Henry Grossman acquired Rogers in the early 50's from the last of the Rogers Family. Moved it from Farmingdale NY to Covington Ohio.

Sold to CBS Musical Instruments in April 1966.

CBS... through a series of poor management decisions and corporate failures, scuttled it by 1984.

Rogers was licensed to the Island Music Import company in the late 80's, and went from lowered quality to junk.

The name was then sold to the owners of Spitzer Music..... who did nothing with it.

From there it went to Brooks May Music, who almost pulled off a genuine resurrection of the brand. Until.... the bankruptcy.

Yamaha had the name and their hearts proved to be fey.

Rogers has departed into the West (or East, depending on how you see it)..... although not the Undying Lands. It is now owned by Joe Chen... Dixon et al.

Gone, death by corporate murder.

Fred Gretsch owns Leedy, right? I keep hoping for more than just snares to come out.

And Slingerland is still owned by Gibson I think. Funny they still listed drums on their website. And maybe still there? Back in 09 I tried to order a new GK kit from them LOL. I didn't know they had stopped production some time ago.

I owned one of those Brook Mays Rogers kits, not much like the original other than the lugs and script badge. It did sound very good, but like a modern kit, nothing like the vintage Rogers.

And here it is....

I think around 1970 when Bud Slingerland bailed out it was first sold off to a group of employees of the company who were financed by a publishing company... later at some point Gretsch owned the name and now (as mentioned) Gibson are still "sitting" on the name... I think others were involved in the name ownership along the way. Be nice to have a detailed timeline by someone who knows...

Cheers

john

JR, those were fairly good drums. The next two years promised even better drums, but it was not to be. Very few BM Beavertail kits made the market, as soon as Yamaha got it... they killed it. I am still looking for one of those BM Beavertail sets.

It was a nice kit, I traded it off a few years ago, wish I hadn't, but it may pop up again.

Actually the new Rogers drums are still a BM product. Just a different sort of BM Burger Kin

Ploughman,

1st: Is this a Brooks May Rogers set?

http://hudsonvalley.craigslist.org/msg/5194621190.html

I'm not in the least bit interested in any post-Big R USA era Rogers, but I though you, as a Rogers historian, might be interested in this BM kit.

2nd: So who is Joe Chen, and why would anyone buy the Rogers name if they weren't going to produce drums? Then again, one of our members here owns the W&A name mostly for historic purposes.

Mike