Carol Calato, BA '70

The Beat of a Different Drummer

Carol Calato’s path to success has been paved with nylon. Nylon-tipped drumsticks, that is.

Calato, BA, ’70, is president of J.D. Calato Manufacturing Company in Niagara Falls. The company’s claim to fame is the “Regal Tip” drumstick invented by Calato’s father nearly 50 years ago. Today the company is the world’s premier drumstick maker and the world’s largest manufacturer of drum brushes. Indeed, Calato’s stewardship these past seven years and those nylon tips have made Regal Tip a household name – if your household is made up of percussionists.

Calato’s nylon-paved path could have ended very differently. She enrolled at UB as an English major. She chose the school, among other reasons, because her department’s professors were “the crème de la crème,” she says. “I still remember getting back my first paper as a freshman in Jack Clark’s class. I thought I wrote well, until I read his comments,” she remembers. “He taught me so much about writing.”

Calato’s main extracurricular activity during her years at UB was – naturally enough for the time – protesting. “During my last semester of my senior year, UB closed early because protesters shut down the campus,” she says. “Our classes were often cancelled because of protests. It was an experience.”

From teaching to the family business

Calato went on to complete her master’s degree in English with a certification in education. Her intention was to teach in one of the junior colleges that were cropping up all over the landscape during the ’70s. She landed a job teaching in the Niagara Falls school district. After her second year, she decided to work at her father’s company during summer break.

“I had always worked for my dad as a kid, but during that particular summer I started to like it more and more,” says Calato. At summer’s end, she told her father she didn’t want to go back to teaching. She substitute-taught until the following December. Then, she started working in J.D. Calato Co.’s offices, doing typing, filing, typical administrative work.

“Gradually, Calato moved into other areas of the business.” She began handling the company’s marketing and communications. She lived in Los Angeles during the ’90s, heading up the company’s office there. “We got invited to awards shows, concerts,” she says. “We met and listened to a lot of artists – Whitney Houston, Boys II Men, Alanis Morrisette, Madonna. If you like music, it’s a great business.”

Her learning process, she admits, “was slow. Over many years – 31 – I came to know all the aspects of the company.”

Today, as president, Calato’s most important role is public relations: “Attracting good people to the company, bolstering our relationships with customers and suppliers, representing the company to music industry organizations. That’s what I’m best at and what I like the most,” Calato says. “Don’t put numbers in front of me,” she says, laughing.

Happily, she loves percussion and the music industry, which makes her job easier. “We need to know the upcoming bands, who’s really good, which drummers are up and coming. It’s a young industry, and the sounds are always changing.”

Made in America

The company manufactures everything in the United States and has been able to maintain its market share and the quality of its products. “One of the reasons we’re still around after 50 years is that we’ve continued to innovate,” says Calato. “We’ve introduced so many new products to the market. For instance, we just came out with a new nylon tip that sounds different when you hit a cymbal.”

Though a degree in English might seem worlds away from a career as a music-industry executive, Calato closely connects her current success with her college years. UB exposed her to a world she had never known.

“I’d traveled some with the American Field Service,” she says. “But at UB I was exposed to students from all over the world, to arts and culture. We deal with companies all over the world because we sell internationally. That experience prepared me to meet and deal with people from other cultures. As well, UB was very volatile at the time, and it opened my eyes politically.”

Perhaps most important, she adds with a wink, “My letters are punctuated and spelled well.”

Written by Grace Lazzara
November 2004

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