Al Duffy has been playing drums for forty-seven years. And that fact, perhaps more than any other, accounts for his singular reputation as a drum designer, craftsman and innovator. Now the key research and development source at Nashville’s Pearl International—and a man deeply involved in the company’s future— Duffy is perhaps best known for his late ’60s tenure at Frank Ippolito’s Professional Percussion Center in New York, where he gained a reputation as a player’s best friend (qua technician and all-around ear), and for several seminal inventions, including the chain pedal. Recently, I visited him in Nashville, where we talked at length about drums and Al Duffy, past, present and future:   MR: Al, tell me how you came to be a person who knows as much as you do about drums. AD: Well, in the first place, I don’t know everything there is to know. You never stop learning. […]

December 1982 Issue