RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THE MUSIC MAN FOR HUNDREDS WAS MR. ENGLISH

There must be hundreds -- maybe even thousands -- of former high school band members around here who learned to count time and chew gum at the same time under the legendary baton of Joe English.

Mr. English -- some people will forever merit a title of respect -- is dead now, but for years and years he was the school music director in your favorite hometown in the Ozarks. Several folks in the audience when the Air Force band performed in Cape Girardeau this week had memories of Mr. English swirling in their heads as they listened to the spit-and-polished performers in their spiffy uniforms.

If ever there was a spit-and-polish fellow, it was Mr. English. To him, dressing properly, sitting properly and behaving properly were all as important as playing an instrument with some degree of accomplishment. He taught music, both vocal and instrumental, but more than that he imparted an attitude for being somebody and becoming someone in the life beyond adolescence and the hormonal teen years.

More than once during a typical school year students could be found sitting in the band room listening raptly to Mr. English as he told stories of "life out there" where people did things that seemed to be so much more interesting than life in a small town or on any of the nearby farms.

Mr. English had been places in his day, all the way to New Orleans, where he played a mean clarinet in joints where they did things your Sunday school teacher was always warning you about. Sometimes he would accede to the unanimous requests for a sample. He would get Jim Ed Bowles to do funky things on the piano that no piano teacher ever taught him to do, and the mellow, floating sounds of a Dixieland clarinet would fill the band room and float outside where the girls' P.E. class was playing softball. Blues and softball. Right there in your little old hometown.

Once a year the school had its biggest hoopla of the year with the annual spring concert, a gala evening of bands and choirs and small groups of both persuasions, all leading up to the main events: the high school choruses and band under the direction of Mr. Joe English.

The band wore uniforms, itchy wool with lots of gold braid. Mr. English had, over the years, devised a recruiting system for the band that met the criteria both for needed instruments and players who could fit into a uniform with only minor alterations. This was tough, especially, the latter, because some band members grew six inches or more in a single school year. To fill the chairs of less-popular instruments Mr. English would curry the parents: "Oh, Mrs. So-and-so, your Bobby was born with the lips of a concert baritone horn player." The next thing you knew, Bobby was coming to school every day clunking a baritone horn case against the hall walls. No one ever remembered they had never heard a concert baritone horn player in a concert. It didn't matter.

Members of the chorus wore suits and formals. For many boys this would be their only brush with white shirts and neckties. For many girls the formal dress, all poofy with petticoats, would double for the prom. On the night of the concert, boys would gather in the band room for inspection, and Mr. English would have a hangar full of his own ties on hand. Boys who knew how to tie a tie were pressed into service.

More than anything else, you remember the pride Mr. English took -- and persuaded you to take -- in the high quality of the musical performance. And, by golly, you did sound good. And you looked good, and nearly everyone had had a bath. Everyone's hair was combed. Clean music never meant so much, before or after.

Mr. English died a year or two ago, but he always remembered his students. And his students always remembered the standing ovation they got at the end of every spring concert. Mr. English thoughtfully -- and cleverly -- scheduled the national anthem as the closing number.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.