youtube/watch?v=0DmtPvFa_W8 What an all star group! I had to check the credits for the vibist though…Harry Sheppard. I interviewed Sheppard for the Gladstone book as he was an endorser and BELIEVER in the Gladstone ‘No Break’ Mallets. “Harry Sheppard was instrumental in the development of Gladstone’s ‘No Break’ vibe mallets. Sheppard first met Gladstone in 1956. Sheppard was playing with Sol Yaged’s group at the Metropole in New York City. Yaged played clarinet, Sheppard played vibes, Kenny Kersey was on piano, Mort Herbert played bass and Cozy Cole was on drums. Of their first meeting Sheppard says: ‘Billy came in to see his friend Cozy Cole, and Cozy introduced me to him. The first thing Gladstone said to me was, “I’ve never seen anybody but Lionel Hampton play as hard as you do.” You see, the owner of the Metropole, Ben Harriman, insisted that the bands play full volume-no ballads. The music critics used to say, “It’s like the jazz is shot out of a cannon when you walk into the place.” The doors of the club were never closed during business hours. Harriman wanted everyone in Times Square to hear the music. When Sol Yaged said he wanted to add me to his group, Harriman insisted that I audition because he didn’t think vibes could maintain the volume level he required. Harriman was hard of hearing and wore a hearing aid. For my audition Harriman walked across the street to Howard’s Clothes, stood in the doorway and turned his hearing aid off! He signalled me to start playing. After a few minutes, he appeared in the doorway of the Metropole and gave Sol the nod. I passed the audition and got the gig. We played so loud I actually broke vibe bars in half-at least one every six months. You can imagine what I did to rattan-handle mallets. If they didn’t break, they simply bent out of shape in no time.’ Gladstone was impressed with Sheppard’s playing. Sheppard remembers Gladstone’s words, ‘It’s very exciting, but you must go through a lot of mallets. I’d like you to help me develop a mallet that won’t bend or break.’ Sheppard agreed; however, he didn’t think much more about it. A few weeks later, Gladstone came to the Metropole with some prototype mallets. Gladstone designed the heads of the mallets out of wood in the shape of a wheel. He then had rubber bands of varying thickness and density that wrapped around the wheel like a tire. The variations in the rubber resulted in a hard or soft sound. In addition, he tried all kinds of plastic shafts, as described in his patent filed in 1954, but eventually they all failed. Gladstone would come into the Metropole with a package of two or three dozen mallets. The stage at the Metropole was above the bar and Gladstone would toss the package on stage to Sheppard. ladstone even had the mallets numbered, and as they failed, he would check the number off the list. Sheppard said this process went on for some time until Gladstone tried fiberglass shafts, which worked perfectly. Sheppard commented ‘As hard as I played, I never broke a shaft. The heads would sometimes fly off, but the shafts would never break. Billy was really pleased. I thought they were fantastic, not only because they wouldn’t break, but I thought they were much more accurate. Playing as hard as I did, I found that rattan shafts were too flexible. They would whip at high volume and sometimes strike between the bars. Gladstone’s fiberglass shafts were rigid enough that this distortion didn’t occur. Some of the guys didn’t like them because they weren’t flexible, but for my needs they were perfect. Without a doubt, Billy Gladstone started the trend for fiberglass mallets that continues to this day’, Sheppard says. ‘A lot of manufacturers offer fiberglass mallets, but when Gladstone developed his “No Break” mallets, everyone else was using rattan. I don’t think manufacturers (then) particularly liked using fiberglass because they last too long. You know, planned obsolescence.’” Sheppard is seen here playing full volume with his Gladstone mallets.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 09:23:35 +0000