Porch Music - The Band at Clear Lake, Iowa

 

 Cedar Rapids, Iowa
The Gazette
5 August 1907 

With the Interviewer

   “It seems to me that the larger brass bands throughout the country are losing much of their old time popularity, and I believe it is all their own fault,” said a gentleman at one of the local outdoor concerts recently.  “I am told that two or three of the big traveling bands have been forced to go out of business this season because they failed to draw crowds, and when a brass band can’t draw a crowd there is something wrong somewhere. 

    In my opinion the trouble is in the music the bands are playing.  It doesn’t have enough ginger in it.  The leaders of the big bands, and some of the small ones, seem to have fallen into the idea that it is undignified or unprofessional to play popular music, or even marches with a ‘get up and git’ swing to them.  Go to almost any band concert nowadays and you will hear a program of classical overtures and grand opera music with high sounding d**o titles that the ordinary mortal cannot understand any more than he can understand the music when it is played.  The music drags along as though it would never end, and were it not for the fact that the drummer occasionally takes a smash at a Chinese gong or something of the kind the audience could hardly be kept awake.  

    Why is it that a minstrel show band will always draw a crowd quicker and receive more applause than any other musical organization on earth?  It is simply because the crowd knows that this class of bands play nothing but fast music and every man blows his horn as if his life depended on how much noise he made.  This kind of music may not be classical and it may not be played correctly, but it is the kind the people like.  

    I was up to Clear Lake a couple of days ago and attended a band concert that was given in one of the parks there by a local organization.  The park in the vicinity of the band stand was simply jammed with people, and everyone of them was there for no other purpose than to hear that little twenty piece band play.  I have heard all of the big ones in the country, but I want to say that I never heard a band concert in my life that I enjoyed as much as I did the music that was rendered by that little Clear Lake band.  They did not play popular music either, but the music they did play had a go to it that made the blood run a little faster in your veins.   Every man played as though he meant it, and at no time was two-thirds of the band sitting gazing out over the crowd while one or two so called soloists ran up and down the scale in a way that gets on the peoples’ nerves.  

    Sousa has the most famous band in the whole world, and for no other reason than that he plays the kind of music the people like.  Who ever heard that splendid organization play the ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ without thinking it was the best thing he ever heard and would gladly travel miles to hear it again."

^*^

The preceding article is a rare first person interview of someone who attended a concert by the band in this photo. The gentleman is not identified but the editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette thought it a music critique worthy enough to include in a weekly feature of the newspaper. The publication date of 5 August 1907 was only a week after this postcard was mailed.  

The twelve men in this band are mostly brass players but with four clarinetists, I suppose it could be categorized as a concert band. They are all wearing a simple bandsmen uniform except for one, the older cornet player seated second from right, who has a different suit jacket. So I think this is likely the band's leader. They are seated on the wide steps of a porch that I suspect is a hotel/inn or maybe a boarding house. The photographer wrote a caption in the lower corner:  Clear Lake, IA. 

Clear Lake, Iowa is a small city situated on the eastern side of Clear Lake, a large body of spring-fed water of approximately 3,684 acres (15 km2) that was once the summer home to the Dakota and Winnebago American Indians. In the 1850s white settlers came to the region and Clear Lake was incorporated in 1871 when the town had a population of around 800 citizens. At the time the beauty of the lake was already attracting many summer residents from Des Moines and Minneapolis–Saint Paul. The city created a lakeside recreation park and built its first bandstand in 1877 which began a long tradition of summer band concerts. From 1878 newspapers from around the state made mention of a Clear Lake Silver Cornet Band as a special feature of the town. 

This postcard was sent on 28 June 1907 from Clear Lake, Iowa to Miss Julia Willand in Mason City, Iowa, which is just 9 ½ miles east of the lake. Ten days before, on Tuesday, 18 June, Clear Lake hosted the Marshalltown Retail Grocer's association annual outing with around "850 grocers and their families, clerks, and others" who traveled by two special trains from Marshalltown which is about 100 miles south of Clear Lake. The journey took a bit over three hours, a newspaper report noting, "Neither accident nor incident happened...to mar the pleasure of the day." 

During the early afternoon there was a baseball game, though the grandstand seating was insufficient for the number of people. The grocers' association also arranged athletic events including several 50 yard dashes for boys, girls, men, and women; a fishing contest won by a husband and wife with two pickerel fish 3 lbs each; a walking race for grocers over age fifty; a tug-of-war for grocers, and a second one for grocers' wives; and a distance guessing contest. Music for the day was furnished by the Clear Lake Band which also played for a dance in the park's pavilion later that evening.  

Evidently, according to the anonymous critic from Cedar Rapids, the little Clear Lake Band sounded pretty good.

Well how are to day  I  spose you

feal all right and so do I am feal
-ing sleepy to-day.  ever thing look dante (?)
Write soon   H. H. D.

The last four words of the third line are very difficult to decipher.
The word "ever" might be "does" but the next word doesn't fit logically.
But the last two are a real puzzle as there are few five letter words that end in "nte".
My guess is that it's a misspelling of "dandy"
Any ideas? Please leave a comment below. 

The message seems innocent enough but it has a curious quality, let's call it a hint of romance, that made me wonder about the recipient, Miss Julia Willand. She was born in Iowa in 1872 of Norwegian parents. In the 1900 census she lived in Brit, Iowa and listed her occupation as Laundress. In the 1907 city directory for Mason City she lived and worked at 221 Jackson as a domestic. Sometime in the summer of 1907 she got a day off and went to Clear Lake park to hear the band, and maybe met someone there. Did she send a reply soon after? Maybe. 

A year later on 26 October 1908, Julia Gurine Willand married Harry Herbert Durr — H. H. D.

1909 Mason City, IA city directory
Durr, Harry H (Julia)

Harry was a foreman at the M. C. Bottling Co.. He was born in Iowa in 1882. As far as I can determine, Harry and Julia lived out their lives in Mason City and had no children. Harry died in 1944 at age 61, and Julia in 1949 at age 77. I suspect they enjoyed many concerts of the Clear Lake Band and remembered that summer of 1907 with great fondness. 

I was assisted in my detective work by a later relation of Harry and Julia who recorded some of their life facts into Ancestry.com. Surprisingly, Julia's age varied quite a lot. In 1900 she was age 24, supposedly born in 1876. In 1907 on her marriage license she was age 34. In the 1910 census she found a fountain of youth and became 27 again. In 1920 after a decade, the census taker recorded her age as 38. In 1930 apparently the fountain had dried up and she was now 58, eleven years older than Harry. And in 1940 the spring of youth returned and she was 54 years old, three years younger than her husband. As every genealogist learns, never trust a record as a fact.  

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everyone is showing off their new old house.