1960s
TWO
Strictly From Memories
On the Road Again… The ’60′s
At the Los Angeles Tabernacle the late fifties and early sixties brought significant evidence of a changing neighborhood. Storefront churches were springing up on the thoroughfares with congregations completely made up of African Americans. Some of the major Black churches attracted thousands – Second Baptist – First A.M.E. and 
many others. Each had dynamic ministers, great choirs, and strong programs serving their individual communities.
The Tab tried to find ways to integrate with the neighborhood, but we weren’t overly successful. Our own congregation seemed to be maintaining itself, and people appeared happy. Nevertheless, the likelihood of growth from the community seemed limited.
Some of the corps leadership became aware that the world’s media capital – Hollywood, did not have an Army corps in it. It seemed a natural. Hollywood Blvd. was a second “Main Street” in Los Angeles. The corps leadership proposed to the soldiery that the corps move to Hollywood. Some thought this to be a positive step, but others expressed a position that the Army needed to have visibility in our present community. The decision was cinched, however, when the city of Los Angeles indicated they wanted to buy our two acres and turn it into a pocket park. As we imagined the bulldozer going through the “big wooden barn”, nobody grieved.
Right in the middle of all this, Bram Collier came up with his second band trip. It was to be a giant series of one-night stands and was slated for1960. He planned to take the band into some of the prime brass band regions of the continent. We would start with Toronto – perform in the Varsity arena where we would perform with three great Corps bands from Toronto – Dovercourt, Earlscourt, and North Toronto. I can’t remember if I delivered a monologue or not, but if I did, you can be sure it wasn’t Darius Green. I do remember playing a cornet solo, but can’t remember what it was. Lt. Colonel William Parkins, our divisional commander and one of America’s foremost cornet soloists, was seated on the platform in such a way that his head was about 18 inches from the bell of my horn. Looking back, I’m sure I must have whispered to him something like this: “Now you’ll hear some real cornet playing, Bill.” I might have felt a little intimidated.
The following day we played at the Canadian Territorial Haeadquarters corps – William Booth Temple. The highlight of
that experience was hearing Wilf Mountain play a bassoon concerto on a euphonium. We made a note about that fellow.
The next day the band moved on to Niagara Falls. The weather quite cold and the band’s light jackets weren’t adequate, but it didn’t stop the horse play. Several jumped up on the wide stone barrier at the edge of the cliff to see great chunks of ice going over the falls and have their pictures snapped. Harry Sparks, standing with Ray Ogg, swears he heard him say: “Last one in is a Congress Hall Bandsman.” Nobody believed him.
Buffalo provided a wonderful concert hall, and from there we moved on to Detroit, followed by Chicago, where Gordon Feldman, the band’s only drummer, caught bass player Herb Bree as his chair slipped off the back of a riser in the middle of a number. Everyone wondered what Ray was looking at during the piece – but he didn’t miss a beat. From Chicago, the band moved on to Peoria – famous for being average and for being Ray’s home town. I think the Tab has been the only touring band to book Peoria for an engagement. After Peoria, the corps’ dynamic and tireless musicians went to St Louis and finished up in Kansas City – where everything is up to date.
One can imagine the logistics in planning and producing such a series of concerts. Only Bram.
By 1962, Captains Bob and Marianne Tobin were appointed our corps officers and the move to Hollywood heated up.
The division began asking “How much? – always a good sign. We needed a property acquisition committee, and Harry Sparks and Jack Wood Jr. were identified to pursue and recommend a location, but there was near universal agreement that Hollywood should be the destination.
Tobin knew how to get and keep things moving. One thing he did was join the Hollywood Rotary. Somehow, one of his Club’s members heard about the corps interest in finding property. Just so happened he was a realtor and had an “inside”, unpublished list of properties. One of those properties was the Hawaii Theater with a restaurant next door on a large piece of property on Hollywood Blvd. The committee, Tobin and the realtor decided to visit the place.
They walked in during a movie. None of them can remember the name of the movie, but on the screen as they walked partially down the aisle, their eyes transfixed on Zsa Zsa Gabor’s image on the screen, they heard her say: “Vell – vhat do you vant me to do –join the Salvation Army?”
The committee and Tobin looked at one another as if they had received a message from God, walked out of the theater, and began to negotiate a price.
Concurrently with all of this, the product of Bram Collier’s latest motivational efforts came to fruition. The band was 
going to Great Britain and Europe. It would happen in 1964. The band would travel as The Hollywood Tabernacle Band.
The next two years, 1962-64 , were very busy. There was considerable work to do in gaining approval for the Hawaii Theater purchase, important discussion among the soldiery in planning for the move and gaining acceptance from those less willing to make what they saw as a much longer drive, some development of program to fit the new facility, and considerable planning about remodeling of the theater to allow accommodation of the desired program.
Another group was working on the band trip, and the contact during the Canadian trip with Major Dean Goffin, now of the International Music Department, was a considerable asset. Finally, the itinerary of the tour was in place. Harry Sparks, in his book With a Thousand Bands, listed the trip as follows:
Saturday and Sunday London
Monday Birmingham
Tuesday Nottingham
Wednesday Newcastle
Thursday Edinburgh
Friday (Free day) Edinburgh
Saturday and Sunday Manchester
Monday Amsterdam
Tuesday Delft
Wednesday Groningen, Netherlands
Thursday (Free day) Hamburg, Germany
Friday Hamburg
Saturday and Sunday Copenhagen
Following the Copenhagen weekend, individual bandsmen departed for their own 4-5 day tours throughout Europe with the understanding that all would meet in London at Regent Hall on Friday, July 12 for the return flight home.
Things were going very well until a major tragedy struck. One Wednesday evening, during band practice, Ray Ogg had a heart attack. Sparks notes that it was in the second week of November, 1962. Once again Bram Collier leaped into the breach – saw his condition, and called an ambulance. He was hospitalized for a considerable period and then a lengthy and inactive period of recuperation. He never led a band again.
Who should take over?
Fortunately, we had met this Australian named Ron Smart during the summer of ’62. He who had just completed his 
Masters degree at Case Institute in Cleveland and had been the principal guest at the Southern California Music Camp that summer. He was the obvious choice, and we knew that he was interested in pursuing a doctorate in the States. We pushed for USC. He was currently the bandmaster of the Campsie Corps band in Sydney. Phone lines between LA and Sydney started heating up. Sparks notes he was commissioned bandmaster in March of 1963.
About the same time these negotiations were taking place this young, handsome, wavy haired fellow from Canada joined the corps and the band. His name, he said, was Frank Moulton and he played alto horn. He was 22 and had a lot of confidence. I’m telling you – he also had a lot of talent. I’ve never heard a horn player match either his flawless technique or his beautiful sound. It seemed to float towards heaven and into the depths of your soul. He was friendly, open, positive and a joy to be around.
Ron Smart made the band his very own almost instantaneously. He had this knack of always expecting much more than you thought you could give. Then, you gave it.
The band knew where it was going when it got to Britain, but it had not yet found air transportation to get there. Scheduled airlines were too expensive, so, once again, the band turned to the Flying Tigers for a charter. We were booked into a Lockheed Constellation – a beautiful, old, three-tailed, propeller driven wonder. It had what looked like temporary seats that would allow the plane to be used for freight if needed. The seats were not the most comfortable for the length of time we would have to be in them. The flight would require two nights on the plane.
We timed our departure so as to guarantee a few hours rest prior to our first concert. Unfortunately, those “few hours” disappeared as a result of some necessary repairs to the plane’s radio in Chicago. We had a refueling stop in Gander, New Foundland, the jumping-off-place for the leap across the Atlantic. The lost time cost us. We arrived just in time to check things out before the concert and discover that no one had any coffee – only tea – “white or black?”
We were the guest band for the bi-annual Bandmasters Councils and were to be joined by the International Staff Band, seated center lower stage; Birmingham Citadel, seated on the same level to their left; and Poole Citadel, seated on their right. We were seated on an elevated stage directly behind the ISB in the shrine of British Brass banding – The Royal Albert Hall. We had to play “over our heads” because we had to play over theirs. The hall itself was intimidating enough. The six thousand people in it only added to the excitement, and the choir of two-thousand voices curving around the back of the entire stage capped it off.
Talk about intimidation for some very sleepy Americans. The three combined bands thundered with Bramwell Coles magnificent march, Under Two Flags as we entered from the rear, marching down the center aisle behind the Stars and Stripes and the Army’s Blood and Fire Flag. It was very precise with a different bandsman pushed out and down the aisle every eight beats. Two things woke us up completely. First, the sound of the march combined with the rhythmic clapping of 6,000 people – and, second, the sea of white epaulets on the shoulders of the 600 bandmasters sitting in the “orchestra” section, each with a full score open to the pieces we were scheduled to play.
I will never forget Rita Green singing Fanny Crosby’s great old hymn:
O be saved, his grace is free!
O be saved, he died for thee!
O be saved, he died for thee!
The simplicity of the lyric, the magnificence of the music – but most of all, the purity of her voice has reverberated in my mind and echoed in my soul time after time over the past decades.
The ISB played Leslie Condon’s Call of the Righteous. That piece begins with a difficult bugle call by all five solo cornets playing in unison – and it sounded like a single player. Birmingham and Poole were terrific, and finally it was our turn. Frank Moulton stood up, smiled out at the audience, and then knocked them dead with the horn solo The Old Rustic Bridge. The melodic line provides the framework for Albert Orsborn’s lyrics:
Except I am moved with compassion,
How dwelleth thy spirit in me?
In word and in deed
Burning love is my need:
I know I can find this in thee.
A little later in the program, we played Kingdom Triumphant, by Eric Ball who was in the audience and assigned responsibility for commenting on the performance in the Musician. He was generous and kind to us.
We concluded the afternoon with Emil Soderstrom’s March of the Hours, played from manuscript – written some years before, but never published. Later, The International Music Department did publish this work.
Sunday we spent in Regent Hall and had the opportunity to march down Oxford Street with them to Soho and a street service – one of three the had every Sunday.
The rest of the trip through Great Britain passed quickly. Bill Bearchell and I billeted together, and folks were open, accepting and very generous with their food – especially at 11:00 o’clock at night.
One brief moment in Coventry stands out. Ron the risk-taker, had me sitting first chair on the trip, and once in awhile he would have me play ahymn tune alone with only a rolling snare drum underneath. Concentration has always been one of my big problems in playing. I seem to encourage my mind to wander. We had played this several times, but this was in the very interesting ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral. The snare drum rolled and I started playing. I must have been interested in my surroundings because, ignoring the key signature in the music, I started playing it in a minor key. I don’t think Ron picked it up immediately, but I realized it and knew that there would be a jarring sound when the band came in with the right key as I finished playing. So – I did the only thing I could think of, which was switch to the right key with all the confidence at my disposal just as if the piece had been written that way. I got a potent look from Ron.
It was great having our corps officer, Captain Bob Tobin along with us, and his bass solos had the teen-age girls swooning. He also participated in the male quartet, featuring the melodic voices of Roy Orr, Glen Lycan, Russ Smalley and, singing bass, of course, Bob Tobin.
It was also great hearing Jan Van Dahlen play a euphonium solo at the Cathedral. It was a coming home experience for him.
On the Monday after a great weekend and a final concert in Copenhagen, the band split up to follow their individual tour plans. John Wielmaker, Frank Moulton and Jan VanDahlen started out in John’s new Volkswagon for Amsterdam. Word reached Captain Tobin and Bandmaster Smart in Berlin that the three had been involved in a tragic accident that took Jan’s life immediately, put Frank in a coma, and John hospitalized with serious injuries. As many bandsmen as could be contacted rushed to the hospital. Frank Moulton later died of his injuries and John remained hospitalized for months.
When the band returned to Regent Hall, the wonderful people of Britain had a beautiful memorial service for the band led by the British Commissioner. Over two hundred were there – including Eric Ball.
It was a quiet, somber group that boarded our Constellation for the trip home. It was very uneventful except for losing a motor on takeoff at Gander and waiting for 40 hours for the delivery of its replacement.
The qualities inherent within Bob Tobin and Ron Smart kept things together and helped the band deal with these significant losses.
Shortly after our return, we moved to Hollywood for real. The dedication weekend was October 16-18, 1964. Commissioner Glen Ryan, territorial commander, officiated along with our divisional commander Lt. Colonel Harold Barry. It began on a Friday night with “A Time of Challenge” moved on to Saturday night with “A Time of Praise” and concluded with Sunday services – “A Time of Dedication.” It was a moving experience for the soldiery.
The ticket sales booth, the marquee, and the big signs identifying the name of the theater were all gone. I often wondered why we removed the marquee. We might have been able to attract some attention using it as a message board.
It felt luxurious to have more than one giant room. The Palms restaurant was turned into a multi-purpose room. The main hall/auditorium/sanctuary was beautifully appointed with new, comfortable seats and a large stage to accommodate both the band and songsters. Ron wanted no carpet on the stage in order to generate good acoustics in the high-ceilinged room. The youth hall, behind the stage, was adequate at best. Bill Bearchell became the Sunday School superintendent and ran a morning assembly second to none. He had this “one-man-band” instrument that banged a cymbal and created a sound like a bass drum when it hit the floor. There was high involvement as the first batch of children were maturing. The second batch was well on the way.
The first time the band and timbrels marched to our open-air stand at Hollywood and Vine was quite a surprise for the police department. They let us march down, classified us as a “demonstration” and said we had to walk back on the sidewalk. J.K. Wood (that’s Jack Jr.), the son-in-law of former sergeant-major Harold Gooding, was now the corps sergeant-major and led the open-air service just before the Sunday night indoor meeting. We discovered we could always get a crowd at that corner. It was an ideal location for a street meeting – right on the corner of one of the world’s most famous intersections, By the following week, we had obtained the necessary permits for our “march,” and the police department even provided a couple of motorcycle officers to protect our rear as we marched up the right hand lane of Hollywood Blvd. When we got to the corner, the band would pull in to the curb and then file across the street with the traffic light. One of the corps soldiers, George Bierman, always carried our “tail-light.”
Our best crowd-getter by far were the timbrels.
A van accompanied us with music stands and our portable public address system. It also brought some non-marcher participants down to the corner. In the twenty years we made that march there were no serious safety related problems.
There was only one close call. The Wellington City Corps Band visited southern California and the Tabernacle one weekend. On the Sunday evening, they marched behind our band down to Hollywood and Vine. With our usual experience, when we got to the corner we pulled into the curb lane to file across with the light. Not so, Wellington. We had assumed they would simply follow us through our routine. Mistake. They marched up along side of us in the right hand traffic lane, blew a couple of whistles, and did the nicest right flank move you’ll ever see. Every line of the band made a simultaneous left turn and the whole band moved to the left – into the oncoming traffic. Fortunately, they made it across the other three lanes without anything more than a few skid marks.
As the 60s ended, we learned that our corps officers of eight years, Captains Bob and Marianne Tobin would be leaving. Many of our children didn’t know what to make of it. Then we heard that they would be replaced by Captains George and Joy Church. We had gotten to know them at a distance when they were corps officers at Congress Hall – so we recognized officership quality would be maintained.
***
The 60s in Pasadena was also a decade in preparation for a move. Major Alex Ritchie was the corps officer from 1960-65. He had a rich background in land purchase, building design, and working with architects and contractors. The state wanted the property for the 210 freeway, so Ritchie began to look around in earnest to find another piece of property.
With key laymen, they settled on property one block off the intersection of Lake and Walnut. He bought all the lots on the entire block of Mentor, running between Walnut and Union. It turned out to be a very smart move.
The corps had the legacy of Frank Mann’s money raising and money management skills plus whatever income would accrue from the sale of the existing property. They worked together with corps representatives and architects to design one of the finest corps facilities in the United States. It’s warm, inviting and fully functional to accommodate every Army program.
They wanted an auditorium to seat up to three hundred on pews. They wanted a lot of glass to provide natural light. They wanted to accommodate those with physical handicaps or with hearing difficulties. They wanted a large multi-purpose room that was not a gymnasium but did have a full size kitchen. Nevertheless, they wanted a gym on the site in a separate facility. They wanted a central patio with Sunday School classrooms that were expandable during the week for use as other program components. They wanted a large, beautiful “fireside room” to be used for appropriate occasions. They wanted a series of corps offices comparable to their existing building, which had formerly been a divisional headquarters site. They also wanted a small apartment on the building.
They got what they wanted.
Plans were developed and evaluated. Funds were allocated. Everything was in a “go” mode. Then, in 1965, the Ritchies farewelled. Brigadier and Mrs, Chris Thomas were appointed.
The rolls showed consistent numbers, and the corps program continued with excellence in every aspect. Art Sparks had been the bandmaster since 1954, and he continued in the position to 1966. With his departure, Bill Gordon, Sr. took over. The band consistently had between 25 and 32 members on the march every Sunday evening to the intersection of Fair Oaks and Colorado Blvd – marching down and up Fair Oaks, dodging street cars.
The corps youth program continued to flourish as well. Guards and Sunbeams still won divisional trophies, and the Corps Cadets still excelled. Morale was high and a sense of anticipation filled the air.
By 1968, they had broken ground for the new building. In 1969 Commissioner William Parkins dedicated the building. It was fully paid for when they moved in.