by Joe Stout
It was 1945 and World War II was coming to an end. In the spring I started my Sophomore year at Greenfield High School. Several years prior in the 1930’s Greenfield had a first class band that was instructed by Mr. Doran until he moved away. Many of the Doran family were very talented musicians. Jeanine Doran was a niece of his and was a very talented trumpet player.
Down in the basement storeroom of the old high school there were several instruments that had been used in those years gone by. The old tuba, bass drum, snare drums, baritone. It was decided to start up a band again and Miss Miriam Cooper, an English teacher was selected to be the band instructor. With Jeanine Doran as the nucleus and carrying the melody on the various marches we were able to give an adequate rendition of a few tunes by the end of basketball season even though we had not even attempted to learn to play and march. Our performances were limited to playing concert style on the stage in the gymnasium at basketball games.
Many of the members graduated that year, Jeanine on trumpet, Don Hummel on tuba, Jerry Cannon on baritone, Wilma “Butch” Cooper on bass drum as well as others.
The following year, 1946, Miss Cooper had left as a teacher and moved away. We had lost at least half of the band due to graduation which meant we were basically starting all over again but this time without Jeanine to “carry” us.
I had played the snare drum last year and decided to continue in the band again this year. I had basically taught myself the various rudiments of drumming from the instruction book. With the basics of reading notes in time it was much easier learning drums than having to learn the scales.
I also obtained a foot pedal and began to learn on my own to play both the bass drum and snare drum by practicing with records at home.
Miss Rowlett from over north of Dresden had come to Greenfield as a new math teacher and since she had some musical knowledge was asked to direct the band this year. After several months of practice and well into basketball season Miss Rowlett announced to us that we would play the Star Spangled Banner at the next basketball game.
Despite the difficulty of the Anthem, the newness of our director, our own inexperience, and the loss of Jeanine and half the band, we were undeterred. We all arrived early in order to properly set up our instruments and music and eagerly awaited the time to play. Miss Rowlett took center stage and proceeded to count off and lead us into the Star Spangled Banner.
This was the only time in the history of Greenfield High School that no one stood up for the playing of the National Anthem.
I’ll leave it to you the reader to figure out why.
From that time on we were known as Rowlett and Her Rhythm Rascals.
Little do we know how small things affect our lives in tremendous ways. I later spent 35 years as a professional musician traveling for some period of time in 21 states and 3 foreign countries. I never again tried to play the Star Spangled Banner. I did learn to play Dixie.
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| Rowlett and her Rhythm Rascals |