32. The Indiana State 4-H Band ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

In the second summer that Robert participated in Ouibache, he played clarinet in the Indiana State 4-H Band.

It was the summer before his junior year, and the big concert band was 116 members strong. The director was Roger C. Heath, who was an assistant director at Purdue University. He would go on to found the band program at Virginia Tech. He had earned his degrees at the University of Colorado and had taught in Montana before coming to Purdue.

Heath had assembled a challenging concert for such a young concert band with limited rehearsal time. Part I included “Slavonic Folk Suite,” and Part II concluded with “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

The director tolerated no monkey business, and he demanded excellence. Robert’s jaw grew tired from playing passages again and again with only seconds of instruction in between. Everyone felt increasingly on edge. During the rare breaks, band members discerned that Mr. Heath was displeased.

The final rehearsal before the concert was tense.

“Trombones,” Mr. Heath said, “that passage must be cleaner. Try it again!” He gave the downbeat with his baton. “No! Cleaner! Try again!” Another downbeat. “Still not clean enough! Again!”

Next, the tempo was of concern. “Band, you are rushing!” Mr. Heath said. “Keep your eyes up here, and keep the tempo with me!”

The band played the passage again.

“Still rushing! Still not looking up here!”

The volume was a problem. Mr. Heath said, “The audience wants to hear the piccolo. You must bring down the volume!”

The band played the passage again.

“Still can’t hear the piccolo! Still not bringing down the volume! Again!”

The band played the passage another time.

Finally, there was no time left.

Mr. Heath set down his baton and stared at the band for several seconds. “This evening,” he began, “I will be all smiles and roses, no matter how well or how poorly you perform. At the end, I will still be all smiles and roses, but, if you have performed poorly, I will not tell you that you performed well. I will simply say nothing.”

With those words, Mr. Heath turned on his heel and was gone.    

 

On that Tuesday evening, June 30th of 1970, the band members slowly filed onto the stage of the vast Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music for the Seventh Annual Concert of the Indiana State 4-H Band, to perform for the public during the Fifty-Second Annual 4-H Club Roundup.

Robert felt dread all the way to his toes, and his stomach kept doing somersaults. He could not remember ever having been so nervous before a band concert, although he certainly had experienced nervousness before many a piano solo. He took his place amid the clarinet section. (A few years later, he would be first chair of the second clarinets in the famed Indiana University Marching Hundred, and, in Robert’s senior year in college, he would be named the Outstanding Bandsman, an honor he would share with drum major Fred Kelly.)

Wearing a black suit and bow tie, Mr. Heath stepped onto the stage to the applause of the packed hall.

He was all smiles and roses.

During the intermission, he was all smiles and roses.

At the end of the concert, he remained all smiles and roses.

Robert breathed a big sigh of relief when the program was over. The music had made a hit with the audience, for the applause was like thunder. After bowing, Mr. Heath turned to the band and said, “You—were—excellent!” enunciating each word so that he could be heard over the applause. He immediately pointed to the piccolo player to stand for special acknowledgment; then he waved all the band members to their feet to be congratulated.

The next summer, Robert was back for more.

The director of the 1971 Indiana State 4-H Band was William D. Kisinger, also an assistant at Purdue. Affable and easygoing, Mr. “Bill” Kisinger greeted the 111 band members warmly.

With his head held high and his chin up, Mr. Kisinger said, in his characteristic rapid pattern, often nodding. “I want to welcome you to the campus of Purdue University and to say how much I’m looking forward to working with you and to tell you that we are going to be making music! We have charts that are really exciting, and we’re going to be a big hit, and the audience is going to love us!”

With those positive sentiments, Mr. Kisinger began the rehearsal. He often left the baton lying on the stand and conducted with his hands.

Mr. Kisinger was a product of the University of Illinois, which had a tradition of innovation going back to the earliest years of marching band performances at football games. He embodied assurance and confidence.

Mr. Kisinger liked what he heard from the 4-H band, and he would like it even more if the trumpets could keep their bells up. Brass instruments were suddenly lifted higher. If an entire section missed a note, he calmly stepped down from the platform, strode over, picked up the music from one of the stands, pointed at it, and said, “Not your fault! Transcription error! There was supposed to be a flat there, so let’s make it a B flat in bar 77, and does everyone have a pencil—if not, there’s one over here—and now we know it’s a B flat in bar 77, so let’s hear it, beginning with bar 75 and one, two, three, four!” He had hopped back onto the platform by the end of his statement and was counting and conducting. He beamed when he heard the B flat, and he went on without stopping.

Breaks were timed well, and the ratio of instruction to playing was just right.

On a ridiculously hot Monday evening, June 28th in 1971, Mr. Kisinger stepped onto the stage of the Slayter Center, a spacious band shell that looked like Alexander Calder’s answer to Stonehenge supported by an enormous tripod. The stage was only seven years old. Mr. Kisinger was in a short-sleeve shirt and wore a 4-H cap.

Every moment of the concert was fun.

When the band performed a medley of songs from West Side Story, Robert could hardly believe his ears: “Tonight” had such a sumptuous sound, and “America” had such a driving rhythm!

The hill stretching away from the stage was so full of families sitting on blankets that almost none of the green grass was showing. At concert’s end, with one accord, the audience stood to applaud and applaud, until Mr. Kisinger announced an encore number, for which he had planned all along and which the band had rehearsed.

From his two years in the Indiana State 4-H Band, Robert took away the realization that excellence can result from at least two divergent methods: from strict discipline leading to the attainment of a high standard or from amiable collaboration bringing about a joy in a job well done. In the spring of 1972, he auditioned for Mr. Frederick C. Ebbs, director of bands at Indiana University, and was accepted into the renowned Marching Hundred. Robert wondered which pedagogical styles directors Mr. Ebbs, Mr. Ray Cramer, and Mr. Wilbur T. England would evince.     

Spare Moments at My Folks' Farm 4

When I was in fifth grade, my father suggested that we visit the Nesbitt Farm in Benton County, Indiana, to consider buying a purebred Polled Hereford. (The word polled means that the cattle are born without horns.) The idea was for me to show the cow at the county fair and to start a line of pedigreed Herefords to help pay for my eventual college education.

Vicky, a Polled Hereford from Nesbitt Farm

I remember Mr. Nesbitt as having a pleasant smile and standing tall. If you wanted to produce a child’s coloring book featuring life on the farm, your farmer would look like Mr. Nesbitt. He guided us to a pasture where we could see the heifers. Immediately, one caught my eye. She had a happy expression, almost as if she shared Mr. Nesbitt’s jovial smile. I asked my father if we could buy her, and Dad consented. Mr. Nesbitt invited us into his kitchen to sign the paperwork.

Me with My Nesbitt Farm Clarinet

Pine Village High School Marching Band

Pine Village, Indiana, 1971

On a table was a clarinet in a tan case. I stared at it as if mesmerized. For some time, I had wanted to learn to play the clarinet.

“Say,” Mr. Nesbitt said, reading my mind, “you wouldn’t know of anybody in the market for a clarinet, would you? My daughter wants to sell hers.”

I thought it was too much to be gaining a lovely heifer, already a pet in my mind, and a clarinet—all in the same day. So I said nothing. Dad understood how much I wanted a clarinet, and one look at my not-daring-to-hope face told him all he needed to know.

“I guess we could consider the clarinet, too,” said my father. “How much do you want for it?”

“Fifty dollars,” replied Mr. Nesbitt.

All the way home, I carried the clarinet in my lap. My heart was racing. I could hardly believe my good fortune. I needed no further proof that I had the greatest dad in the world!

Learning to play the instrument, though, was a struggle. My parents took me to lessons at a music store in Lafayette. For the first several weeks, my teacher, a young man named Mr. Baker, kept trying to help me make a note on it. All that happened was that my breath escaped around the mouthpiece until I had puffed so much that I could puff no more. One glorious afternoon, the clarinet emitted an enormous squawk! What a thrill! Mr. Baker breathed a sigh of relief while I smiled from ear to ear.

Me in the Indiana University Marching Hundred in 1975

From that day forward, my abilities rapidly progressed. That summer, I learned that Mr. Davis, the band director in my hometown of Pine Village, was adding younger musicians to the high school band so as to make it as large as possible for the band competition at the State Fair. He accepted me into the ranks. All summer, the augmented band rehearsed on the school playground. The competition consisted of parade shows, not football field shows. From the moment when the front rank of the band crossed the starting line until the back rank stepped over the finish line, a stop watch counted the seconds. Going overtime would cost precious points. Mr. Davis had built an observation platform accessible by a ladder. From the platform, he looked down on the band to see if the lines were straight. Over the weeks of practice, the band pounded the grass into powder. The white stripes that were formed with lime disappeared into the dust.

Ray Cramer

Director of the Indiana University Marching Hundred

Photograph by Larry Crewell

Bloomington Daily Herald–Telephone, 1975

My memories of the trip to Indianapolis include gagging on the girls’ hairspray on the bus, making sure that the decorative cords around the shoulder of my uniform were in the right place, and waiting in a line of bands that stretched as far as the eye could see. In those years, over a hundred bands of smaller schools competed on the day that the Pine Village band took part. Our organization came out somewhere in the top third. I can still recall part of the melodies and part of the steps.

Me on the Undergraduate Staff

Of the Indiana University Marching Hundred

Rehearsing New Members During Band Camp

In the Old Stadium on the IU Campus, 1975

 

I named my Hereford Vicky. She lived for the rest of her long life on our farm and produced many calves, all of them as sweet-tempered as she was. They helped me meet the cost of tuition at Indiana University, where I became a fixture. I earned my bachelor’s degree, my master’s, and my doctorate at IU. For the first four years, I performed on the clarinet with the famed Marching Hundred, with the pep band during the marvelous basketball seasons when Bobby Knight was the head coach, and with the summer concert band with music performed beside the iconic Showalter Fountain. I shared the title of Outstanding Bandsman with Fred Kelly, the drum major. For the next five years (while I completed my MA and my PhD), I served on the graduate staff of the Marching Hundred and continued to play clarinet in the pep band.

So the trip to Nesbitt Farm truly shaped my future.