Working Boys Band Takes the Stage

A year ago, I mentioned on this blog that the History Theatre in St. Paul would be putting on a new musical in spring 2014 about the Minneapolis Working Boys Band (you can read the previous post here). That show is now getting ready to open and has been getting some great local press.

There’s a story about it in today’s Star Tribune, I heard Euan Kerr talk about it on MPR, and it was also mentioned in the Pioneer Press.

Photo credit: History Theatre

We have tickets to see the production on May 15 – about the only date of the run that works for us, given our crazy spring schedule of concerts and other events, including the high school spring play, Prom, and high school graduation. I am eager to see the show for what I imagine are rather obvious reasons: it relates to the topic and themes on this blog and in my book in progress.

The Working Boys Band is set in 1917, before the United States entered the Great War. At that time, my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, was directing the well-regarded 75-piece Crookston Juvenile Band, which he had originally formed as a feeder band to the city’s adult band.

The Working Boys Band was formed specifically to bring structure and discipline to the lives of immigrant boys living and working in Minneapolis, at a time when most schools did not have band programs. This was also one of the reasons G. Oliver was hired to form a boys’ band in Bemidji in 1919, and a boys band in St. Cloud in 1923 – it was seen as a way to keep boys out of trouble by giving them something positive to do. But the main reason businessmen in both Bemidji and St. Cloud were interested in having a top-notch boys’ band was for the positive publicity it brought to their growing cities.

The St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band (seniors and beginners) in 1930

G. Oliver certainly would have known Professor C.C. Heintzman, the man who formed the Minneapolis Working Boys Band and is the main character in the new musical. I don’t know how well the men knew each other, but I do know that the director who later took over for Heintzman, William Allen Abbott, was a friend of G. Oliver’s. Their bands performed in some of the same parades and even competed against each other on at least one occasion, in 1930.

In 1929, the year G. Oliver served as president of the Minnesota Bandmasters Association, his St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band and the Minneapolis Working Boys Band were among the more than two dozen bands that competed in the state’s first band contest in June of 1929.

The three-day festival was organized by G. Oliver and other MBA officers. The parade through downtown St. Paul on the first night attracted an audience of 60,000 people. The judges of the second day’s competition were Iowa composer and conductor Karl King and A. Austin Harding, band director at the University of Illinois. The top three winners in each division received trophies and performed in a concert in Highland Park on the last day of the festival.

At 96 members, the St. Cloud band was the largest in the entire competition. It took second in the Class B division, with a score of 91.9. Sleepy Eye High School took first with 93.0, and Bemidji (the band G. Oliver had directed before moving to St. Cloud) took third with 91.7 points.

The Minneapolis Working Boys took second in the Class A division. First place went to the the Minneapolis Bear Cat American Legion Band, and third place went to the Pillsbury Flour Mills band. In the Class C division, Elbow Lake placed first, the Brainerd Ladies Band took second and the Pederson Concert Band of Hallock took third.

St. Paul Pioneer Press front page, June 21, 1930

The next year, 1930, the band contest and festival was again held in St. Paul. The St. Cloud Boys took second place out of all 22 bands in the parade contest, placing behind the St. Paul Police Band. However, in the Saturday competition, it didn’t quite fare as well. It voluntarily jumped up to the Class A category to compete against bands from larger cities, and it was nudged out of third place by the Working Boys Band, whose score of 92.3 was 0.3 points higher than St. Cloud’s score. The Pillsbury Band finished in second with 92.6 points, and the Eveleth Boys Band won the Class A title with 93.66 points.

In writing about its hometown boys, the St. Cloud Daily Times explained, “A low mark in marching alone kept the St. Cloud band out of first place. In all other departments, particularly their playing ability while marching, they were given very high ratings. No special training had been given the boys in marching. In the parade contest they were conceded to be the best playing band.”

The Class B championship trophy went to Bemidji; Sleepy Eye High School took second, and the St. Paul Police Department Band took third. In Class C, Pederson’s Concert Band of Hallock was victorious, followed by the Ortonville Kid Band in second place and the Elk River High School Band in third. The competition was judged by S.E. Mear of Whitewater, Wisconsin, Professor Carl Christiansen of South Dakota State College, and Fred Griffin of Hartley, Iowa.

Boys from St. Cloud at the 1929 state band contest in St. Paul.

I realize the show at the History Theatre won’t cover any of this later time period; it’s too bad, because it would be fun to see G. Oliver as a character in the show! But I am looking forward to seeing how the production captures the joy and pride that come from being a member of a band, an experience that was life-changing for so many Minnesota youth 100 years ago – and one that continues to enrich the lives of young people today.