My Musical Family - Joy Riggs
My great-grandfather, Bandmaster G. Oliver Riggs, right, gives a cornet lesson to my dad, William J. Riggs, near Bemidji, Minnesota, in the early 1940s.
Updated: 1 hour 2 min ago
Sing, Sing, Sing!
I was only half-listening to the radio in the other room earlier this evening when my ears perked up at the name “Harry Anderson” and the words “community sing.”
Minnesota Public Radio’s Dan Olson was reporting a story about community sings in Minneapolis, a tradition that was popular between the 1920s and the 1950s and has been revived by a group called Minnesota Community Sings. The Minneapolis-based group has scheduled a community sing for tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in Powderhorn Park. Four additional events are scheduled for this summer, three in Minnehaha Park and one in Rosemount.
Olson interviewed 95-year-old Harry Anderson Jr., who grew up attending community sing events led by his father, Harry Anderson Sr.
You can read or listen to the entire story if you click here.
This photo, taken before the 1925 sing in St. Cloud, shows the boys’ band in front, in white, and the adult municipal band in the bandstand. The reason my ears perked up is because the elder Harry Anderson came to St. Cloud in 1925 to direct the city’s first big community sing. The event in Central (now Barden) Park also included music by the St. Cloud Municipal Band and the St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band, both directed by my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs.
The Aug. 20, 1925, event attracted 5,000 people, which is impressive in itself, but even more so when you consider that the city’s population at the time was about 16,000 — meaning that almost a third of the city’s residents came out for the event. According to newspaper accounts, cars lined the streets around the park’s perimeter, and police were on hand to handle the street congestion. People bought popcorn and Crackerjack from the popcorn wagon, and more than a dozen uniformed Boy Scouts walked through the crowd, distributing song pamphlets.
After numbers by the boys’ band and the municipal band, Anderson took the stage and led the crowd in songs including “America” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” and he divided the crowd to sing rounds of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and “Row, Row Your Boat.” Last on the program was the “Star Spangled Banner.”
At the event’s conclusion, the St. Cloud Daily Times noted, the crowd “applauded together with automobile horns until the din was deafening. The leader then led them in ‘rahs’ for the bands, the park and almost everything which came to his mind and they joined in with spirit.”
Sounds like great fun. I can’t make tomorrow evening’s event in Minneapolis, but I will have to see if I can attend one of the events later this summer. I wonder if they’ll sell Crackerjack?
Minnesota Public Radio’s Dan Olson was reporting a story about community sings in Minneapolis, a tradition that was popular between the 1920s and the 1950s and has been revived by a group called Minnesota Community Sings. The Minneapolis-based group has scheduled a community sing for tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in Powderhorn Park. Four additional events are scheduled for this summer, three in Minnehaha Park and one in Rosemount.
Olson interviewed 95-year-old Harry Anderson Jr., who grew up attending community sing events led by his father, Harry Anderson Sr.
You can read or listen to the entire story if you click here.
This photo, taken before the 1925 sing in St. Cloud, shows the boys’ band in front, in white, and the adult municipal band in the bandstand. The reason my ears perked up is because the elder Harry Anderson came to St. Cloud in 1925 to direct the city’s first big community sing. The event in Central (now Barden) Park also included music by the St. Cloud Municipal Band and the St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band, both directed by my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs.
The Aug. 20, 1925, event attracted 5,000 people, which is impressive in itself, but even more so when you consider that the city’s population at the time was about 16,000 — meaning that almost a third of the city’s residents came out for the event. According to newspaper accounts, cars lined the streets around the park’s perimeter, and police were on hand to handle the street congestion. People bought popcorn and Crackerjack from the popcorn wagon, and more than a dozen uniformed Boy Scouts walked through the crowd, distributing song pamphlets.
After numbers by the boys’ band and the municipal band, Anderson took the stage and led the crowd in songs including “America” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” and he divided the crowd to sing rounds of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and “Row, Row Your Boat.” Last on the program was the “Star Spangled Banner.”
At the event’s conclusion, the St. Cloud Daily Times noted, the crowd “applauded together with automobile horns until the din was deafening. The leader then led them in ‘rahs’ for the bands, the park and almost everything which came to his mind and they joined in with spirit.”
Sounds like great fun. I can’t make tomorrow evening’s event in Minneapolis, but I will have to see if I can attend one of the events later this summer. I wonder if they’ll sell Crackerjack?
Categories: Citizens
Catch Vintage Band Fever
The countdown to Vintage Band Festival 2013 is at 77 days – it’s less than three months away! If you enjoy listening to world-class music, attending family-friendly summer festivals, and exploring cool small towns, make plans now to travel to Northfield, Minn., this summer – the town of Colleges, Cows and Cornets!
Thirty bands are scheduled to present 100 concerts during the four days of the international festival, showcasing a variety of genres, heritage influences and period-style performances. Some bands are making a return appearance, and others are new to the festival. Detailed information about the bands, links to their websites, samples of their music, and a searchable performance schedule are available on the festival website, vintagebandfestival.org.
New bands this year include Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Cowboy Band, from Texas (also known as the Frontier Brigade Band); the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a New Orleans-style band composed of eight brothers from Chicago; and two bands from Sweden, Ehnstedt’s Octet and Medevi Brunnsorkester.
You can get a taste of the Swedish bands’ music by listening to this podcast, narrated by VBF artistic director Paul Niemisto.
Here’s another podcast, with samples of music from three heritage bands: the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Cowboy Band, the Independent Silver Band from Mt. Vernon, Illinois (directed by the esteemed William Reynolds, whom I befriended at the last VBF); and Amerikkan Poijat, a Finnish-American brass band founded by Niemisto.
Additional events planned for the festival include vintage base ball, a ballroom-style dance, vaudeville entertainment, and a Battle of the Bands on the banks of the Cannon River, commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.
The Riverwalk Market Fair will be operating on the Saturday of the festival, and the Northfield Arts Guild will present Meredith Willson’s The Music Man on Aug. 2-4 (the second of three weekends of performances).
Independent Silver Band director William Reynolds meets vintage band director G. Oliver Riggs in August 2010. The last two festivals, in 2006 and 2010, attracted audiences of 15,000 people, and we are expecting even more festival-goers this year because of the larger number of bands and the more extensive schedule. Events begin at noon each day, and performances will be on the hour and half hour at various venues throughout the city. Satellite concerts are scheduled in the surrounding communities of Dundas, Faribault, Owatonna, Cannon Falls, New Prague, Red Wing, Chatfield, New Ulm and Minneapolis.
All performances are free, but to cover expenses of the festival we encourage freewill donations. Those who donate a minimum of $25 will receive a handsome VBF 2013 pin. Donors at the $150 or $250 levels receive reservations to limited-seating events, invitations to special receptions, a T-shirt and a poster. For donation information, click here.
You can also buy cool VBF T-shirts and hats at the Northfield Historical Society gift shop, and they will soon be available for sale on the VBF website.
I serve on the VBF executive committee, so it’s exciting to see all the plans coming together for what I think will be the best festival yet. I am already trying to figure out how I can make it to as many concerts and events as possible!
Thirty bands are scheduled to present 100 concerts during the four days of the international festival, showcasing a variety of genres, heritage influences and period-style performances. Some bands are making a return appearance, and others are new to the festival. Detailed information about the bands, links to their websites, samples of their music, and a searchable performance schedule are available on the festival website, vintagebandfestival.org.
New bands this year include Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Cowboy Band, from Texas (also known as the Frontier Brigade Band); the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a New Orleans-style band composed of eight brothers from Chicago; and two bands from Sweden, Ehnstedt’s Octet and Medevi Brunnsorkester.
You can get a taste of the Swedish bands’ music by listening to this podcast, narrated by VBF artistic director Paul Niemisto.
Here’s another podcast, with samples of music from three heritage bands: the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Cowboy Band, the Independent Silver Band from Mt. Vernon, Illinois (directed by the esteemed William Reynolds, whom I befriended at the last VBF); and Amerikkan Poijat, a Finnish-American brass band founded by Niemisto.
Additional events planned for the festival include vintage base ball, a ballroom-style dance, vaudeville entertainment, and a Battle of the Bands on the banks of the Cannon River, commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.
The Riverwalk Market Fair will be operating on the Saturday of the festival, and the Northfield Arts Guild will present Meredith Willson’s The Music Man on Aug. 2-4 (the second of three weekends of performances).
Independent Silver Band director William Reynolds meets vintage band director G. Oliver Riggs in August 2010. The last two festivals, in 2006 and 2010, attracted audiences of 15,000 people, and we are expecting even more festival-goers this year because of the larger number of bands and the more extensive schedule. Events begin at noon each day, and performances will be on the hour and half hour at various venues throughout the city. Satellite concerts are scheduled in the surrounding communities of Dundas, Faribault, Owatonna, Cannon Falls, New Prague, Red Wing, Chatfield, New Ulm and Minneapolis.
All performances are free, but to cover expenses of the festival we encourage freewill donations. Those who donate a minimum of $25 will receive a handsome VBF 2013 pin. Donors at the $150 or $250 levels receive reservations to limited-seating events, invitations to special receptions, a T-shirt and a poster. For donation information, click here.
You can also buy cool VBF T-shirts and hats at the Northfield Historical Society gift shop, and they will soon be available for sale on the VBF website.
I serve on the VBF executive committee, so it’s exciting to see all the plans coming together for what I think will be the best festival yet. I am already trying to figure out how I can make it to as many concerts and events as possible!
Categories: Citizens
Trombone Stories
One of the enjoyable aspects of writing a blog is that it allows me to virtually meet people I likely would never otherwise encounter, and exchange information with them about a mutual topic of interest. I have made the acquaintance of several people that way in the last couple of months, including Ross Swanson, whose father, Arthur, played trombone in the St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band under the direction of my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs.
Art joined the boys’ band in 1929 when he was 12 years old. “He later taught me to play the trombone, and he never stopped telling me about the impact that G. Oliver Riggs had on him during the years that he played in the St. Cloud Boys Band,” Ross told me.
The St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band in 1930 Ross’s paternal grandfather, Solomon Swanson, emigrated from Sweden to Minnesota in 1903 and went to work for the Hilder Granite Company in St. Cloud as its chief blacksmith. Solomon and his wife Ida raised their family in Swede Hollow, a neighborhood located near the St. Cloud State Reformatory. Art was the youngest of their seven children (Ross writes about the history of the city’s granite industry in this account, St. Cloud Granite).
In an essay Ross wrote about his dad and his trombone playing, he explains that it was Art’s sister Lillian who gave Art the $10 he needed to buy his first trombone. She had a job working at Herberger’s department store. He was 11 at the time, and he joined the boys’ band the following year, in 1929.
Art continued to play the trombone through his teen years. When he was 16, he played on the weekends for the Stan Zontek Dance Band. And when he was 17, he played a gig one night with Lawrence Welk and His Hotsy Totsy Boys, filling in for their sick trombone player. He graduated from Technical High School in 1935 and received his elementary school teaching credentials in 1937 from the St. Cloud Teachers College.
Arthur E. Swanson, 1917-1996 Ross was born in St. Cloud, but his family moved to Duluth in 1950 and later to California, where his dad worked as a machine shop manager for Hughes Aircraft Company. When Ross turned 11, Art bought his son a used 1948 Olds Ambassador trombone and taught him to play it. Ross says his dad was a great teacher and encouraged him to continue playing throughout junior high, high school and junior college.
Now a resident of Redding, California, Ross writes regular “remembrances” about growing up in Minnesota and California for a website in Cook, Minn., that is owned by a friend of his. One recent essay, “The Music Man,” is about G. Oliver Riggs. You can read the entire essay if you click here and scroll down past his essays on Marshall-Wells and the Blue Laws.
In the “Music Man” essay, Ross writes that his father described G. Oliver as “a stern disciplinarian who demanded perfection from the boys. He would walk around the band room during rehearsal, and if he heard a wrong note he would rap the offender on his head or on the back of his neck with his baton. He would ask the boys how much practice time they were getting, and later he would contact the parents to see if the boys were being truthful. ... The boys may have feared him as a disciplinarian and task master, but they grew up to truly love and appreciate G. Oliver Riggs.’”
It’s always gratifying to hear that my great-grandfather made a lasting impression upon his young musicians, although I do feel bad for those who became better acquainted with G. Oliver’s baton. And it’s amazing to consider how a sister’s generous gift of $10 reaped rewards that can’t be calculated in dollar amounts.
Art joined the boys’ band in 1929 when he was 12 years old. “He later taught me to play the trombone, and he never stopped telling me about the impact that G. Oliver Riggs had on him during the years that he played in the St. Cloud Boys Band,” Ross told me.
The St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band in 1930 Ross’s paternal grandfather, Solomon Swanson, emigrated from Sweden to Minnesota in 1903 and went to work for the Hilder Granite Company in St. Cloud as its chief blacksmith. Solomon and his wife Ida raised their family in Swede Hollow, a neighborhood located near the St. Cloud State Reformatory. Art was the youngest of their seven children (Ross writes about the history of the city’s granite industry in this account, St. Cloud Granite).
In an essay Ross wrote about his dad and his trombone playing, he explains that it was Art’s sister Lillian who gave Art the $10 he needed to buy his first trombone. She had a job working at Herberger’s department store. He was 11 at the time, and he joined the boys’ band the following year, in 1929.
Art continued to play the trombone through his teen years. When he was 16, he played on the weekends for the Stan Zontek Dance Band. And when he was 17, he played a gig one night with Lawrence Welk and His Hotsy Totsy Boys, filling in for their sick trombone player. He graduated from Technical High School in 1935 and received his elementary school teaching credentials in 1937 from the St. Cloud Teachers College.
Arthur E. Swanson, 1917-1996 Ross was born in St. Cloud, but his family moved to Duluth in 1950 and later to California, where his dad worked as a machine shop manager for Hughes Aircraft Company. When Ross turned 11, Art bought his son a used 1948 Olds Ambassador trombone and taught him to play it. Ross says his dad was a great teacher and encouraged him to continue playing throughout junior high, high school and junior college.
Now a resident of Redding, California, Ross writes regular “remembrances” about growing up in Minnesota and California for a website in Cook, Minn., that is owned by a friend of his. One recent essay, “The Music Man,” is about G. Oliver Riggs. You can read the entire essay if you click here and scroll down past his essays on Marshall-Wells and the Blue Laws.
In the “Music Man” essay, Ross writes that his father described G. Oliver as “a stern disciplinarian who demanded perfection from the boys. He would walk around the band room during rehearsal, and if he heard a wrong note he would rap the offender on his head or on the back of his neck with his baton. He would ask the boys how much practice time they were getting, and later he would contact the parents to see if the boys were being truthful. ... The boys may have feared him as a disciplinarian and task master, but they grew up to truly love and appreciate G. Oliver Riggs.’”
It’s always gratifying to hear that my great-grandfather made a lasting impression upon his young musicians, although I do feel bad for those who became better acquainted with G. Oliver’s baton. And it’s amazing to consider how a sister’s generous gift of $10 reaped rewards that can’t be calculated in dollar amounts.
Categories: Citizens
G. Oliver! the Musical
I have occasionally joked with friends about the idea of making the G. Oliver Riggs story into a musical. Turns out, it’s not such a wild idea. The History Theatre in St. Paul has announced its 2013-14 season, and one of the shows is about the Minneapolis Working Boys Band, a contemporary of (and occasional competitor to) my great-grandfather’s St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band.
The theater’s press release describes the world premiere show as “a celebration of community, music, love, and patriotism.” Working Boys Band, with book and lyrics by Dominic Orlando and music by Hiram Titus, will be performed May 3-June 1, 2014.
The Minneapolis Working Boys Band/photo from the History Theatre website The Minneapolis working boys band was organized in 1918 by Professor C. C. Heintzman as a way to give boys a positive activity that would keep them out of trouble. The band continued through at least the mid-1930s; I first became aware of its existence when I saw it mentioned in events connected to G. Oliver and his band. For example, in 1930, the Minneapolis Working Boys Band was one of 26 bands that competed in the second annual, two-day state band contest, organized by G. Oliver and held in St. Paul (The St. Cloud boys took second place in the marching contest, losing to the St. Paul Police Band. The Brainerd Women’s band and the Sleepy Eye high school band tied for third place).
The later director of the Minneapolis Working Boys Band, William Allen Abbott, was a friend of G. Oliver’s. He was one of the guest directors who filled in for G. Oliver in 1936 when G. Oliver was in the hospital (I wrote about it in this September 2011 blog post, Pinch-Hitting for G. Oliver).
In addition to Working Boys Band, the History Theatre’s new season includes other intriguing shows, like Tim O'Brien’s The Things They Carried, based on the Austin, Minnesota native’s book about his experiences in Vietnam; Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq; and Baby Case, about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
The theatre is selling subscriptions for the 2013-2014 season now through December 8, 2013. Single tickets for all shows will go on sale Tuesday, July 9, 2013.
The theater’s press release describes the world premiere show as “a celebration of community, music, love, and patriotism.” Working Boys Band, with book and lyrics by Dominic Orlando and music by Hiram Titus, will be performed May 3-June 1, 2014.
The Minneapolis Working Boys Band/photo from the History Theatre website The Minneapolis working boys band was organized in 1918 by Professor C. C. Heintzman as a way to give boys a positive activity that would keep them out of trouble. The band continued through at least the mid-1930s; I first became aware of its existence when I saw it mentioned in events connected to G. Oliver and his band. For example, in 1930, the Minneapolis Working Boys Band was one of 26 bands that competed in the second annual, two-day state band contest, organized by G. Oliver and held in St. Paul (The St. Cloud boys took second place in the marching contest, losing to the St. Paul Police Band. The Brainerd Women’s band and the Sleepy Eye high school band tied for third place).
The later director of the Minneapolis Working Boys Band, William Allen Abbott, was a friend of G. Oliver’s. He was one of the guest directors who filled in for G. Oliver in 1936 when G. Oliver was in the hospital (I wrote about it in this September 2011 blog post, Pinch-Hitting for G. Oliver).
In addition to Working Boys Band, the History Theatre’s new season includes other intriguing shows, like Tim O'Brien’s The Things They Carried, based on the Austin, Minnesota native’s book about his experiences in Vietnam; Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq; and Baby Case, about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
The theatre is selling subscriptions for the 2013-2014 season now through December 8, 2013. Single tickets for all shows will go on sale Tuesday, July 9, 2013.
Categories: Citizens
Name that Face!
A common problem with old photos is that they lack names, dates and locations – crucial information when you’re conducting research decades later. But that’s not the problem facing me at the moment (yes, the pun is intentional). I have located a photo that clearly labels the first and last names of all the people in it. The problem is, I’m not convinced the young man identified as my great-uncle, Percy Riggs, is really him.
The photo is of the St. Cloud Cathedral high school basketball team from 1925. After I discovered that Percy was listed as being in the photo, according to the Stearns History Museum’s online collections directory, my dad went to the museum and made a copy of it. In addition to the photo, Dad and John Decker, museum archivist and chief sleuth, found other mentions in the Cathedral yearbook, the Cathedralite, of Percy playing forward on the 1924-25 basketball team. However, they were unable to find a record of him graduating from the school or find him in the 1924 or 1926 yearbooks.
The back of the photo lists the team members and coaches as follows:
• Back row, left to right: George Pung (guard), P.H. “Percy” Riggs (forward), Rev. T. Leo Keaneny, Virgil Skumautz (center), Raymond Hermanutz (guard)
• Front row, left to right: George Ladner (guard), Oswald Denne (captain, forward), Nick Lies (forward0, John Smuda (forward), Charles Tanner Jr. (coach)
So far, so good, right? But when I looked closely at the boy labeled as Percy, my instinct was to say, no, that must be the wrong guy – although none of the others looks any more like him.
It’s my opinion, based only on photos I have seen of Percy from different times in his life, that it is not Percy. Yet, I can’t completely rule it out, either, knowing that the faces of growing boys do change in the late teen years. Also, it’s clear from the yearbook that he did play on the team.
Blog readers, can you help me out? Look at the photos and let me know what you think.
St. Cloud Cathedral high school basketball team, 1925
Percy?
Percy, 1917
Percy as a college student, unknown date Percy as a young band director, unknown date
Of course, if it’s not Percy, it raises the question – who else could it be? The yearbook notes that the team started out with 15 young men, and the coach took 10 to the first game of the season in Royalton. But only eight players are in the photo, and only eight names are listed in the yearbook roster, including Percy’s.
Although his name isn’t mentioned in the regular season game recaps, he apparently played well in the first two of the team’s three post-season tournament games. In the game against Superior, which Cathedral won 21-9, Percy replaced team captain Dunne, who was forced out by an attack of appendicitis. Percy’s “splendid floor work and accurate eye baffled the Superior defense,” according to the yearbook. And in the semi-final game against St. Mary’s, which Cathedral won 24-15, the yearbook notes that Percy was “good.” He must not have played much or well in the final game, a 10-27 loss to St. Thomas, because his name was not mentioned again.
It’s not vitally important, but it would be helpful to know whether it is Percy in the photo, for the sake of accuracy. I’m trying to verify more details about his young adult life for the book chapter I’m writing that covers the 1923-25 time period.
I remains a mystery for now – I will have to keep digging.
The photo is of the St. Cloud Cathedral high school basketball team from 1925. After I discovered that Percy was listed as being in the photo, according to the Stearns History Museum’s online collections directory, my dad went to the museum and made a copy of it. In addition to the photo, Dad and John Decker, museum archivist and chief sleuth, found other mentions in the Cathedral yearbook, the Cathedralite, of Percy playing forward on the 1924-25 basketball team. However, they were unable to find a record of him graduating from the school or find him in the 1924 or 1926 yearbooks.
The back of the photo lists the team members and coaches as follows:
• Back row, left to right: George Pung (guard), P.H. “Percy” Riggs (forward), Rev. T. Leo Keaneny, Virgil Skumautz (center), Raymond Hermanutz (guard)
• Front row, left to right: George Ladner (guard), Oswald Denne (captain, forward), Nick Lies (forward0, John Smuda (forward), Charles Tanner Jr. (coach)
So far, so good, right? But when I looked closely at the boy labeled as Percy, my instinct was to say, no, that must be the wrong guy – although none of the others looks any more like him.
It’s my opinion, based only on photos I have seen of Percy from different times in his life, that it is not Percy. Yet, I can’t completely rule it out, either, knowing that the faces of growing boys do change in the late teen years. Also, it’s clear from the yearbook that he did play on the team.
Blog readers, can you help me out? Look at the photos and let me know what you think.
St. Cloud Cathedral high school basketball team, 1925
Percy?
Percy, 1917
Percy as a college student, unknown date Percy as a young band director, unknown date
Of course, if it’s not Percy, it raises the question – who else could it be? The yearbook notes that the team started out with 15 young men, and the coach took 10 to the first game of the season in Royalton. But only eight players are in the photo, and only eight names are listed in the yearbook roster, including Percy’s.
Although his name isn’t mentioned in the regular season game recaps, he apparently played well in the first two of the team’s three post-season tournament games. In the game against Superior, which Cathedral won 21-9, Percy replaced team captain Dunne, who was forced out by an attack of appendicitis. Percy’s “splendid floor work and accurate eye baffled the Superior defense,” according to the yearbook. And in the semi-final game against St. Mary’s, which Cathedral won 24-15, the yearbook notes that Percy was “good.” He must not have played much or well in the final game, a 10-27 loss to St. Thomas, because his name was not mentioned again.
It’s not vitally important, but it would be helpful to know whether it is Percy in the photo, for the sake of accuracy. I’m trying to verify more details about his young adult life for the book chapter I’m writing that covers the 1923-25 time period.
I remains a mystery for now – I will have to keep digging.
Categories: Citizens
