Rogers Drums were made in three factories. The first one was in New Jersey, when the family owned the company. When Rogers was purchased by Cleveland based Henry Grossman (of Grossman Music) he moved operations to Covington, Ohio in the 1950s. In 1969, Rogers, as a division then, of CBS Musical Instruments consolidated production in Fullerton, California.
During the Covington years, finished product was shipped to Grossman Music headquarters in Cleveland for warehousing and sales. Once CBS owned Rogers, in April of 1966, the warehousing was done in nearby Dayton, Ohio.
Today's feature was created during the Covington time period when Rogers also used the Toronto firm of H&A Selmer for Canadian distribution. I've had this undated catalog for quite a few years and I would date it about 1962 since some of the pages are exactly the same as the US catalog.
The Canadian version has a few differences and pictures of sets and descriptions were minimized to save space.
The catalog is about one third the total size of the US counterpart, leaving out a number of products. What we do find are the various Rogers sets, snare drums, tom toms and basses, marching drums, Swiv-o-matic hardware, stands, cymbals and heads and percussion items. No prices are listed.
You can see the front cover - an illustration of a silhouette of a matched grip drummer. The inside front and back covers have pictures of international endorsees - Charles Botterill of England and Mark Bowden of Australia are in both the US and Canadian catalogs, but Canada's own Ron Rully and Ray Reilly are pictured with their sets. Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson are also on the back cover in gleaming black and white.
The only color shot shows us the 14 plastic wraps and two lacquers available in 1962. If I could go back in time, I would get every Mardi Gras drum I could get from the factory and warehouse. The only problem with Rogers in 1962 was that the company was in the final two years of using the beautiful but fragile drawn brass lugs. We needed another year for Rogers to introduce their nearly indestructible beavertail lugs and then the drum set war was really on.
I have not seen another Rogers Canadian catalog. Let me know if you have one or have seen one.