One day, in Mrs. Duncan’s home room in the 8th grade, Mr. George Peck, the band director, showed up and asked if anyone who could read music, a piano student, for instance, would like to play in the band. He had this oboe in his hand. It was after fifth period.
I raised my hand, having wanted to be in the band for some time, but did not own an instrument, or have any real idea what I wanted to play. He told me to come to the band shack after school that day. Having nothing better planned, I found Mr. Peck in the back of the tin-sided building in his tiny office. Smoking non-filtered Luckies, he told me the situation. Band competition was to be in two weeks, and if they did not have an oboe player, points would be taken away. This was Pecks first year and the band he inherited from the former director was very fine, but lacking in double reeds. He had found Jan Correll to learn the formidable bassoon, but the oboe position was still unfilled.
He gave me some instructions, showed me the vibrating reed, how to put the instrument together, how to clean the spit out of it. An old instruction book with a finger chart, and a picture of a stout gentleman playing the thing. He held the oboe to his smiling lips, and his cheeks seemed sort of puffed out. It looked about 50 years old, in blurry black and white. The oboist name was Emile somebody, German or Jewish, probably. Goosens?
He saw that I could make a squawk on the thing, and sent me home to learn the scales. And said to come to the special practice the band was having next Sunday afternoon. I went home and tried to learn the scales and the tunes offered in the instruction book.
Next Sunday, I showed up for my first band practice. It was confusing and exciting at the same time. There were some senior virtuosi, like Quincy Collins and Jesse Fisher, on sax and trombone, a neighbor on baritone, Don Corl on French Horn. I think I was the only eighth grader. All the rest in the 7th and 8th, were in Junior Band. Everybody seemed so adult and sophisticated. Remember I was in the class of ‘53 at the time. (I was later to take two junior years, and thus spent the last two in the class of 54.)
The first piece that was handed out, was a something called “King John Overture”. I was sitting beside Carolyn Crowell, playing flute, and she explained what everything was on this strange band chart. First came an 8 measure rest, indicated by a bar with an 8 over it. She showed me how to count out the time: 1 2 3 4, 2 2 3 4, 3 2 3 4 etc. while the brass played a thrilling 8 measure fanfare intro, and then the wind choir came on with a melodic passage, with me playing a squawky, uncertain alto to the flute’s silvery soprano. I was scared to death, but after a few stops and starts and encouragement from Peck and the band, I got a bit of applause, and decided I liked it.
My solos were covered anyway by the clarinet, as I was not really ready for prime time. Peck told me that if I did not play a note, it would be all right. Just put the instrument in my mouth and move my fingers to the rhythm and we would be covered. The day of the contest approached. I actually caught on, and played most of the notes of my part. We had to play three pieces. That “King John”, by one Forrest L. Buchtell is the only one I remember. Perhaps “Hail Detroit” was the warm-up march. The venue was in Charlotte, at an auditorium on Hawthorne Street, near the Presbyterian Hospital, where my sister was to be born that May
Jan and I had become friends. After the band performed, not badly at all, we did not go back to Concord right away, but listened to some of the solo competition. Quincy played a very fine piece with much fast scale work. He got a superior. Trumpet wizard Maurice Allen turned in a perfect performance of “Carnival of Venice” with its dizzying coloratura bravado. They both got Superiors. Our band got superior. This all meant that we would go to Greensboro the next month and compete on the State level. Now we did not really compete. We played for criticism. The judges gave marks and grades on, I guess, absolute values. Jan and I took a walk all the way to the downtown area and back. We talked about everything we knew. Rode back to Concord with Mr. Peck, I think. I learned when I got home, that Mom was worried about me, since I was supposed to return around noon. Mom always worried about me if I was off the announced schedule.
Jan later had a party at her house for four of us embryonic musicians. She found music for a Woodwind quartet. I cannot remember who played clarinet, but Edwin Hord played flute. He was the youngest, but could play very well. He lived close to Jan. We murdered a piece by Tschaikovsky, but had a great deal of fun doing it. I spilled hot chocolate on Mrs. Correll’s rug!
Then it was arranged that I should join the first period band practice. I do not know what class I exchanged for that move, but we had to prepare a couple of other pieces for the Greensboro event. The judges would pick one of the ones we were to play, so we had to practice hard to be ready. When we finally went to Greensboro, I loved my first band trip, being on the bus with all those impressive upper-class players. I bought a newspaper to read, and the others found it funny. It was the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which I saw at the Soda Shop, and displayed the comics on the front. The paper provided some amusement, with some smart ones making figures out of the pages and rearranging the words to make absurd headlines. We performed at WC, the Woman’s College, in Aycock Auditorium. A grand stage in a big hall. We did well and after listening to a few other high schools, especially Lenoir, who played the hardest stuff, Wagner and all, we went down town to eat, and hung out in the King Cotten Hotel lobby. After all, we had played J. P. Sousa’s “King Cotten March”. The judges gave us “Superior” for that performance also....
Back home, we had to practice marching for the Memorial day parade, Remember Confederate Memorial Day? On May 10th. Waving Confederate flags, and carrying flowers to put on the monument to the Confederate war heroes. A student would read their prise winning essay about the Civil War. Bill Harmon won the contest one year, I remember. The monument itself is polished marble and is rather phallic in shape, topped with a sphere, but that detail did not occur to me at the time. (Also, once, in May, at Coltraine Grammar School, John McGinnis built a May pole, and in this great ceremony, was decorated by beautiful young girls in gossamer dresses, weaving musti-colored ribbons around that phallic pole, symbolically taming the priapic power, harnessing the male dominance. Quite touching.) Carolyn was my squad leader, and taught me how to march. The oboe is not usually used in the marching band, but they needed the body. I had trouble learning about left and right. Staying in step, etc. Mrs. Ruth Cannon gave us refreshments in the back yard of their big place on Union Street.
The Band also to played concerts in the other grammar schools... Coltraine and Long. And even the all-Black Logan. And we gave a Mother’s Day Concert in the athletic stadium, Web Field, which included some good stuff like Morton Gould’s jazzy “Pavanne” and Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”. Maurice Allen played “Trumpeter’s Lullaby”, which brought a tear. We closed with a reverend version of “Bless this House”, in honor of all the Mothers.
Another Spring event was Easter Sunrise, which took place at the Central Methodist Church with the singers and band on the porch. Congregation on the ample lawn. We played some Bach chorals and the usual “Up from the Grave He Arose”. Later, coffee and doughnuts....
The last gig of the year was always the Commencement send-off for the seniors. It was usually outside also.
I went to summer school, to pass Mrs. Walker’s math class, which I had flunked. And more or less forgot about the band until fall. We started band practice before school in August before classes started, like the football team. I still had trouble marching. But that Freshman year, our band was not so good since the senior soloists had graduated and their were fewer players with experience.
Those coming up from junior band were not yet seasoned players, but Hugh Craig was their playing bassoon with Jan. Edwin Hord was there. I am not sure if Phil Nelson, Garren Tate, Hiram Caton, and Bill Harmon who was a year behind them, had to wait another year, since they were in the eighth grade, but if Hugh was in, I guess they were too. We were in trouble. Peck had trouble pulling us all together.
We started marching band practice, before school. It started turning cold, and still we had to practice. We put on our uniforms of black and gold, woolly and scratchy, and prepared half-time shows, going through maneuvers and such. Once we had a theme show where the lights were turned off, we made a street corner with a real street lamp, and a fire hydrant with a dog!!! I forget the context or purpose, but it was different. Our out of town games were at schools close enough for a bus trip. Which was fun. The flag bearers and the twirlers and the honor guards were all aboard. It was quite a deal. Everybody smoked by me. How I escaped I do not know, but Mom must have thought I did because the smoke would cling so fast to the wool uniforms, you could probably have scraped pure nicotine from them!!!!! Young people seem to have leather lungs. Betty Drye taught us some songs, most with baudy lyrics, like “Fascinating Lady” about a woman of the night. “She lived in a house with a little red light, slept all day and worked all night.....” Another was “Minnie the Mermaid” who “lost her morals down among the corals.”
Towards Christmas, we got to go to Charlotte and march in the Carousel Christmas parade, then the Concord and the Kannapolis parades. In the Concord parade we were at the end, and had to step in all the horse droppings. Everyone who had a horse in the county, it seemed, rode in the parade, and our first concert of the year, when we became the “concert” band, was at Christmas.
Bill Hansell was the best trumpet player, left over from the year before, and he was good enough to take Maurice’s place, easily doing the horse whinney in Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride”. Otherwise we were not nearly so strong, and when Contest rolled around in the spring, we did not make the excellent mark, and did not go on to Greensboro.
That year, the century reached 50. Harry Truman was President. 1950 saw the Korean War, with Douglas McArther the General in command, and people started getting television sets. The parents of Jimmy Probst, who we called Pinky, had the first one I knew of, and everybody crowded into his house to see. Hugh’s parents bought one soon after, and it was the novelty of the hour. Although most of the time it was on test-pattern.
At school, though, the music department got some help from Buford Goodman, an accomplished singer, who did wonderful things with the choir. He was not popular with the band, though. Just a bit fey. And the next year, William Tritt, a fine violinist, fresh out of Eastman School of Music, arrived with his family, and started a string program. He directed the chorus that year. Jadie Metcalf came out of nowhere to win a superior at solo contest on his French Horn, playing Mozart. Jadie was so skinny then, the newspaper praised him as a 90 pound wonder!!!! I remember how hard he worked getting in shape, practicing all afternoon in that music shack we called the band room!!!! He made that difficult Mozart sound easy!
The next year, we were all a lot better, and Phil Nelson started talking about Dixieland. He made us listen to Louie Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton and all the New Orleans and Kansas City and Memphis players. He had learned by ear or by heart a whole lot of rifts from those guys. Buying some arrangements, a motley crew came over to my house one Friday night, (I had the piano!) and we made quite a noise a few Saturday nights for a while. My folks were very patient, to say the least. Then, when we started to sound like something, he got George Peck to let us use the band room for practice. He even got the key. Mr. Nelson, Phil’s Dad, owned the radio station WEGO, and we made a record or two there. Garren and Phil played trumpet, Phil Morris played sax, John Barnhardt played trombone, and Danny Cook played drums. Bunny Kidd also played drums, when Danny could not make it. Things were loose. I cannot remember who played clarinet, or even if we had one. Later, Phil started dating a very sexy girl from China Grove, and she sang with a beautiful dusky voice. “I’m trying... to forget you.... but tr....y as I may-ay.... You’re still in the very heart of me.... oh oh! every day-ay!!” There was not a dry seat in the house......
We read a lot about musicians.... I remember we discovered Mezz Mezro’s “Really the Blues” with stories of Bix Beidebeck, and........ then some of the big band influence hit. Phil was crazy about Stan Kenton, and his most progressive of the band jazz artists. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Galespie and the Bee-Bop school had some effect too. We played dances in faraway Statesville and Salisbury. The rock and roll era was dawning. Doo-wop was emerging. Songs like “60 Minute Man”, “Shake Rattle and Roll”, “Honey Love”, and “What I Say”. You often had to go to Colored Town to get the records, as these were still considered Black music, and looked down on in the segregated environment of those days. Only one progressive minded radio station would play them at first. Robert and Richard somebody from K-town came to sing some with the band. They were twins with long hair, side burns and rock star good looks, proto Everly Brothers. They did not last very long. Phil made fun of them. Too trifling for our ever growing sophistication. Raw-butt and Rich-turd, I think they refered to themselves. But the harmony was sweet.
Our senior year, Phil arranged a whole Assembly Program of music, and imported some good players from Kannapolis. Garren’s cousin Max and my cousin Elmo Hoffman, and a trombonist named Phil Glass. We did the concert in Concord and Kannapolis. I do not know if Phil has the tapes or not. I do know recordings were made. The sound was very big-band and it was fun to play. It was quite an accomplishment for Phil, and Tritt was in awe of the sounds he created.
I stayed behind after my first junior year. I decided to take it over with different courses, and improve my grade point average, and have fun with a lot of friends I had made in the class below. Money for college was scarce and I was not scholarship material. (I wasn’t College material either, but I went for it anyway.) Made mediocre grades but learned a lot. Not necessarily about the subjects I took. Jimmy Lineberger took me to a French film, “Devil in the Flesh” with Gerard Phillipe, and I never recovered. The first Charlotte trip with Jimmy was on the bus. The second, he had his Dad’s Studebaker. The Visulite Arts cinema became a regular stop in Charlotte after that.
More memories later........
