A Small Town Band with a Big Heart
by Peter Greene
There are older community bands, and more musically advanced ones, too. There are community bands that employ trained professionals, and those that serve a larger market.
But the Franklin Silver Cornet Band of Franklin, Pennsylvania, is a small town band in every sense of the term, and this year we celebrate our 150th anniversary.
The band is a picture of small town diversity. Come to a summer concert in the park, and you’ll see every slice of town life represented up on stage. Teenagers sit next to retirees in their 70s. Teachers, doctors, homemakers, machinists, and artists all volunteer their time and talent to help keep this tradition alive.
But it’s not all about preserving tradition. When I joined the band in 1970, I had no idea how old it was, or why that was any big deal. I joined because it was a chance to play my instrument beyond the usual high school ensembles. Ed Frye, my high school director, was also the Franklin Silver Cornet Band director; the real difference with City Band (as we called it among ourselves) was playing with such a mix of people. I sat and played with players who had been playing for decades, who I knew as members of the community, parents of friends, and neighbors.
It never occurred to me that people didn’t grow up and keep playing music, whatever their “real” job might be. We all grew up never doubting that no matter what you do for a living, you can always be a musician.
Part of the flavor of a small town is the many different ways that people are tied together, and those sorts of connections are reflected in the band. Here in the trombone section is Harlow, whose father played in the band (his dad used to practice tuba out in the woods behind the family home). Harlow also sings in a church choir which is directed by Toby, who also plays trombone with the band.
Harlow runs a machine shop where he has hired several members of the band over the years, including my brother Dave. Dave met his wife Becky playing in the band. They attend a church where the choir director is also a band member, and their daughter helps run the popcorn machine at the summer concerts.
No resident of Franklin has more than two degrees of separation from the band. But as tight-knit as the group is, it has always been open to any interested players. Doug married a local girl and joined us between military tours of duty. Jerry is a soon-to-be-retiring pilot who found us just a few years ago. Miller is a retired postman who picked up his tuba after a forty-year hiatus. And each year brings a new crowd of high school students to our rehearsal rooms in City Hall.
The city of Franklin (population slightly more than 7,000) is located in Northwestern Pennsylvania, about halfway between Pittsburgh and Erie. Situated on the Allegheny River, it has a picturesque Victorian charm and natural beauties. It was settled in colonial days; on the front lines of French and Indian War, it hosted forts by all three major powers.
When the band first formed, Franklin was a quiet town built on farms and iron furnaces; a few decades later the area would explode in the wild onslaught of the Pennsylvania oil boom. The band benefited from flowering of culture-minded wealth, but like many community bands, it struggled when the Roaring ’20s arrived. In the ’30s, the oil industry began moving to Texas, and in the ’60s, the band once again faced a shrinking interest in such an antiquated institution. But at each new turn of the calendar, dedicated individuals with a thirst for music kept the band alive.
Only a handful of members have gone on to professional music careers; most of us aren’t that good. We each contribute the best we can. We don’t take ourselves too seriously—our newsletter was for years called The FSCB Journal of Real Important Stuff—but we are serious about the music. But as with any small town institution, it’s the people that create the unique flavor. We remember the musical moments, but we remember the people even more.
There’s Professor Hoffman, an musical itinerant who became band director in 1876 rather than cool his heels in jail. He was fired because of his unfortunate tendency to hock band instruments for drinking money.
And Alonzo “Grassy” Nichols, a town character who today would likely be institutionalized. He imagined that he was the band director, and often traveled with the group. His home was cot in the corner of the band room until 1918, when Grassy was killed as he rode on a fire engine.
Wilbur Myers joined as a young boy and played for over sixty years. By the 1970s, most of his friends and loved ones had passed on, but “Doc” still came to band rehearsal every week, even if all he could manage was to play bass drum on a few marches. He came to be with his family.
Many members have tackled great obstacles over the years to stay involved with the band. Andy’s knee had to be fused after a brutal motorcycle accident; he still marches tuba with the band. After his stroke, Dick was told that he would never play his instrument again, but within a year he was back with the band.
Roy retired with his wife to Florida, but he still traveled north each summer to join us for concerts. When he was finally forced to give up the trip, he had played with the band for almost 75 seasons.
The band has traveled near and far, appearing at the Chautauqua Institution, the Smithsonian Institution, the Henry Ford Museum, and Rehoboth Beach. We appeared in Philadelphia in both 1876 and 1976.
A group can hit many musical highs and lows in 150 years. In the 1950’s, less than a dozen members showed up to play at a fair, so they tried playing while riding the Ferris Wheel. And, of course, your band life is not complete until you have played “The Midnight Fire Alarm” with a fire truck, parked next to the band stand, as your guest soloist.
We’ve also maintained a steady diet of standard warhorses like “Light Cavalry” and “1812,” plus a wide ranging library of marches. Just a few years ago we presented “Rhapsody in Blue” to local audiences.
But, musical adventures aside, our stock in trade remains local parades and concerts in the park. We will celebrate our special anniversary this year with special concerts, a special banquet, and a book about our history (you can find all the details at www.franklinsilvercornetband.com). But mostly we will celebrate by coming together to play.
I’ve played my instrument for a long time. Sometimes I play for money, and sometimes I play with people who are strangers to me. But it’s getting together to play with my extended musical family that gives me that extra lift.
When you think about it, playing an instrument is a strange and wonderful business. You look at odd marks and squiggles on a page, then blow air into feet of tubing, or smack a particular object, and somehow something is created that has the power to move an audience.
You can certainly be moved by a performance delivered years ago in a far-off studio, reproduced now by technology and equipment.
But how much more intimate to have the experience live, to see real live performers strain and stretch and try to let that bigger musical something flow through them. And even more intimate than that when the people are people you know, people you see at school or work or the grocery store, people whose history you know and maybe share a piece of, people who become, before your eyes, part of a living tradition.
They make all that music, then come down off the stage and sit down next to you and say, “Hi.”That’s playing in a small town band. No brain surgery. No saving the world. No people on the band stand who are larger than life. But on a good night, out of all these ordinary people comes a passing moment of grace and beauty, and for a moment, sitting on the cool summer grass under a field of green leaves beneath a wide stretch of evening blue, it feels pretty good to be together and human, here and now. It’s not the biggest thing in the world, but it’s not the smallest thing, either.
