The Southern Colonels Dance Band (Cont.)
Screen 2 of 5Complex? Time consuming? Difficult? Yes: But as we became more experienced with this process, we found it to be not only less and less difficult but also more enjoyable. The first time we learned a new piece in this way required three or four hours of hard work. Later, we could learn a comparable number in less than an hour. This learning included memorizing the entire arrangement, with an introduction, a first chorus, a modulation to a different key, another chorus, and a coda to conclude. By the end of the first six months of rehearsing and playing for dances in and around Bowling Green, we had memorized more than forty complete numbers--none of them with the help of written music.
There were usually eight young men in the band: Leon Spillman, the leader and drummer; Marvin Brown, Jimmy Jones, and Bill Bushong playing saxophones; Henry Baker, trombone; and Tom Pollard, playing either piano or bass horn. Occasion- ally, Johnny Kite and T. C. Cherry, Jr. substituted for clif- ton Simpson or me on trumpet, and Sid Hendricks sometimes played banjo with us, but most of the time the Southern Colo- nels were eight in number. (Many of these players are shown in the picture on the next page.)
Since jobs were scarce and money was very hard to come by during the Great Depression, all of us in the band felt fortunate in having this opportunity to help put ourselves through college. But just as important as the need to buy clothes and books and to pay our tuition costs were the pleasure and sense of accomplishment we had in playing together. It was great fun, as well as hard work. Some- times on school nights we would get as little as two or three hours of sleep between the end of a late dance and the beginning of our early morning classes at Western.
On out-of-town trips to play for dances, six of us rode in Marvin Brown's Model A Ford sedan--perhaps a museum piece now but then a modern and classy vehicle. The other two, selected on a rotating basis, rode in a crude, home-made, wooden trailer which was towed by Marvin's car. This trailer was no more than an oblong box not much larger than a household refrigerator set precariously on top of a set of leaf-type springs which were attached to a two-wheel cart.
Our musical instruments--all except the piano which was never transported--were also carried in the trailer. With no windows, its only opening was at the rear, where two hinged doors were made to be joined in the middle and padlocked only from the outside, an odd arrangement I cannot explain, except to say that the members of the band who built it were by no means construction specialists.
The instruments were packed tightly in the front of the trailer and held in place by a fishing net which had been used earlier as a seine for catching minnows. It was strong enough to hold the instruments in the forward part of the trailer but it did smell a little fishy at times-- especially on hot and humid summer nights. The net was strapped to the inside walls of the trailer, leaving just enough room at the rear for two people to be seated on the floor, which was usually covered by an old blanket folded to fit the small place. Certainly not an inviting or very comfortable way to travel--even in what my grandchildren would call "those pioneer days when Herbert Hoover was president"--this trailer arrangement for two was all we had and we just made the best of it.
Marvin never rode in the trailer during the first year or two we traveled together. We felt sure it was because he was fully aware of the Spartan riding conditions in that sweat box, but he claimed he could not take his turn back there because he had to drive the car! When asked why some other member of the band could not drive the car occasionally, he said his father would not allow it. Anyway, he said, his Model A had peculiarities no one else could understand. In any case, he always insisted on driving, not so subtly pointing out from time to time it was his car and that without it the band would have no transportation. We couldn't argue with that point, since none of us owned an automobile. In fact, at the time, I could not afford to own even a bicycle.
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