Searching for Sousa in Crookston

Three weeks from today, my dad and I will be packing for a short research trip to Crookston, Minn., where my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, directed adult and juvenile bands for about 15 years, from 1898-1909 and again from 1914-1918.

What we would love to find, in the archives of the Polk County Historical Society, is a photo of John Philip Sousa and G. Oliver together, from either of the concerts Sousa's Band played in Crookston when G. Oliver lived there.  I don't think such a photo exists, but if it does, and we obtained a copy, I would be so ecstatic I'd forget I ever cursed Sousa back in my high school band days while playing the boring French horn off-beats in one of his marches.

This line drawing is from the March 11, 1899 edition of the Crookston People's Press.

I am certain from all the research I've done that G. Oliver and Sousa knew each other, and I've also discovered that they had several mutual acquaintances, including Iowa bandmaster and composer Karl King, University of Illinois band director A. Austin Harding, and George Landers, father of the Iowa Band Law.  The last time that G. Oliver and Sousa were together – at least the last time I can document – was in November 1925 at the Minnesota Bandmasters Association convention in Minneapolis, where Sousa was made an honorary member of that organization.  What I don't know is how or when they first became acquainted.  It's not a big deal in the scheme of things, but it's one of the mysteries I set out to solve when I began researching G. Oliver's life.

I first became aware of a G. Oliver/Sousa connection when I read an old St. Cloud Times article in which a former St. Cloud Municipal Boys' Band member said that G. Oliver used to talk about Sousa and had once played with the eminent bandmaster.  I learned that a statement like that can be easy to make but difficult to prove (it's like a man claiming that he saw Jesse James and his gang the day before the attempted raid on the bank in Northfield).

So I dug deeper and discovered that even though there's a wealth of detailed information out there about Sousa's Band and its tours, it's difficult to obtain a definitive answer.  G. Oliver's name does not appear on any official band rosters, so I'm pretty sure he was never a member of Sousa's Band.  But according to information my dad obtained from the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, it wasn't uncommon for talented local musicians to sit in with Sousa's Band when it toured.  So, I think that's what G. Oliver did.

The letterhead of Bandmaster G. Oliver Riggs in the early 1900s.

When Sousa's Band came to Crookston in March 1899, Crookston was not a big town, but it was an convenient stop on the railroad line.  My dad and I like to think that Sousa chose to perform there because he knew he'd have a receptive audience due to G. Oliver's success in developing the Crookston municipal band.  But it's really just guesswork (like my speculation in an earlier post that the two men could have met at the World's Fair in Chicago).

Sousa already was influential by the late 1890s, and he remains well-known today, 78 years after his death.  It would have been helpful to me if G. Oliver had mentioned his interactions with Sousa in his writings.  But then I think about how I've encountered some famous people in my life and haven't written about it, and I can see why a person might not think to record it for posterity.  Or maybe G. Oliver did write about it in letters that weren't saved.

Sousa directed the U.S. Marine Band for 12 years and left in 1892 to form his own band, which toured numerous times, both nationally and internationally, between 1892 and 1931.  Sousa booked various vocal and instrumental soloists to perform with the band during the tours.  One of the soloists in Crookston in 1899 was band member and trombonist Arthur Pryor, who wrote more than 300 ragtime and other popular compositions (including, and I have to mention this for my daughter's sake, the comic waltz "Frau Louisa"). 

One misperception I had about Sousa was that he only wrote and played marches.  His band concerts always included his popular marches played as encores, but the programs consisted of a variety of classical pieces and featured vocal and instrumental solos.

For example, the program for the March 28, 1899, Crookston concert included Pryor performing the solo "Love Thoughts," soprano Miss Maude Reese Davies singing "Linda di Chamounix" by Donizetti; and violinist Miss Dorothy Hoyle performing "Souvenir de Haydn," by Leonard.

When Sousa's Band returned to Crookston for a concert on March 4, 1901,  Pryor again performed a trombone solo, "The Patriot."  Soprano Miss Blanche Duffield sang "Maid of the Meadow," and violinist Miss Bertha Bucklin performed Ries' "Adagio and Moto Perpetum."

Sousa's Band performed both concerts in the Grand Opera House, the same place G. Oliver's bands performed during the winter (in the summer, the Crookston bands played outside in a moveable bandstand).  The Grand Opera House also is where Mark Twain gave a lecture on July 29, 1895, three years before G. Oliver's arrival in Crookston.

I could be mistaken, but it appears to me that this building is still in use as the Grand Theatre, which claims to be the oldest continually operating movie theater in the country.  That's one of the questions I hope our visit will answer.  If it is the same place, it would be fun to go inside and catch a movie.

There are other buildings in town that date back to G. Oliver's time, including the Palace/Wayne Hotel, which was included on the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota's "10 Most Endangered Historic Places" list in 2009 because the county plans to demolish it.  The long-vacant hotel, built in 1896, anchors Crookston’s Commercial Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.  While we're visiting, I hope to learn more about the local efforts to save the building (like the Facebook page I discovered today, Friends of the Palace/Wayne Hotel).

I've never been to Crookston, and my dad hasn't been there since he was a young boy.  I'm looking forward to taking the self-guided walking tour of the historic downtown to get a sense of what the town might have been like a century ago.  My dad and I also plan to visit the cemetery where G. Oliver is buried next to his wife, Islea, their daughter Rosalie, and their infant son, G. Oliver Jr.

It would be great to find some old (but new to us) photos of G. Oliver's Crookston bands or some interesting news articles while we're at the historical society.  What I'm expecting to happen, though, is what seems to happen whenever my dad and I attempt to glean information about G. Oliver's life from potential sources – we end up providing those sources with more information than they have to offer us.  But that's OK, because we're happy to share. 

Regardless of the outcome, the trip, for me, will be another wonderful part of the journey into my ancestral past, which always seems to connect in remarkable and unexpected ways to my own musical life.