120 Years of Electronic Music

The Wurlitzer "Side Man" (1959)

The Side Man was the first commercial electronic drum machine, designed and built by Wurlitzer from 1959. The Sideman was intended as a percussive accompaniment for the Wurlitzers organ range. The side Man allowed a choice of 12 electronically generated predefined rhythm patterns with variable tempos. The sound source was a series of vacuum tubes which created 10 preset electronic drum sounds. The drum sounds were 'sequenced' by a set of rotating discs with metal contacts on the edge spaced in a certain pattern to generate parts of a particular rhythm. combinations of these different sets of rhythms and drum sounds created popular rhythmic patterns of the day -waltzes, fox trot etc., these combinations were selected by a rotary knob on the top of the Sideman box. The tempo of the patterns were controlled by a slider that increased the speed of rotation of the disc.

The Wurlitzer Sideman (open casing showing internal speaker, rotating disk and circuitry)

The sideman had a panel of 10 buttons to manually trigger drum sounds and a remote player to control the machine while playing from an organ keyboard. The Sideman was housed in a wooden cabinet that housed the sound generating circuitry, amplifier and speaker.