Marking Missouri's bicentennial: Cape's enduring community band

This story is updated.

This is the 19th in a series of articles with Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation board chairman Frank Nickell, an emeritus faculty member of Southeast Missouri State University, commenting on Show Me State history on the 200th anniversary of Missouri being received as America's 24th state in 1821.

The late entertainment impresario Dick Clark, longtime host of TV's "American Bandstand," used to say music "is the soundtrack of our lives."

Some might argue with Clark's characterization, but few people familiar with the history of the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band will challenge how important music has been historically to Missouri's 16th-largest city.

"In the 19th century, this region was pretty much a frontier and isolated, and a lot of people who moved here to Cape were eager to create a sort of genteel society in the midst of a fairly harsh environment," said Nickell, adding, "music took off some of the rough edges for hard-working folks."

John F. Schuchert, organizer of the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band.

Nickell, whose current office at the Kellerman Foundation is across the street from what used to be the old St. Charles Hotel at Main and Themis streets, said the inn — which was razed in 1967 — was once a vital center of Cape's musical life.

"The hotel had music every weekend and when soldiers were here during the Civil War, there was always someone inside from the military," he said, noting music at the St. Charles preserved a sense of "life as usual" during the War Between the States.

Putting the band together

A German immigrant grocer, John Schuchert, had opened an opera house in Chester, Illinois in 1875 and, after moving to Cape Girardeau in 1899, was planning a similar musical enterprise in the building now housing Katy O'Ferrell's Restaurant at 300 Broadway.

Instead, Schuchert started a 12-piece town band in 1900.

The Cape Girardeau Municipal Band posed for a portrait at Courthouse Park in 1929. Front row, from left: Henry Grossheider, Cletus Stausing, John Frenzel Jr., Ben Rudert, director Thomas A. Danks, Elmore Kassel, David Hawkins, Henry Kimmich, and Albert Schultz. Second row: E.F. Foster, William Bock, Harry Foster, Wooten Gilbert, Chester Blaylock, John O'Donoghue, Clark Caruthers, and Chester W. Kassel. Top row, Jean Hirschberg, Albert Bentley, Louis Kassel, William Redding, Ed Rudert, Walter Kempe, Clark P. Purcell, and Arthur Kempe.

His son, C.F. "Clarence" Schuchert, took over the conducting in 1911.

Like his father, Clarence's ensemble played at picnics, weddings and public events.

In 1917, the United States entered World War I and the entire band enlisted, becoming an official band of the 6th Missouri Regiment.

Legend has it that those deemed too young or old for military service, Schuchert included, came back to the city in short order as hostilities ended and started what we know today as the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band, although the exact start date for the group is uncertain.

In its early days, the band played in Courthouse Park, now the site of the new city hall project on Lorimier Street, overlooking the Mississippi River.

Tax supported for years

The younger Schuchert is credited with helping to get statewide legislation passed in Jefferson City in 1927 allowing Missouri cities to impose a tax to support town bands.

Cape Girardeau had a levy on its books, according to previous reporting by the Southeast Missourian, as late as 1969.

At the time, the tax amounted to what was then a 3-cent property tax, raising nearly $12,000 annually to support the band's expenses.

By 1970, however, the tax had disappeared, because Cape Girardeau's population had grown too large to impose the levy under Missouri law.

Currently, the city funds the band from its parks and recreation budget.

"Some say Cape's municipal band is the oldest community band in America but if it's not, it certainly is one of the very first to be backed with tax dollars," said Nickell.

Today

Neil Casey, a retired band teacher at Cape Girardeau Central High School, is the 10th director of the city's municipal band, taking over leadership following the 26-year tenure of his predecessor, fellow music educator Ron Nall.

"We have diversity of age and socioeconomic status in the band," said Casey, who adds the 60-plus volunteer group has teenagers to octogenarians making up its number.

"I'm proud of the fact that we have a traditional instrumentation complement, meaning our community band looks like CHS," he informed, noting the band has bassoons, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, tubas, horns, a baritone and even a piccolo.

For decades a male-only contingent, the band took on women members beginning in the 1970s.

Venue

The municipal band's home, the Cotner Amphitheatre in Capaha Park, is undergoing renovation this year and cannot be used this summer.

The band shell is named for dentist Dan Cotner, who retired from the band in 2015 after playing trombone for 77 years.

Casey and the band will make their 2021 debut at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Kinder Performance Hall at CHS and aside from a Fourth of July concert at Arena Park, will continue to use Kinder for the free concerts each Wednesday night through July 28.

Those interested are invited to consult www.cityofcape.org/parks for more information.