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?