Seventeen musicians have formed into a semicircle on a hard dirt road. The band are on a street in front of a row of small shops, but they are not marching in a parade. It's a standup concert. Nearby, people in a few horse drawn wagons and some open-top automobiles have stopped to listen. The photographer has helpfully added a caption in the lower corner.
Burdick Boosters
at
White City
at
White City
Since the people who might have bought this postcard actually lived there, the full location was not needed. They knew where this was. But fortunately it's not hard to establish that Burdick and White City are two small towns in Morris County, Kansas.
It's September 1915, the Burdick Boosters are traveling around the county in ten cars to promote their annual fall field day festival. The newspaper in Hope, KS thought the band was pretty good. For an amateur band.
 |
| Hope KS Dispatch 23 September 1915 |
The photograph was taken on Mackenzie Street, also known as Kansas state road #4, which runs east–west, but takes a sharp turn south at White City. Situated along the railway tracks once known as the Rock Island Line, White City is about 130 miles west from Kansas City, and in 1915 had a population of around 600 citizens, though today its numbers have diminished to 447. In fact the whole of Morris County was once quite prosperous reaching its peak population of 12,397 in 1910. Today there are only 5,386.
Burdick was established in 1887 near the old Sante Fe Trail along a branch line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. It was named after a Ms. Burdick, the sweetheart of a Santa Fe Railroad official. Today it remains an unincorporated community that can only boast of 62 people who call it home.
 |
| Kansas DOT map of Morris County, Kansas Source: Wikipedia |
The band from Burdick called itself a "Cow-Boy" band, and dressed in a kind of western ranch garb, though the boy scout hats and jodhpurs-like trousers make them look more like bandsmen in the U.S. Cavalry. The idea for this fanciful costume was popularized by the celebrated Cow Boy Band of Dodge City, Kansas, about 210 miles west of Burdick, which formed a professional brass band of so-called musical "cowboys" in 1881.
Some readers of my blog might recognize this dirt road from a story I wrote in June 2014 entitled On The Road in White City, Kansas. It featured this 1910 photo postcard of a large gathering of people and automobiles taken at about the same location in White City. The caption reads:
Herington and White City
Commercial and Auto Clubs
And Bands
April 13 -10 at White City Kans
Commercial and Auto Clubs
And Bands
April 13 -10 at White City Kans
The lettering looks very similar to the Burdick band's postcard, so I suspect it's by the same photographer. My 2014 story was mostly about the White City Ladies' Band seen kneeling on the right in this photo, but I included a lot about the early Morris County automobile club too. In this era, just about every town within a 25 mile radius of White City had an amateur band which played concerts for their community and helped to promote their town's businesses and farms. White City had two bands, one for women and the other for men. The Burdick Cow-Boy Band had only recently been formed in about 1914 and continued to perform at county fairs into the 1920s.
The Burdick Boosters probably stayed in White City for just an hour or two that September day in 1915. The band likely played a short set of favorite marches with maybe a Swedish polka too, since White City had a number of families of Swedish descent. Then they piled into their horseless carriages and continued on to the next stop in their concert tour of the county.
But one fellow thought the photo was worth saving to commemorate the day.
On the back he wrote:
On the back he wrote:
See me at
head car
head car
I don't know his name, but he was a proud Burdick Booster.
2 comments:
... and after a number of such concerts blocking the traffic through town, someone at a town meeting suggested setting apart a piece of land for a town square... (lol, just speculating!)
It occurred to me while reading of these bands, what is the difference between amateur and professional bands? My first thought was the pros get paid for their time. But perhaps not. I think you will know...
Post a Comment