A Great-Granddaughter’s Journey

If you live in or near Northfield, or plan to be driving through our fair city this Thursday morning, I’d like to invite you to attend an informal presentation I’m giving at Village on the Cannon about the G. Oliver Riggs project. I’m calling it “Tales of a Real-Life Music Man: A Great-Granddaughter’s Journey.” The talk is free; it will begin at 10 a.m. in the community room and will last about 30 minutes, followed by time for questions (and, if all goes well, answers).

Big G and me last spring, before a research trip to Iowa

The Village on the Cannon is located at 301 Seventh St. West, on a site overlooking the Cannon River and within easy walking distance of downtown. I am grateful to administrator Susan Pederson for helping arrange my talk in the community room, which is often used for Cannon Valley Elder Collegium classes, informal concerts and other events. I know that the residents there are an active bunch, and I’m not sure how many of them will be able to attend, given their busy summer schedules, but I will be happy to share my story with anyone who’s interested.

I’m also happy to get people excited about the chance to hear real-life vintage bands perform later this summer at the Vintage Band Festival, which will be held in Northfield Aug. 1-4.

During my presentation, I will explain what I have learned about the career of my great-grandfather, who organized and directed numerous adult and juvenile brass bands from the late 1800s through World War II. I will also talk about the most famous band he directed, the St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band, which he organized in 1923 and was once known as the best and largest boys’ band in the country. One of the most rewarding aspects of my research has been the chance to interview former pupils of my great-grandfather’s who grew up to become part of America’s Greatest Generation, so I will talk about that, about the book I’m writing, and about the importance of telling and recording family stories.

I hope to see you there!

Media Coverage of a Monumental Visit

The Iowa Monument at the battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi, was successfully rededicated over Memorial Day weekend. Since I couldn’t be there, I have been searching the web for media coverage of the event, which was attended by hundreds of people, including Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

This Reuters article mentions that Branstad wasn’t the first Iowa governor to visit the battlefield, but it fails to note that the original dedication in 1906 was attended by Iowa Gov. Albert Cummins, along with a delegation of Iowans who had fought in the Civil War (and, of course, the Iowa 51st Regimental band that included my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs).

I was glad to see that Dan Finney’s Remembering Vicksburg story in the Des Moines Register did mention Cummins, and this Cedar Rapids Gazette column mentions not only Cummins, but also S.H.M. Byers, a poet and Civil War veteran who has become one of my heroes. 

This photo of Iowa Gov. Albert Cummins and co. was taken at Shiloh in 1906; the Southern tour also included the dedication of monuments at Vicksburg, Andersonville and Chattanooga.

The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger has a nice story about the event (click here); I also found stories by Radio Iowa and KTVO-TV.

My great-great-grandfather, Jasper Riggs, fought with the 45th Illinois Infantry at Vicksburg, so it would have been meaningful to attend the re-dedication event. Instead, I was in Savannah, where, it turns out, Jasper also was stationed as part of Sherman’s March to the Sea campaign. I didn’t have time to do much Civil War research on our brief visit, since the main purpose was for Louisa to visit the Savannah College of Art and Design, but I have a feeling we’ll be back!

A Rededication in Vicksburg

Thanks to an alert blog reader, I learned recently that the Iowa Monument at Vicksburg National Military Park is being rededicated this weekend. If I didn’t already have plans – and if I hadn’t taken a trip to Vicksburg a mere two and half years ago – I might have considered attending.

Steve in front of the Iowa Monument in October 2010

My great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, attended the original dedication of the monument on Nov. 15, 1906. He played cornet in the 51st Iowa Regimental Band, led by Maj. George Landers, and the band was part of a state delegation of veterans, officials and family members that dedicated monuments to Iowa soldiers at Vicksburg, Shiloh, Andersonville and Chattanooga. The dedication trip was particularly meaningful for my great-grandfather because his father, Jasper Riggs, fought at Vicksburg and Shiloh with the 45th Illinois Infantry.

The Iowa Monument in Vicksburg was completed in 1912 at a cost of $100,000. It’s constructed of Vermont white granite, and it also features six bronze relief panels that depict scenes from the Vicksburg campaign.

A close-up view of the monument in 2010, before it got spiffed up for the 150th anniversary.

The monument apparently was in great need of fixing up after years of baking in the Mississippi sun, so the Iowa Legislature authorized funds for its repair, just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Vicksburg campaign. The monument will be rededicated on Saturday at 10 a.m. by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad.

The blog reader who alerted me to the story is among a group of Iowans leaving tomorrow on a bus to attend the festivities, which include a performance by the U.S. Navy Band. You can read more about the Memorial weekend events in Vicksburg by clicking here.

I dont know if the reading of poetry is on the schedule, but if anyone in the 2013 Iowa delegation is looking for ideas, this one by S.H.M. Byers would be most appropriate:

Go read the story of thy past. Iowa, O! Iowa
What glorious deeds, what fame thou hast!         

 Iowa, O! Iowa!

So long as time’s great cycle runs,
Or nations weep their fallen ones,
Thou’lt not forget thy patriot sons, Iowa, O! Iowa

– from “The Song of Iowa” by S.H.M. Byers

Sing, Sing, Sing!

I was only half-listening to the radio in the other room earlier this evening when my ears perked up at the name “Harry Anderson” and the words “community sing.”

Minnesota Public Radio’s Dan Olson was reporting a story about community sings in Minneapolis, a tradition that was popular between the 1920s and the 1950s and has been revived by a group called Minnesota Community Sings. The Minneapolis-based group has scheduled a community sing for tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in Powderhorn Park. Four additional events are scheduled for this summer, three in Minnehaha Park and one in Rosemount.

Olson interviewed 95-year-old Harry Anderson Jr., who grew up attending community sing events led by his father, Harry Anderson Sr.

You can read or listen to the entire story if you click here.

This photo, taken before the 1925 sing in St. Cloud, shows the boys’ band in front, in white, and the adult municipal band in the bandstand.

The reason my ears perked up is because the elder Harry Anderson came to St. Cloud in 1925 to direct the city’s first big community sing. The event in Central (now Barden) Park also included music by the St. Cloud Municipal Band and the St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band, both directed by my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs.

The Aug. 20, 1925, event attracted 5,000 people, which is impressive in itself, but even more so when you consider that the city’s population at the time was about 16,000 — meaning that almost a third of the city’s residents came out for the event. According to newspaper accounts, cars lined the streets around the park’s perimeter, and police were on hand to handle the street congestion. People bought popcorn and Crackerjack from the popcorn wagon, and more than a dozen uniformed Boy Scouts walked through the crowd, distributing song pamphlets.

After numbers by the boys’ band and the municipal band, Anderson took the stage and led the crowd in songs including “America” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” and he divided the crowd to sing rounds of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and “Row, Row Your Boat.” Last on the program was the “Star Spangled Banner.”

At the event’s conclusion, the St. Cloud Daily Times noted, the crowd “applauded together with automobile horns until the din was deafening.  The leader then led them in ‘rahs’ for the bands, the park and almost everything which came to his mind and they joined in with spirit.”

Sounds like great fun. I can’t make tomorrow evening’s event in Minneapolis, but I will have to see if I can attend one of the events later this summer. I wonder if they’ll sell Crackerjack?

Catch Vintage Band Fever

The countdown to Vintage Band Festival 2013 is at 77 days – it’s less than three months away! If you enjoy listening to world-class music, attending family-friendly summer festivals, and exploring cool small towns, make plans now to travel to Northfield, Minn., this summer – the town of Colleges, Cows and Cornets!

Thirty bands are scheduled to present 100 concerts during the four days of the international festival, showcasing a variety of genres, heritage influences and period-style performances. Some bands are making a return appearance, and others are new to the festival. Detailed information about the bands, links to their websites, samples of their music, and a searchable performance schedule are available on the festival website, vintagebandfestival.org.

New bands this year include Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Cowboy Band, from Texas (also known as the Frontier Brigade Band); the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a New Orleans-style band composed of eight brothers from Chicago; and two bands from Sweden, Ehnstedt’s Octet and Medevi Brunnsorkester.

You can get a taste of the Swedish bands’ music by listening to this podcast, narrated by VBF artistic director Paul Niemisto.



Here’s another podcast, with samples of music from three heritage bands: the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Cowboy Band, the Independent Silver Band from Mt. Vernon, Illinois (directed by the esteemed William Reynolds, whom I befriended at the last VBF); and Amerikkan Poijat, a Finnish-American brass band founded by Niemisto.



Additional events planned for the festival include vintage base ball, a ballroom-style dance, vaudeville entertainment, and a Battle of the Bands on the banks of the Cannon River, commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.

The Riverwalk Market Fair will be operating on the Saturday of the festival, and the Northfield Arts Guild will present Meredith Willson’s The Music Man on Aug. 2-4 (the second of three weekends of performances).

Independent Silver Band director William Reynolds meets vintage band director G. Oliver Riggs in August 2010.

The last two festivals, in 2006 and 2010, attracted audiences of 15,000 people, and we are expecting even more festival-goers this year because of the larger number of bands and the more extensive schedule. Events begin at noon each day, and performances will be on the hour and half hour at various venues throughout the city. Satellite concerts are scheduled in the surrounding communities of Dundas, Faribault, Owatonna, Cannon Falls, New Prague, Red Wing, Chatfield, New Ulm and Minneapolis.

All performances are free, but to cover expenses of the festival we encourage freewill donations. Those who donate a minimum of $25 will receive a handsome VBF 2013 pin. Donors at the $150 or $250 levels receive reservations to limited-seating events, invitations to special receptions, a T-shirt and a poster. For donation information, click here.

You can also buy cool VBF T-shirts and hats at the Northfield Historical Society gift shop, and they will soon be available for sale on the VBF website.

I serve on the VBF executive committee, so it’s exciting to see all the plans coming together for what I think will be the best festival yet. I am already trying to figure out how I can make it to as many concerts and events as possible!

Trombone Stories

One of the enjoyable aspects of writing a blog is that it allows me to virtually meet people I likely would never otherwise encounter, and exchange information with them about a mutual topic of interest. I have made the acquaintance of several people that way in the last couple of months, including Ross Swanson, whose father, Arthur, played trombone in the St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band under the direction of my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs.

Art joined the boys’ band in 1929 when he was 12 years old. “He later taught me to play the trombone, and he never stopped telling me about the impact that G. Oliver Riggs had on him during the years that he played in the St. Cloud Boys Band,” Ross told me.

The St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band in 1930

Ross’s paternal grandfather, Solomon Swanson, emigrated from Sweden to Minnesota in 1903 and went to work for the Hilder Granite Company in St. Cloud as its chief blacksmith. Solomon and his wife Ida raised their family in Swede Hollow, a neighborhood located near the St. Cloud State Reformatory. Art was the youngest of their seven children (Ross writes about the history of the city’s granite industry in this account, St. Cloud Granite).

In an essay Ross wrote about his dad and his trombone playing, he explains that it was Art’s sister Lillian who gave Art the $10 he needed to buy his first trombone. She had a job working at Herberger’s department store. He was 11 at the time, and he joined the boys’ band the following year, in 1929.

Art continued to play the trombone through his teen years. When he was 16, he played on the weekends for the Stan Zontek Dance Band. And when he was 17, he played a gig one night with Lawrence Welk and His Hotsy Totsy Boys, filling in for their sick trombone player. He graduated from Technical High School in 1935 and received his elementary school teaching credentials in 1937 from the St. Cloud Teachers College.

Arthur E. Swanson, 1917-1996

Ross was born in St. Cloud, but his family moved to Duluth in 1950 and later to California, where his dad worked as a machine shop manager for Hughes Aircraft Company. When Ross turned 11, Art bought his son a used 1948 Olds Ambassador trombone and taught him to play it. Ross says his dad was a great teacher and encouraged him to continue playing throughout junior high, high school and junior college.

Now a resident of Redding, California, Ross writes regular “remembrances” about growing up in Minnesota and California for a website in Cook, Minn., that is owned by a friend of his. One recent essay, “The Music Man,” is about G. Oliver Riggs. You can read the entire essay if you click here and scroll down past his essays on Marshall-Wells and the Blue Laws.

In the “Music Man” essay, Ross writes that his father described G. Oliver as “a stern disciplinarian who demanded perfection from the boys. He would walk around the band room during rehearsal, and if he heard a wrong note he would rap the offender on his head or on the back of his neck with his baton. He would ask the boys how much practice time they were getting, and later he would contact the parents to see if the boys were being truthful. ... The boys may have feared him as a disciplinarian and task master, but they grew up to truly love and appreciate G. Oliver Riggs.’”

It’s always gratifying to hear that my great-grandfather made a lasting impression upon his young musicians, although I do feel bad for those who became better acquainted with G. Oliver’s baton. And it’s amazing to consider how a sister’s generous gift of $10 reaped rewards that can’t be calculated in dollar amounts.

G. Oliver! the Musical

I have occasionally joked with friends about the idea of making the G. Oliver Riggs story into a musical. Turns out, it’s not such a wild idea. The History Theatre in St. Paul has announced its 2013-14 season, and one of the shows is about the Minneapolis Working Boys Band, a contemporary of (and occasional competitor to) my great-grandfather’s St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band.

The theater’s press release describes the world premiere show as “a celebration of community, music, love, and patriotism.” Working Boys Band, with book and lyrics by Dominic Orlando and music by Hiram Titus, will be performed May 3-June 1, 2014.

The Minneapolis Working Boys Band/photo from the History Theatre website

The Minneapolis working boys band was organized in 1918 by Professor C. C. Heintzman as a way to give boys a positive activity that would keep them out of trouble. The band continued through at least the mid-1930s; I first became aware of its existence when I saw it mentioned in events connected to G. Oliver and his band. For example, in 1930, the Minneapolis Working Boys Band was one of 26 bands that competed in the second annual, two-day state band contest, organized by G. Oliver and held in St. Paul (The St. Cloud boys took second place in the marching contest, losing to the St. Paul Police Band. The Brainerd Women’s band and the Sleepy Eye high school band tied for third place).

The later director of the Minneapolis Working Boys Band, William Allen Abbott, was a friend of G. Oliver’s. He was one of the guest directors who filled in for G. Oliver in 1936 when G. Oliver was in the hospital (I wrote about it in this September 2011 blog post, Pinch-Hitting for G. Oliver).

In addition to Working Boys Band, the History Theatre’s new season includes other intriguing shows, like Tim O'Brien’s The Things They Carried, based on the Austin, Minnesota native’s book about his experiences in Vietnam; Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq; and Baby Case, about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.

The theatre is selling subscriptions for the 2013-2014 season now through December 8, 2013. Single tickets for all shows will go on sale Tuesday, July 9, 2013.