Home Amusement Club Band

[All my memories] are revived by the picture of the Home Amusement Club Band which my friend Murray Wade sends to me.

Ted Piper
Oregon Magazine, March 1922

In writing about the history of the Home Amusement Club Band in the March 1922 edition of the OREGON MAGAZINE, Ted Piper, former member did more than document the history of the band he played the serpentine horn in, he also helped date, place and document the image above.

Piper identifies the men in the band from left to right as: “John M. Coomer, Harvey Hastings, Roy Wiles, Walt Warner, Billy Baxter, Frank Haas, Harry Simes, Norris Brown, Hugh Tompson, Thede Potter, Billy Dugan, Jay Philips, R. Richard Ryley, Fred Kelly, Ted Piper.” He also notes “At the wheel, Capt. Rabbe.”

Excerpts from his article:

I have no difficulty in picking out my own fragile frame from among the group of accomplished musicians there depicted.  But others may have.  I am the long bandsman at the end with the serpentine horn around me.  I have one hand in my pocket, either because it was cold, or to show that I could play the horn with one hand,  — yes, with one hand – which was an achievement made possible by the peculiar form of the instrument.  The horn doesn’t look as big as it once looked to me; but I look bigger.  I don’t think I was so tall as all that.  But I was certainly slim… 

I do not recall the occasion, but I should judge that the photograph was taken along about 1885, in the earlier, if not earliest, days of the Home Amusement Club band…

I miss from the picture some of the figures who later graced the organization when ti got up into society and called itself a concert band.  That was not the official name, but privately among ourselves we all admitted that we were something better than a mere brass band.  There was George Morris with his magnificent silver-plated trombone and his affable manner; George W. Mack, who it was rumored, had once played with a circus band, and certainly new how to play the baritone and later the clarinet.  Then there was Mark Long who was also a clarinet player and a good one.  And Willis McElroy, who tooted his first notes at Salem, and was long the leader afterwards of one of the best bands Portland ever had.

I note that Richard Ryley, with the baritone horn in his hand, is modestly hiding behind the music pages of Fred Kelly’s ringing trombone. Who that ever belonged to the band at that time will fail to remember the night Dick Ryley showed up at the practice room? Nobody knew where he came from nor who he was.  He merely sat there and listened while the boys banged their splitting way through a new march.  After it was all over he picked up a horn and tooted a scale or two.  He was a player and a real one.  There was a lot of excitement.  They found Dick Ryley a job and a place in the band, and then it seems to me that the Home Amusement Club took its first step towards  the great goal of concert band.  Dick Ryley has been in Salem most of the time since.  I saw him not long ago and he doesn’t look a day older than on that momentous night 36 or 37 years ago, when he wandered into our club room. But he looks more prosperous.

There was a time when Dan W. Bass, now the owner of a hotel in Seattle, played the bass drum.  Dan was no one-note player, but he was the only drummer we ever had, so far as I k now, who could read the bass drum score at sight.  He read it correctly too, and if the band got out of step with Dan, it was the band that was on the wrong foot, not Dan.

Then there was Eugene England, a beautiful boy, who played the snare drum and who died an untimely death at the age of 18 or 19, a dreadful loss to his parents whose only son he was.  I see Hugh Thompson in the band, another loved only son, who passed away long ago.  Where was Charlie Barker?  Nothing but physical force could have kept him away from his duties as second alto, on so important an occasion.  No band can get along without a second alto.  Several other familiar faces are now missing and missed from this earth, but I will not mention them all.

I joined the band in the summer of 1884, I think.  A year or more before that some of the town boys, feeling the need of a social rendezvous, had organized the Home Amusement club.  They had the right idea.  About the only place in those days where a young man could spend the evenings was in one of the too numerous saloons.  There was no town library and no social center of any kind outside the churches or the University, and for various reasons the boys in Salem were not eligible for amusement there, or at least they desired entertainment and instruction under other auspices.  Out of the club idea grew the band.  They employed John Coomer to be their leader.  Coomer had come to Salem with a circus band and it broke up somewhere in that vicinity at that time. He was hunting employment and he found it.  Under him the band grew into a fine organization. He was a good leader, a fine player and a steady industrious and reliable man. He lately died in Portland, leaving behind him regrets of many friends.

The tuba player had gone away and it was learned somehow that I could play a horn.  I couldn’t play much, but I accepted the invitation and blew the tuba for about four years.  Then I went to work and I quit the band.  Learning to blow my own horn in the Home Amusement Club has stood me in good stead ever since.

The later history of the band others can tell better than I  can.  But I know that it occupied a great place in the history of Salem for several years.  The public was proud of the band and supported it well.  Who does not recall those minstrel shows…?  Who does not remember, too, the weekly concerts given in Wilson Avenue and the thousands of people who came to hear them?  …

Sources:

Piper, Ted. “Me and the H.A. C. Band” OREGON MAGAZINE March 1922  (WHC Collections 2008.038.0019b)