The old-fashioned brass band has done more, to my way of thinking, than any other one thing to make our country the great nation that it is. The yeast of democracy never bubbles harder than when two dozen barbers and grocery clerks and farmers tear into "Dixie" or "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean."
In my day a brass band marching down Main Street on a Fourth of July and bursting forth with "Yankee Doodle" was positively the grandest sight on earth. On it marched, with firecrackers popping all around. I remember once when a small boy tossed a cannon cracker into the bell of a bass horn. It made the loudest and most explosive note ever to come out of a horn.
The more runaways a band caused, the better it was liked. In my home town every Fourth of July parade caused an average of three runaways. When the band came abreast of a skittish team of geldings, they would rear up on their hind legs, and then amidst the screams of women and the cries of children the terrified horses would plunge down the street. I know of nothing that gave a person more downright whole- some excitement than a team of runaway horses.
Parents who exercised careful and profound judgment in assisting their sons in choosing a band instrument were well rewarded. If a boy had buck teeth and a receding chin, a wise father steered him away from a horn. Squint Peabody was a perfect case of matching the boy to his instrument. Squint had a mouth that puckered like a black sucker's, giving him a perfect down-draft for a piccolo.
Of course, a two-hundred-pound man looks a bit ridiculous as he clutches a piccolo against his bosom and waits through almost an entire musical selection until it comes his turn to blow a few tweets. He feels that life has sort of passed him by. But on the whole, piccolo players get as much fun out of life as anybody. In our band we always ranked the piccolo player as a panty-waist. We thought he blew a little more into a piccolo than he ever got out of it.
There was an old axiom that the village innocent always played the bass drum. But I wouldn't say that. My Uncle Pod Goodwin was a bass drummer and an excellent one. He wasn't really deficient; he just looked dumb as he sat on the edge of the bandstand and banged away on his drum. He didn't know any music and he didn't have to know any, and since he wanted to be in the band we thought he would do less damage beating a drum than blowing a horn.
Picture in your mind's eye the town park on a balmy summer evening with the bandstand gaily lighted and with the gold braid and the gold buttons of the musicians' uniforms reflecting little beads of light. There comes a dramatic pause in the music— and then the cornetist rises and points his horn heavenward. With bated breath the audience follows the silvery notes until, finally, the band director's baton drops to his side. The cornetist resumes his seat amid a thunderous wave of applause.
Any man who can remember back to the time he played a silver cornet solo need never feel that his life has been lived in vain.
Not far behind the cornetist in prestige was the trombone player. You could spot a trombone player's wife any time because she was so thin and pale and nervous. Any woman who had to listen to her husband practicing a trombone smear night after night for weeks was bound to have bulging eyeballs and the whim-whams.
In the good old days a town was rated by the number of musicians in its band and by the elegance of their uniforms. A brass band with an oboe and a French horn was considered very de luxe.
Financing a band often was a serious problem. Some bands had to play in the red year after year. But loyal boosters of a really progressive town took it upon themselves to raise a band fund every year. It was understood this fund was to be used to buy uni- forms; then, if there was a balance remaining, that, according to well-established precedent, was to go for an oyster supper.
Unfortunately, for some reason, band players were very fond of oysters. I remember our band boys once voted to treat themselves to oyster suppers very early in the season. Nobody seemed to keep in mind the exact amount of the surplus, and it turned out the boys ate so many oysters that the new uniforms, figuratively, went down their throats.
It's firm conviction that when the small town my band went out, treason, disloyalty, and subversive activities came in. I just can't imagine a subversive band member; he blew all his primitive urges right out through his horn. And it was hard for the by- stander to feel anything but complete loyalty when the boys got wound up and ripped into Sousa's March. Rural life lost something fine and honest when our band played its last concert; we haven't been the same since.
"76 Trombones" sung by Professor Harold
Hill in Turner's "Music Man''
Learn about Meredith Wilson, America's real music man.
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