To the Beat of Her Own Drum
Retiree Nancy Park Drum of Rochester and her band perform throughout the area
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Although she and her group, The Pearlz Band, play for nursing home residents and senior center guests, Rochesterian Nancy Park Drum, 64, also likes to rock out, performing classic rock and blues at local breweries, bars and restaurants evenings and for special events.
For the older audiences, she and her group play standards by Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Gene Autry, along with bluegrass.
The band used to be called String of Pearls, which Drum felt confused audiences because it is also the name of a 1941 hit by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. Funnily enough, her older audience members expressed relief learning that the band did not play Big Band music — perhaps because music that was their parents’ genre but not theirs.
“It worked in our favor because the seniors were delighted to learn that we weren’t a big band,” Drum said. “They just love what we play. They’ve said they’re inundated with big band and Frank Sinatra. No one else comes in with folk, bluegrass and things like that.”
Formed in 2008, the trio is an all-acoustic group. Switching to The Pearlz Band name allows Drum and her bandmates to avoid these misunderstandings.
“We enjoy it and it’s very fulfilling for us,” Drum said. “I’ve cried during a song and because I’ve seen them crying. But at night we go wild and rock it out.”
Drum retired in November 2021 from working in a marketing role in the office of development at RIT, a shift that has allowed her spend more time performing with the band, comprised of Jerry Curry and Dave Santa Maria.
The Pearlz Band isn’t her first musical group. A lifelong musician and performer, Drum has also played with Pay Dirt in Rochester with Curry, Santa Maria, Bob Mondy and her husband, Bill Drum. She and Bill met while playing with the St. James Blues Band. Bill now plays with Blue Sky. They have been married 34 years. Bill works as an electrician at RIT.
Drum has come a long way since tap and ballet classes at age 5. She studied clarinet, piano and guitar while in school and added guitar, Dobro, hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, auto harp, five-string banjo, mandolin, fiddle and string bass. She sang in various school groups and when she graduated, received the National Choral Award.
While still in school, she joined the Golden Link Folk Singing Society where she met local mentors who influenced her music, such as Allen Hopkins and the late Bill Mickelson. In 1974, she also met Lesley Riddle, an Appalachian legend.
“He would change my life forever,” Drum said. “Mr. Riddle is now being hailed as one of the originators of country music. He collected songs with AP Carter of The Carter Family in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia for several years and wrote some of their music and arranged it.
“Mother Maybelle Carter is being hailed as one of the best female guitar players of all times and Riddle’s guitar technique influenced her playing. She credits him for that and he taught me it as well some 40 years after her. Mother Maybelle was the mother of the late June Carter-Cash and Johnny Cash’s mother-in-law.”
At the time, Drum viewed Riddle as just a friend of the family with little idea of his influence on the world of country music. In general, most people had no idea of how important his contributions were because he was Black.
“He didn’t receive credit for it when he worked with the Carters back in the ‘20s and ‘30s because of the segregation rules and issues in the South at that time,” Drum said.
Drum also learned from local blues musicians John Mooney and Joe Beard. She recalled her father taking her out on a school night well past midnight to sit in with the band or play during one of their breaks. But Drum was ready to catch the school bus by 6 a.m. the next day.
Her musicianship continued at Nazareth University (Nazareth College then), where she earned a BA in English, concentration in writing and secondary educational certification. During those years, she provided warm-up acts for John Hammond Jr., Paul Butterfield, Bat McGrath and more.
She also became friends with New Orleans blues and jazz guitarist Danny Barker, Cab Calloway’s guitarist.
Her connection with Lesley Riddle caused the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Virginia to invite her to attend an anniversary celebration where the organization exhibited all of Drum’s archives of playing with Riddle. She also received an invitation to participate in a live interview by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, followed by a performance of Riddle’s music and a demonstration of his guitar style.
Drum’s experiences with Riddle and her own journey as a female musician also spurred her to write a book about him, “Almost Famous in Ra-Cha-Cha, NY (and Featuring the ‘Lost’ Years of Mr. Lesley Riddle.” She said that the stories include tales that are “entertaining, heartwarming, heart-wrenching, hysterically funny and some even shocking.”
Retiring two years ago afforded her the opportunity to complete the book which she said is close to publication.
“I’d always wanted to get this book about Lesley Riddle published,” Drum said. “We weren’t getting much coverage from the Rochester papers because I don’t think they’re as familiar with the music. Down South, they thought I was famous because I’d played with Lesley Riddle.”