MUSIC OF BUYGONE ERA BEING SOLD

As a college student in the early 1930s, Otto Seabaugh sometimes stopped by Kassel's jewelry store in the 600 block of Broadway. Seabaugh and Elmer Kassel were both musicians, and Kassel's wife, Neva, had been Seabaugh's fourth-grade teacher.

Seabaugh began buying the sheet music displayed on the counter in the store. The music was for sale because Kassel had disbanded his orchestra, one of the most popular of the day.

Kassel might ask a dollar, Seabaugh said, "but if I only had 15 cents he'd take it."

Almost seven decades later, Seabaugh has a classified ad in this newspaper offering for sale "Kassel's Girardean Orchestra Sheet Music of the twenties & thirties." The 20 orchestrations are scraps of Cape Girardeau's musical history.

This is not the swing music that has young dancers jitterbugging again today but rather gentler tunes people waltzed and fox-trotted to. The titles include "Walkin' My Baby Back Home," "Hello Beautiful," "There's Oceans of Love by the Beautiful Sea," "Dinah" and Bing Crosby's "Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day."

The 84-year-old Seabaugh said he didn't buy all of Kassel's music. "I just bought the numbers I wanted."

Both Seabaugh and his wife, Della, played in the band at Jackson High School. He also played in the band at Southeast Missouri State University for a year.

He used to get together with fiends and play the music "for our own entertainment."

But when he got a job teaching school, he bought a car that didn't have a heater and needed $35 to buy one. "I sold my trumpet and kept all the music," he said. And he never played trumpet again.

"It's a shame," he said.

Seabaugh taught in the Cape Girardeau schools a few years then left the area. He worked for a maker of small-arms ammunition, McDonnell Aircraft, Ford, and Winchester firearms before retiring to live in Jackson.

They now live at Chateau Girardeau and have made a substantial contribution to Southeast's new polytechnic building, which will be named for them. A map of the world in their living room is dotted with straight pins marking the many places they have traveled to.

But their younger years left them with memories of nickel ice cream cones and the popular music of the day. Those memories explain as well as anything why Otto kept Kassel's sheet music.

"It was an attachment to the music," Della said.

Seabaugh said Kassel's orchestra often played for dances at the pavilion at Capaha Park, events that were broadcast live on KFVS radio.

The Southeast Missourian files contain no references to Kassel's Girardean Orchestra, but Kassel did have a band. Homer Gilbert, famous for his longevity with the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band, recalls playing with Kassel's outfit.

"They were very popular," he said.

In 1909, the newspaper listed the Kassel orchestra personnel as John Kassel Sr., violin; Otto Kassel, cornet; Chloe Kassel, piano; Elmore Kassel, clarinet; and Fred Kassel, trombone.

A photograph on the wall at Shivelbine's Music portrays the New Broadway Orchestra, which played for vaudeville shows at the Broadway Theater in the late '20s and early '30s. Members of the band were Elmore Kassel, his cousin Louis and William A. Shivelbine.

They are among those credited with gathering the contributions to construct the band shell at Capaha Park.

Elmore Kassel was already a member of the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band when Gilbert joined in 1927. Gilbert recalled that Elmore wrote one of the pieces of music the Municipal Band still plays.

Seabaugh is glad to hear that Southeast band director Barry Bernhardt and Shivelbine's Music Store owner Leland "Freck" Shivelbine both are interested in looking at his trove of music.

"I was not going to use it anymore," he said.