The World’s Most Famous Boys’ Band

The Minnesota State Fair opened Thursday, which means it’s the perfect time to explain my great-grandfather’s connection to what’s also known as “The Great Minnesota Get-Together.”  I have a few stories to tell, but I’ll use this post to focus on the the Bemidji Boys’ Band’s great fair adventure of 1922.

The 75-member Bemidji Boys’ Band in 1922.

G. Oliver Riggs moved to Bemijdi in January 1919 after accepting an offer to direct the city’s municipal band and form a juvenile band.  The rest of his family – wife Islea, elder son Ronald and younger son Percy – stayed in Crookston until June, when Ronald graduated from Crookston High School.

By March of 1919, G. Oliver had recruited 111 boys to the band and had begun instruction.  Three years later, the Bemidji Boys’ Band was invited to perform at the Minnesota State Fair.

The 75-member band piled into several vehicles and left Bemidji on Friday, Sept. 1, at 4:30 a.m.  The all-day drive included a 9 a.m. stop in Pine River for milk, and a 1:30 p.m. chicken dinner at St. Albans on Mille Lacs Lake.  After sleeping in tents at the fairgrounds, the band members awoke early the next morning and went to Minneapolis, where they paraded in the streets of the business district and serenaded newspaper and government offices.  That afternoon, they did the same thing in St. Paul.

An article and photo of the band in the Sept. 2, 1922 issue of the Minneapolis Journal.

The above photo is difficult to make out; I copied it from the State Fair scrapbook that’s available on microfilm at the Minnesota History Center library.  My favorite part of the article is the interview with the youngest band member, 10-year-old Basil Britton, who had never seen a streetcar and had “lived all his life in Bemidji ‘where I see buses.’”

An article from the Sept. 3, 1922 issue of the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune.

Sunday afternoon the boys had a paid engagement to play at Minnehaha Park for a “record-breaking crowd of ten thousand people, thus evidencing the favorable publicity gained by their city parades the previous day,” according to the band secretary’s account of the trip, published in the Sept. 15 issue of the Bemidji Sentinel.  They were treated to an evening meal at the Ryan Hotel (an impressive building demolished in 1962) and a show at the Metropolitan Theatre.

The program for the Minnehaha Park concert, printed in the Minneapolis Daily Star.

The boys played twice each day, Monday through Friday, at the fair’s Plaza Bandstand, and because they were such a big hit, fair manager Thomas H. Canfield requested that the band play in front of the grandstand on Friday evening as a featured act.  Through a newfangled $50,000 amplifier, Tony Snyder, the director of state fair music, introduced the band as “the world’s most famous boys’ band from Bemidji, Minnesota, under the direction of G. Oliver Riggs.”

This is how the Bemidji Daily Pioneer described the Sept. 8 performance: “The act went over big.  The boys were applauded from the minute they appeared in view of the grandstand until they were again out of sight.  The announcement made by Mr. Snyder received a tremendous ovation, as did the first number played by the boys.  An encore just had to be played before the crowd would let the boys leave the front of the grandstand.”

(An interesting side note: the amplifier was donated for the Fair’s use by Northwestern Bell.  Vice President Calvin Coolidge used it earlier in the week for an address that apparently left fairgoers unimpressed.  According to a story in the Minneapolis Daily Star, the audience became restless 40 minutes into the speech and started walking out, causing Coolidge to skip to the end.  The 98-degree heat was cited as the most common explanation for crowd’s behavior.  I wonder how long Coolidge would have spoken if the audience had remained quiet?!)

A photo of the Bemidji Boys’ Band in front of the bandstand, with the grandstand in the background.

The band left the fair the next morning and drove all the way home, stopping in Walker for supper at the New Chase Hotel, and arriving in Bemidji close to midnight.

As I read old newspaper articles Sunday afternoon about the trip, the words “Chase Hotel” jumped out at me because a few hours earlier I’d read a travel article in the Star Tribune about Walker that mentions the hotel.  It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now known as Chase on the Lake.

I ate at the hotel’s restaurant a few years ago, on a trip up north with friends, and enjoyed the view of Leech Lake.  I didn’t realize until writing this post that that by stopping to eat there, I’d once again unwittingly followed the trail of my great-grandfather.  

Now I suppose I should travel to Pine River for some milk, and catch a concert at Minnehaha Park.  Good thing I don’t have to worry about running into Coolidge.