When the day comes that someone decides to build the Santa Cruz Percussionists Hall of Fame, the curators will have a lot of names to immortalize – Walker, Greiner, Hull. But at the top of that list should be the name of Johnny Craviotto. Heck, they should probably just name the joint the Johnny C. Hall of Fame.

The man that Santa Cruz knew as “Johnny C.” died on July 15 at the age of 68, leaving behind friends and fans that can only marvel at a drummer who built not one, but two fine careers.

As a performer, he was known as the drummer of Neil Young’s 1970s side band, the Ducks, and worked for years as a studio side man and touring drummer for a number of headlining acts including Arlo Guthrie, Ry Cooder and Moby Grape. Then, in the late 1980s, he changed course entirely, becoming a drum maker that eventually evolved into the Craviotto Drum Company, a manufacturer of high-end snare drums and drum sets that has been embraced by many of the top names in the music industry. Among the bands that use, or have used, Craviotto drums: Death Cab for Cutie, the Killers, Keith Urban, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Branford Marsalis, Sleater Kinney, Rush … we could go on.

Craviotto’s love of drums goes back to the 1950s when he joined his first Santa Cruz band Corny & the Corvettes, fronted by the late sax man Cornelius Bumpus. The Corvettes were regulars at the Cocoanut Grove before Johnny C. began to gig with other name-brand musicians, including Young in the late 1970s.

Later, he began to collect drums and he became fascinated with their construction. He then worked for the industry giant Drum Workshop, which led to his adventure as a entrepreneur. At the head of his own company, he grew into a master craftsman and his Watsonville-based company began to attract the attention of drummers from around the world. Much of that success came from his love for materials. When I visited his factory back in 2007, he showed me an enormous plank of maple that was dredged up from the bottom of Lake Superior, believed to be more than 700 years old. Someone somewhere has a Craviotto drum made from that plank.

Johnny C. is gone, but the sound of his drums roll on.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct an error.