played  
from 1970 to 1979 was on loan from the Rolling Stones’s Charlie Watts,  
a friend of Mr. Maxwell’s. It sat cheek by jowl with Peter Erskine’s  
maple Yamaha tour kit from his Steely Dan days, yours for $8,500.  
Nearby was a $30,000 white marine pearl Rogers set with gold-plated  
hardware that the jazz drummer Louie Bellson gave to Sammy Davis Jr.

The almost four-year-old shop, near 48th Street, is itself a rarity,  
the only serious drum store left in New York City, and one of a few  
nationwide to survive the Internet, the economy and big-box retailers.  
On this afternoon, Mr. Maxwell and his employees were busy absorbing  
inventory from Drummers World, a nearby shop that closed earlier that  
week.

“I tip my hat to Barry,” Mr. Maxwell said of the defunct store’s  
owner, Barry Greenspon. “Thirty-two years, that’s a good run. I’m  
going to miss him.”

When he was a teenager in Rhode Island, Mr. Maxwell would take the bus  
to New York and hang out at Frank Ippolito’s Professional Percussion  
Center in Midtown, where he studied with the legendary Papa Jo Jones.  
After playing professionally for several years, he landed in Chicago,  
where he ran a technology business and opened the first location of  
Maxwell’s in 2002.

The New York store functions both as a community center and as a  
destination for gawkers and serious customers. “We get everyone from  
celebrities getting custom work done to Broadway players to weekend  
warriors,” Willie Martinez, the store’s in-house repairman, said.

Heavies like Steve Jordan, Jeff Hamilton and Vinnie Colaiuta visit  
when they come through town. But those with less-intimidating résumés  
are also welcome. Andy Hazlitt browsed a wall of snares as his 15-year- 
old son, Cole, tried out some old K Zildjian cymbals he had seen on  
Maxwell’s Web site. He and his family were visiting for the weekend  
from Clearwater, Fla. “We made a pilgrimage,” Mr. Hazlitt said. “We  
stop at Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and here.”

On another winter afternoon, Jay Friedman, 64 and recently retired,  
dropped in to pay for his weekly lessons with Ron Tierno, a musician  
and teacher who has a studio in the store.

“I walked in here and thought, ‘This is pretty cool,’ ” Mr. Friedman  
said, recalling his first visit. “Sam Ash” — the music megastore down  
the street — “is a big machine. This place is a little jewel.”