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.