A Compositional and Editorial Review of Drum Method and The All-American Drummer by Charley Wilcoxon, Referencing Material from the BGSU Wilcoxon Collection

Charley Wilcoxon is one of the most influential composers of early rudimentalpercussion literature. Many of his works came out of the necessity to create etudes andsolos for his students while teaching out of the Arcade in Cleveland Ohio. BGSU hasrecently obtained early original manuscripts, letters to the editors, 1st editions, and othermiscellaneous manuscripts that suggest that many of Wilcoxon's works including DrumMethod and The All-American Drummer were either a direct result or an evolution of theworks he created for his students. This work will chronicle the compositional andeditorial process of two of Wilcoxon's best selling and most influential snare drumbooks: Drum Method and The All-American Drummer. The editorial process for thisreview will consist of not only how the manuscripts went from single exercises to thepublisher; it will also cover the differences in artwork between the original sketches tothe 1st edition through the most recent edition on the shelves today. Many of Wilcoxon'spublished works were a direct result of his necessity for quality literature for his studentswhen, at the time, there were limited resources available. Wilcoxon's published workshave become staples in percussion pedagogy because he was able to come up with “realworld” etudes that could be applied to many of the disciplines of percussion.