The Band

We had an extremely good band at Airways Junior High School in Memphis, Tennessee.  I remember my parents buying me my alto saxophone.  I was so proud. It was golden, shiny and made a lot of noise.  I remember the first day I sat beside this feisty little short haired girl named Sheila. She was also an alto saxophone and she even had the same brand of saxophone I did.  We had the most wonderful band room I had ever seen.  It had soundproof practice rooms in the back of the class just behind the band podium. That’s right, we had a stair step podium for our band and Mr. Knapp would stand in front of this and direct.  I notice the first year he had earplugs in and I can’t say that I blame him. We were pretty bad that first year, but by the middle of our second year, the Airways Junior High School Boosters Club had bought us uniforms.  You couldn’t have found a happier group of kids. We thoroughly loved to our band. It made us feel alive and creative. 

Speaking of being creative, I loved Neil Young’s album “After the Gold Rush” and I brought it in one day for Mr. Knapp and our French horn player to hear. There is a part in After the Gold Rush that I thoroughly loved and I knew it had the sound of a French horn but different somehow.  Mr. Knapp explained to us that the French horn could double as a B flat instrument as well. I think even our French horn player (I wish I could remember everybody in the band’s name but I just can’t) was also shocked,  but we trusted our band director and teacher and he took the album and made an arrangement for us to play After the Gold Rush.  I don’t know if everyone did but I do know that the French horn player and I both practiced together over and over and over again until we got this particular piece of music the way we liked it. I won’t say it was perfect because, unfortunately, I don’t think I was that good but I wasn’t bad and neither was our band. There were some pretty great players in our band and we even went to a band contest sort of like Haley Mills did in “The Trouble With Angels” (that’s a movie if you didn’t know and you really should watch it).  But back to my story, at this band contest we didn’t finish first by any means but, if I remember correctly, we didn’t finish last either.  Before that year ended we talked it over with Mr. Knapp and we had a band summer school. Oh my goodness, how much better a way to spend your summer than to go to band camp.  Oh my, that sounded extremely nerdy didn’t it?  So who cares anyway. We may not have improved a whole lot but we loved every minute of it. Our Senior year we had improved enough that they allowed us to play at a Pep Rally.

I have to tell you a story about a young man named Ralph who played drums. He had to be an extremely good sport because we would play pranks on him at band camp all summer long and he loved it.  I remember one time Mr. Knapp told us to make the motions of playing but not to produce any sound at all and we did it.  We all pretended to be playing and he pretended to be directing a band that was playing. At first, Ralph was confused and Mr. Knapp was yelling “where’s the percussion, we have to have percussion”. Ralph wasn’t playing in the beginning and after a few seconds Ralph started playing his part but I don’t think we let it go on too long and we let him in on the joke.  We would take a short break every day from our practicing and playing but one day Ralph was late coming back from break so we all hid in the band director’s office and in the soundproof practice rooms.  Ralph finally came in and he yelled “where is everybody at” and then he left for just a few seconds and came right back. He exclaimed “no one’s here” and he left again and was gone for a few minutes. He must have gone to the lunchroom to see if everyone was still in there and, of course, we weren’t.  Someone heard him say “I guess they decided to call it a day, I’ll go call mom”.  Oh no, should we let him call his mom and get her all the way out here when we still had at least some of our of band practice left.  No, someone’s got to go stop him from calling his mom.  In those days no one had a cell phone and I do mean no one. They weren’t invented yet.  So a couple of the guys ran as hard as they could to try and stop him before he could call his mom.  It was too late. They could not find him so we all started searching the whole school. We all returned to the band room and there he was, sitting in Mr. Knapp’s chair and laughing his head off because he had turned the tables, the joke was now on us. Then we finished the day’s practice.

I know this is going to sound strange to most of you but I enjoyed being in that band much more than I enjoyed being a football player or playing baseball.  I had even met my best friend sitting right next to me playing alto saxophone. Sheila was always someone who cut through the red tape to get down to business.  If I asked her about a problem she either had an answer or told me to grow up.  As I’ve told you before, we talked about some of the strangest things.  We both loved early rock and roll music, and one time, our Assistant Principal Ashley took a cassette recorder player away from me because Sheila and I were listening to early rock and roll at a pep rally. I guess it was for basketball because any other sport besides track, I would’ve been a participant.  I guess it was kind of disrespectful to the cheerleaders and I’m sorry.  I was with my best friend listening to the best music in the world and I still believe that we, my best friend and I, made the best music in the world with help from all of our band mates. I am appalled at school systems taking band out of the curriculum of our schools. It may not prepare all of us for our jobs but it makes us better human beings. I will always love and cherish the memories and the friends we made in our band.