JACKSON BAND CELEBRATES ITS 75 YEARS OF MUSIC MEMORIES

JACKSON -- News accounts differ on when the Jackson Junior Band formed. Some say it was 1920, others 1921.

Director Nick Leist says 1920, so the 50-member group will perform its 75th anniversary concert beginning at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Cape Girardeau County Courthouse gazebo.

Of course they'll play under a different name. Now it's the Jackson Municipal Band.

Thursday night will be dedicated to remembering all the people who gave their time and talent to be an integral part of Jackson life. Once a week, for 75 years, they brought music into their neighbor's lives.

And as other community bands came and went, devoted Jackson musicians kept their's going. Today its members get a small allowance to cover time and expenses. But at one time, each member paid 25 cents for the privilege of being in the band.

It all began when businessman A.W. Roloff took a group of boys -- some of them barely schooled in music -- and gave them sheet music to learn. As the band improved, Fred Reasoner took over directing duties, then Leroy Mason.

Current director Leist said those men gave the group the foundation needed to last 75 years. Roloff was well respected in the community, and Mason's love for music was matched with his ability to teach.

And the Jackson community supported its band. Even in today's busy world, about 200 people come out to Jackson City Park every Thursday during the summer to listen to the band.

Leroy McNeely remembers a time when there weren't so many distractions. He joined the band in 1924 when he was 15. He didn't own an instrument, but Roloff gave him a clarinet. That started McNeely's 65-year tenure with the group.

McNeely holds the record for most years with the Jackson Municipal Band, beating Paul Bruening by one year.

"In 1988, when I'd played 64 years, I told the director I wasn't able to play much anymore because I couldn't watch the notes and him, too," McNeely said. "He told me he'd enlarge the music for me, because I had to make it 65 years."

The clarinet player collected a lot of memories in those 6 1/2 decades. Some of the dates and places have faded from memory, but McNeely remembers several incidents quite clearly.

One was when the municipal band was asked to march in Appleton and all the streets were gravel.

"They wanted us to march from the school to the picnic grounds over rocks as big as your fist," McNeely said. "You couldn't watch the music and watch where you were going, so you'd step on a big rock and shove the horn down your throat."

On another occasion, tuba player Rueben Schade had to sit under a bright light during a performance. At the next band practice, fellow musicians noticed an odd odor coming out of the tuba.

When he tipped the horn over, McNeely recalled, "about a gallon" of bugs fell out of the bell.

But one-time band director Richard Partridge provided perhaps the most interesting footnote in Jackson Municipal Band history.

Partridge was director of the Jackson High School Band and the municipal band in October 1962 when the Bank of Advance was robbed. Nearly a year later, on Aug. 5, 1963, the Bank of Chaffee was robbed.

An Aug. 6, 1963, article in the Southeast Missourian said police connected the two robberies right away, but it took just over two weeks to connect both to Partridge.

According to local legend, McNeely said, Partridge owed a lot of money to a garage owner and paid his bill within a few days of the second robbery. The garage owner noticed that Partridge looked like a sketch of the robber and called the sheriff. Or so the story goes.

Regardless of how they made the connection, police decided to put bank employees from Chaffee and Advance in the audience during a Jackson Municipal Band concert that Partridge was directing

When they identified him as the robber, police arrested Partridge following a rendition of the National Anthem.

McNeely was sitting with his clarinet a few feet away when they arrested his band leader.

The director was sentenced to 12 years in a Terra Haute, Ind., prison. After he was released, Partridge returned to Jackson, where he worked for Lenco Inc. He died in 1989.

Leist, the current director, hasn't had such a colorful career with the band, but he has had a longer one. He went to work at Jackson High School 27 years ago, when he also began directing the municipal band.

"I was really eager to start, although it was different from working with students," Leist said. "The adults take criticism really well. After all these years I've been in Jackson, 90 percent of the band is former students of mine."

The band season started Memorial Day and will finish at Jackson Homecomers on Aug. 15.

As for Thursday's performance, The Water Street Six, a Dixieland group, will open the concert at 7 p.m. Contemporary Christian group Forever Friends will sing during intermission.

Admission is free.