The story of Texas' Big Bertha and a decades-long rivalry over the biggest drums in college football began with the swagger of a wealthy oilman.
The Longhorn Band's biggest drum was ordered by Col. D. Harold "Dry Hole" Byrd, a man who had earned an unfortunate nickname for drilling wells that produced nothing before making a fortune in the East Texas oilfield.
Crockett began his own journey before hitting it big. It's really large. One of the great rivalries in sports history was revived when he discovered one of the largest drums in the world in an Indiana warehouse and acquired it.
The world's largest drum was owned by Boilermakers. The state of Texas had a big man. Both claimed to be the biggest, with Purdue claiming its dimensions were a secret to keep the mystery alive.
The Longhorn Band introduced Big Bertha II, a worthy successor to their 100 year old bass drum. During a 100th anniversary celebration for its predecessor, the world was unveiled to a 9 12 foot tall and 55 inch wide Bigger Bertha.
The Longhorns issued a press release with a picture of the largest bass drum in the world. Texas' drum was bigger than the world's largest drum. It was larger than Missouri's Big Mo, which was introduced in 2012 and dwarfs both of them at 9 feet tall and 54 inches wide.
The pride of the Longhorn Band director is the fact that he was a former snare drummer.
Croomes agreed. Everything is bigger in Texas. Texas had the tallest drum. Both sides had a claim to make. Big Bertha II is taller and wider than the drums, and that has been decided.
It was a blow to a rivalry a century in the making, when the Leedy Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, was enlisted to build a drum of "impossible proportions" by the band director of the Boilermakers. The world's largest drum is about 8 feet tall and 48 inches wide and costs $800. When the University of Chicago hosted a Big Ten game between the Boilermakers and the Maroons, the drum was used for the first time.
In college football, there's always a booster who wants to do something bigger and better for their school's reputation. Leland, the son of Carl D. Greenleaf, played in the university band. He was going to build a drum for the band. It was named after a famous German howitzer from World War I and became a huge attraction at football games and parades.
Texas entered the mix. The drum became the home of the Manhattan Project experiments after Chicago dropped football and left the Big Ten in 1939, but there were concerns the drum could've been used.
J.P. Kirksey, Texas' historian, said that there was no evidence that the drum was more contaminated than anything else in the stadium.
Texas saved the drum after it was abandoned at C.G. Conn.
The drum debate moved from regional to national as Texas celebrated its showpiece. Fans of both schools have bantered back and forth for a long time, including a planned 1961. The Boilermaker contingent arrived in time with their drums while the Longhorns did not. Texas band officials claim they don't know much about Big Mo.
The Boilermakers didn't engage on Texas because they couldn't fit the drum through the visitors' tunnel for the Notre Dame game. Keeping the spirit of rivalries alive was one of the messages they had for the Bigger Bertha.
The spokesman for the "All-American" Marching Band said that they would love to see it.
There are larger drums that wouldn't fit in the tunnels at Notre Dame. The traditional Korean CheonGo drum is 18 feet, 2 inches in diameter, 19 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 7 tons. The magnetic field around the Earth is said to be the largest drum in the universe.
The debate is about drums. They are not giant Korean bongos. The name of the drum will not be changed soon. All of it is part of the fun. The Boilermakers have tried to obscure the actual dimensions of the drum, only giving out measurements when it's mounted, which they say is over 10 feet tall.
Neil Boumpani, who built Missouri's Big Mo and Harvard's six-foot drum, said that the size of the drum wouldn't be known by anyone. They claim to have the biggest drum in the world, and now they're full of it.
Columbo knows what's true. When she was a newspaper reporter in Indiana, Dave Smith set her off on a quest to find out why no one told her the size of the drum.
If you don't want to be asked about it, why are you saying it's the world's biggest drum? Columbo spoke. It is said on the drum.
The headline of her story was "Purdue's 'World's Largest Drum' claim a giant exaggeration." It was supposed to be a lighthearted investigation to uncover the truth, but Purdue denied her request for the dimensions of the drum, claiming they were exempt from records that contain "trade secrets." Smith sent her to the Tippecanoe County Public Library, where she found a 1921 newspaper with an article stating that the drum was seven feet three.
She was happy that she had reached the bottom of the case. Readers weren't.
This is so clever. She said that people are going to take this in good humor. People were so offended by it that they didn't like it. Someone made a parody account of me saying "I enjoy long walks on the beach and defamation of universities." The intensity got really high.
Fans of the Boilermakers have been playing defense since 1922, when the team was built in Chicago. It was difficult to build a larger drum because the material on the surface of the drum was made from cow hides.
A company official told an Illinois newspaper in the 1920s that the drum cost $1,100. The bass drum had two heads, so it was necessary to find two just like the hides. The skin which was used for the head of the drum was trimmed to a size that could be mounted.
The rivalry only lasted for 17 years before the city of Chicago decided to stop playing football.
After hearing about a large abandoned drum in Indiana, Crockett decided to fulfill the vision of a showpiece for the band. He went to C.G. Conn's warehouse later that year and worked out a big deal.
He wanted the largest university in the largest state to have the largest drum in the world. He wouldn't give it to me. He was able to sell it to me for a dollar. He gave me a receipt after I paid him the dollar.
The drum was covered in a tarp and towed back to Austin after a three day road trip. The maroon lettering on Bertha was removed and replaced with a Texas seal.
She served the Longhorns from 1955-2022. She was used in the inaugural parade of John F. Kennedy and is considered as much a Texas icon as the UT Tower.
She was known as "The Sweetheart of the Longhorn Band" and despite its wooden frame and the wear and tear of being wheeled around, she held up for a century. After a last-second win over Arkansas in 1962 and an accident on I-35 between Austin and Dallas, the leather heads were slashed. Future travel was limited.
The Longhorn Alumni Band and the Longhorn Band were directed by Crockett. He looked after the drum after he died, setting up an endowment for care and maintenance.
The drum was restored after Mr. Crockett paid $19,000 for it in 2007. Everything on it was completely different. The wood was rotting when it was replaced. I was told by Moton that he wanted to get her ready for another century.
The state of Texas reached out to a long-time drummer who had moved to the Austin area from California. He was excited to work on a piece of history because he was a drummer and studied the evolution of drum manufacturing.
He was concerned about the wood construction and the fact that the straps on the trailer caused the wood to flex. The renovations gave Bertha a new lease on life, but they were still concerned that a crack in the outer shell could cause it to collapse in front of a large crowd.
"I kept praying that the drum would survive, that there wouldn't be a problem on the field, that everything would be fine," he said. Any day, it could happen. You can hit it hard or spin it weird. It can happen on the field. I told them that they could look at a new option.
The man dreamed of another person named Bertha. Big drums are expensive. Donors saw their "Sweetheart" as a worthwhile cause, even though no one knows what the replacement cost was. The fund was set up to send her off well.
Croomes said that anyone who is 100 years old should retire.
In January of this year, the official go-ahead was given to begin construction on the second project. He fell in love with Texas when he lived in the hills outside Austin. There are plots of land that were once owned by Willie Nelson where the A&F drums studio and house are located. A few of Nelson's studio recordings have drums on them.
It might have been enough to make him a full-blooded Texan. The Longhorn Band's new signature showpiece is no longer in question.
"I think we got adopted by Texas," he said. We have to keep up with Texas. We cannot let her go down. We need to do this in a way that the drum will last a long time.
The size of the drums is difficult to build according to the former Duke band director. He thought it would take him six weeks to build Big Mo, the bass drum that is the world's largest. The shell was made from fiberglass so it wouldn't get bent out of shape. He got the shell painted at an auto body shop after meeting locals who could help him make his own materials.
It took me a long time. Everything that could have gone wrong did not.
In the five years since he started working on Bertha, he'd already begun imagining and experimenting with how he'd build a new one, which allowed him to hit the ground running. They watched a video about how Leedy made the drum.
They talked about their team of engineers. I want to hold my beer. Let's work on something.
The materials used on airplanes and rockets were used to develop a proprietary aluminum.
A quarter-inch aluminum was the choice. It would be four feet wide by 30 feet long if you laid it out. Wrap it around in a circle and that's how it became the shell.
An extremely low-profile trailer that carries the drum, complete with handles as wide as the drum that look like the horns of a Longhorn steer, and a gearboxes that looks like the UT Tower, was built by Spille.
"Maybe we'll be asked to build a trolley for their drum so it can go sideways," he said.
The university didn't have to change theBertha door in the band hall because the carriage was low.
Croomes said that there was a door that was 12 feet tall that could fit through. There is a big man. On the trailer is a picture of Big Bertha II. We were worried that it wouldn't fit in the door. It clears the door by a small amount.
Remo, a California company started by drummer Remo Belli, developed the first commercially successful synthetic drumheads, which saved the hides of countless animals. The drum makers did it 100 years ago, but the evolution of the materials made them even bigger.
It was a challenge to get Remo to make a head larger than Big Mo's, which was108 inches. He had to do his own lobbying to get them to go bigger.
"I told them to make history," he said. Another century-old legacy can be created by us. You would like to be involved in this. I'm telling you that I believe in and the only people in the world that can do it are my friends. They were able to figure it out.
The biggest bass drum in the world is 114 by 55 inches.
It was a chance for Spille, who has lived in Texas for more than two decades, to write a love letter to the state.
One of the most exciting things for me is my wife's graduation from UT. I wasn't that cool until this point, but now I'm a bit cooler in her book. Bertha I was the drummer for Chicago. He said that this was not meant for Texas. The drum was built in Texas.
The largest drum can play the lowest note ever played on a drum. It's going to change things up with a new wireless microphone inside it.
The larger the diameter the lower the note. "That's drums, that's what I'm saying." If this is the largest bass drum in the world, then it will be the lowest note. I'm not sure what type of subs they have in that stadium. It is able to break windows. Everyone is going to feel like there is an earthquake in there. It will roar.
The section leader for "Bertha Crew" at Texas, who is also a member of the Longhorn Band, will be rumbling for the game this weekend when he makes his first appearance during the national anthem.
When it's the 100 year anniversary of a drum that has a lot of history with the school, it's cool to be in this position. I'm only going to have two home games with her, but I'm hoping that she'll make some new memories like the old Bertha did.
The Athletics Hall of Fame is located under the north end zone at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
Kirksey, who played in the Longhorn Band in the 1960s and was a good friend of Crockett, is a bit nostalgic about the old drum being in a museum.
Kirksey said that he was glad that Mr. Crockett was dead because he would have liked to have seen that drum used forever. That is all history now. I'm okay with her decision to retire.
Even if he still wants to make up for a past wrong.
According to Kirksey, the biggest drum ever built is the original Bertha. I don't think there's any doubt about that, except for the fact that they have fakery.
Croomes is excited that fans will once again be able to see the original Bertha.
He said they were happy to have both girls in the family.
A reporter told Boumpani last week that Big Mo had been overtaken. He was excited to know all the details and dimensions, and was impressed that it was made from metal.
After mastering the art of building drums on the fly, he hopes the drum wars never end.
He thinks someone will want him to make a bigger one. I'm willing to accept the challenge.
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