Building a Better Band

I went to the Minnesota History Center’s library yesterday – I like to think of it as my St. Paul office – hoping to learn more about a 1935 photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that I recently acquired from a second cousin. 

After I’d spent 70 minutes with the microfilm machine, I decided the St. Cloud Daily Times was not going to help me better understand the connection between the photo and my great-grandfather, Minnesota bandleader G. Oliver Riggs. And just as I conceded defeat, I found an intriguing, unrelated article that made my whole visit worthwhile.

That experience is pretty typical of my research quests. Surely there’s a life lesson in this!

At the Minnesota History Center, waiting for the library to open.

The photo of President Roosevelt was taken on the afternoon of Dec. 9, 1935, in front of the train station in downtown South Bend, Indiana; he had traveled to the city from Chicago to accept an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. The writing on the back of the photo suggests that G. Oliver played for Roosevelt in front of the La Salle Hotel, which was across the street from the station. At that time, G. Oliver directed the St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ band and was a well-known figure in St. Cloud.

President Roosevelt stands in front of a car parked outside the train station.

Because the St. Cloud newspaper often mentioned G. Oliver’s comings and goings, I hoped it would reveal more details about this event. Had G. Oliver taken some of his St. Cloud band boys to South Bend? Or was he simply there assisting his son Percy, who directed a high school band in that city?

Unfortunately, the newspaper’s only story about the Dec. 9 event – a national wire story about FDR’s stop in South Bend – did not answer any of my questions. But I noticed the newspaper did run a story on Dec. 6 announcing that G. Oliver had scheduled an important meeting for parents of band members for Jan. 9. So I scrolled into January and found this headline on page 4 of the Jan. 10, 1936, edition of the paper:

Band Building Proposed For City By Riggs

Band building? This was news to me. The lengthy story underneath the headline explained G. Oliver’s idea: to meet the practicing needs of players and instructors, he proposed constructing a 60 foot by 60 foot municipal band building on city property that would house a large rehearsal space, offices, practice rooms and a space for music libraries for use by the municipal bands and all the area schools.

I found that idea intriguing, especially because he was proposing it in 1935, the year the Works Progress Administration’s public works projects – including those related to the arts – began putting people back to work and helped pull the country out of the Great Depression.

But what I found even more interesting were the excerpts of the speech G. Oliver gave to the 150 parents in attendance, in which he discussed how bands and group music had evolved in the five decades he had worked as a director.

“‘Fifty years ago,’ Mr. Riggs said, ‘only a few who were really musical and who loved to play music made any attempt to study music seriously. Twenty-five years ago, more people studied music, but they seemed to understand thoroughly that music was a difficult subject and were willing to practice from one to three hours a day and, of course, made good progress. The present day boy or girl, it seems to me, does not wish to practice at home, and most parents do not care, or are too busy at something else to see that the child does practice daily. There cannot be anything of any merit accomplished without work. This holds good in learning to play a musical instrument.’”

It was hard not to feel a little sheepish reading the last part of that paragraph. No doubt, the minutes of practicing that my kids manage to put in each week would leave him unimpressed. But I also felt a little bit better knowing that parents back in the 1930s were not necessarily more successful than I am in getting my kids to practice – and they didn’t have to deal with computers, cell phones and other electronic distractions.

“‘Considering it as a fact that these young people of today, who are members of our bands and orchestras, cannot or will not practice at home enough to get good fundamentals and advance enough to have a fairly good command of technique on the instruments,’ he declared, ‘the only way I see for us to make further advancement in this wonderful work is for the teachers to have facilities where supervision of personal practice may be given by the teacher or an assistant.’”

In making his case to the parents, G. Oliver said that some of the best school and municipal bands in the country had facilities like the one he was proposing (did this, I wonder, include South Bend?). Poor facilities, which were much more common, posed a great handicap for the development of a quality program.

“‘The study of music is here to stay,’ Mr. Riggs said. ‘I think we should keep abreast of this great movement and encourage its continued success and advancement. I believe we should think more about developing the young mind to do more good, clean thinking, with the understanding that by diligent work and sensible living only, good results can be attained.’”

According to the article, the parents supported G. Oliver’s proposal and expanded the parents committee to seven members to work on the project. As for what happened next, I guess I need to return to the library and do some more research. Knowing how this process works, though, I expect that the answers I seek will be elusive, and the searching will instead yield surprises and new questions.

But that’s OK – it’s all about the journey, right?