For Chet Doboe, the Big Bang is the original downbeat, and every physical object in the universe is a percussion instrument. There is nothing he hasn’t slapped, kicked, shaken, scraped, or hit with a stick in his life-long quest to introduce all sentient beings to the joys of corps-style drumming.
From the beginning, he was surrounded by eventual Hall-of-Famers. Chet was Don Freising’s student in the Babylon Islanders, Gerry Shellmer’s in the Sunrisers, and he worked with Dennis Delucia there during a string of DCA Championships. Other accomplishments include 6 DCA Quartet and 2 Duet championships, membership in the Sunrisers Hall of Fame, the VFW Americanism Award, authoring 23 drum books, a column in Modern Drummer Magazine, founding the Drumming for Our Veterans Benefit Concert, several PASIC appearances, and performances with the Santana drum section, Chester Thompson, Bernard Purdy, Terry Bozzio, and many other world-class drummers.
But by far, Chet’s most significant contribution has been the establishment of the Hip Pickles drum ensemble whose dynamic performances have been spreading the word about corps-style drumming for years, from the sidewalks of NY, to Puerto Rico, Canada, the UK, Austria, the Netherlands, the UN Peace Summit, the US Open, at corporate events, through TV and radio features, and via interactive school programs like “Music with a Message”, designed to teach young people about kindness, inclusion, and the power of music to counteract violence and bullying.
Chet Duboe is a missionary, the Pied Piper of the drum. Where he goes, the young and the old follow him, and when he plays, everybody joins in.
