Westbrook Pegler

Fort Worth Record-Telegram/September 10, 1929

NEW YORK, Sept. 9–Candidates for the New York University varsity band have gone into training at a camp of their own adjacent to the varsity football camp at Farmingdale, L.I. This is believed to be the first time that a university band has gone into training quarters in preparation for a season of blatting and tootling in conjunction with the varsity football games.

The New York University band has a hard schedule this year and is pointing for two big contests, one with the Pennsylvania band, the other with the band from the University of Missouri. The Pennsylvania band is the loudest in the East and has by far the most spectacular uniforms, even the young man who forms the front legs of the bass drum wearing a pound of brass fringe on each shoulder.

Stars Turn Pros

Maurel Hankins, the coach of the New York University band, is not optimistic at this time. His squad was hard hit as the saying goes, not only by graduations but by proselyting tactics of unscrupulous Broadway band leaders. He lost 20 trombonists, slap-tongue saxophonists, and piccolo players by graduation and during the summer half a dozen of his remaining stars were detected playing professionally under assumed names in roadhouses around Saratoga. However, he is particularly interested in a young man whom he is covering up for the time being, owing to reports that a scout for Rudy Vallee was hanging around the camp disguised as a critic from one of the musical publications. According to Al Nixon, the graduate manager of athletics and music in New York, this young man is a triple threat musician, having volume, speed and marvelous endurance.

“He will show you the hottest pair of lips in any university band on the Eastern seaboard,” Nixon stated “But just at present he is working out with a dummy horn so that Vallee’s scouts won’t be able to spot him. There has been some difficulty with the neighbors around Farmingdale but I am afraid they will have to put up with the inconvenience for one week.

“One of the neighbors came over to say that he moved out of New York because be used to have a neighbor who was taking a mail order course on the trombone. He said the sound of 80 or 90 boys all practicing runs and double stops on a great variety of instruments at once was more than he could stand and asked us to sound proof the practice hall. Instead we offered to sound proof his house and I think we might compromise by sending him away for a week’s trip.

“Illinois Has Loudest”

“It is difficult to find a place to conduct practice for a band of 70 pieces and from 10 to 20 scrubs, as it seems that there are no wide open spaces wide enough or open enough to permit the boys to let themselves out without being beard by someone. As the chief aim of all varsity bands is to be louder than the other bands I am inclined to doubt that our complaining neighbor could go far enough in a week’s trip to get away from it all.”

The main difficulty, of course, is that varsity bands when in competition are compelled to play while marching and forming themselves into large initial letters on the football field. The New York University band is learning to form a large repertoire of these letters and as the practice requires several acres of space, it is impossible to carry it out in any of the available drill halls. And, anyway, Nixon says, it would be dangerous to the musicians themselves to do so as the volume when the boys are all blowing at once would be likely to stun them with shell shock.

“Hitherto the band has been a neglected feature of college life in our part of the country,” Nixon says. “The great Western schools have wonderful loud bands of which I believe the Illinois band is the loudest.

“New York University intends to produce the best college band in the country and I predict that when the Maurel Hunkins system of coaching has been allowed to develop fully you can put the Illinois band alongside our band and start them horning and not even hear the Illinois band.