The History of the Drum Machine

About 10 years ago, a disgruntled pianist in Los Angeles named John Wood began a popular bumper sticker campaign with the slogan, “Drum Machines Have No Soul.” Not everyone was convinced, including producer Eric Sadler.”Drum machines don’t run themselves,” Sadler says. “It’s the people who put into the drum machines that give the drum machines soul, to me. I’ve definitely given some drum machines some soul.”

Here’s the thing: The earliest drum machines were never intended to be studio recording devices. Take Wurlitzer’s 1959 Sideman, one of the first commercially available drum machines. It used vacuum tubes to create its percussive sound and was intended for organ players who perhaps didn’t want to pay a drummer to join their lounge act.

“It’s about 2 feet and some change tall,” says Joe Mansfield, author of the new book Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession. “It’s maybe a foot and a half wide, and it looks like something that would belong in an old, wood-paneled library to me. It’s a distinctive-looking thing; at first look, you wouldn’t think it would be a drum machine.”

Drum machines were still largely novelties throughout the ’60s and ’70s, but musicians slowly began to play around with them, says Dante Carfagna. He’s the producer behind the recent compilation album Personal Space, which examines early pop experiments with drum machines and other electronics.