Great bands of America

“See the waltzing horses keeping time to the music of the band, Johnny!” exclaimed one of the many fathers who had taken his son to the circus. The horses seemed to be crossing their slender legs to the beat of the music, and at each boom of the drums they reared gracefully.

But Johnny’s father didn’t know that Merle Evans, bandmaster of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus, was keeping his third eye on the waltzing, glossy-coated horses and directing his band to follow them. Merle says that he uses three eyes during performances—one to watch his music and one to glance at his players, but the third one never misses anything that goes on under the Big Top.

Actually, horses learn to dance without music. Evans watches them go through the intricate steps taught by the trainers. Then he chooses a composition to match the rhythm of their dance, usually a waltz or a galop.

Merle Evans, the Toscanini of the Big Top, is now in his thirty-second year as leader of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus twenty-seven-piece Band. During this time he has not missed a single performance out of more than 14,000 engagements, and he has no assistant.

Merle began his musical career at an early age, and his cornet has been an obsession ever since. His first teachers were the local musicians in his hometown of Columbus, Kansas, where he was born fifty some years ago. At the age of ten he was playing in the town band. For the next few years he practiced six hours every day. He listened to such “greats” as Clarke, Sousa and Gilmore then tried to copy their phrasing, tones and style.

Merle says, “I came up the hard way. I was never able to study at famous conservatories or under famous teachers. But I believed that if you work hard, treat people right and keep looking up to better things all the time, your time will come.”

And Merle’s opportunity did come at the age of fifteen when he was asked to sign up with the “Mighty Brundage Shows,” a traveling carnival. His parents and sisters tearfully bade him goodby. His mother was worried about the bad company he would keep, but his letters soon assured her that in the circus there must be a strict schedule of rehearsal, right living and sound training. Merle had little leisure time as his job included playing in the band, helping to set up the props and working the carousel.

Merle next signed up with a band on a show boat on the Mississippi River. In the towns where they gave shows, the band led the parades. He not only learned much from this larger band, but he had time to practice five hours a day.

A succession of jobs followed. While working for a touring medicine show, Merle played his cornet to attract the crowd then turned to packing pills into bottles to sell to them. From this work he went to the National Stock Company which opened up in Baton Rouge. He says, “I not only led the band, but I also took the tickets and worked the pulleys for the ‘Saw Mill.’ This act was the climax of the show, a thriller act where a young girl narrowly escaped being sawed in two.”

In 1918 Merle went out with Gus Hill’s Minstrel Band of twenty-eight musicians. This was a busy life of long parades and long programs. About this time he realized that he should be looking for a better job. He had heard the great Sousa several times and he yearned to have a band like his.

Things began looking up for Merle when Ranch 101 hired him to play for its huge Wild West show whose main attraction was Buffalo Bill. Merle recalls, “Buffalo Bill used to stop to talk to me about my music and encourage me to keep on with it.” Soon at the age of nineteen Merle was asked to lead the band for the combined Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Since that time Maestro Evans has truly been the pulse of “The Greatest Show on Earth.” He and his all-brass array play more than 225 different cues during each show. The music ranges from Big Time Boogie to selections by Wagner and Tchaikovsky. The typical galops and marches that they play were composed mostly by men whose ears were tuned to the sounds and atmosphere of the kingdom of spangles.

But special music has been written for the Merle Evans Band by the distinguished composers, Deems Taylor and Igor Stravinsky. The musical scores, Circus Suite and Through the Looking Glass, Deems Taylor wrote for the 1945 plot of Alice in Wonderland. Stravinsky’s music was arranged for the first elephant ballet ever to be staged. Fifty elephants in fetching ballet skirts performed a dance routine whose music called for elaborate changes of rhythm.

For a number of years Evans himself composed most of the original music and made the musical arrangements for the star acts—waltzes, foxtrots, marches, galops, rhumbas, tangoes, cakewalks, or various combinations of rhythms. He did this while the circus was in winter quarters at Sarasota, Florida, where the next years’ productions are prepared. “Music has changed a lot since I joined the big show,” Merle said recently. “Now we have much of it arranged for our band. We also have production numbers—and that is special music.”

Aerialists have said that it is rhythm that makes it possible for them to accomplish the seemingly impossible in their flying trapeze acts. Sometimes Evans spends much time and effort finding the appropriate music for them. When Alberty, the “upside-down daredevil,” needed music to accompany his swaying back and forth atop a forty-five-foot pole, Evans finally chose Pagan Love Song, a slow waltz.

He must combine different melodies and rhythms to make the varied pattern needed for times such as the swooping of The Famous Ringling 100 Clowns into the show. But the music, like a colorful backdrop, sets off these boisterous buffoons as they bustle, blunder, or rush hither and thither in baffled confusion. For the clowns’ entrance, the band plays High Riding and for a clown “walk around” they play The Anvil Chorus.

Evans spends about eight weeks preparing the circus score, and of course that is subject to change during the thirty-two-week season. The bandsmen must be drilled on the new material and rehearsed on the routine so that they are ready when the circus opens at Madison Square Garden in New York each April.

The veteran bandmaster and his men present a splendid picture in their blue uniforms with red-striped trousers. His musicians come from various backgrounds—some even from symphony orchestras. Theirs is a difficult routine as they average seven hours of playing a day. They must be constantly alert and have the ability to adjust instantly to any possible change in rhythm.

The band has a repertoire of memorized selections to play at a moment’s notice in time of need. Sometimes death flies along with the circus actors’ thrilling performances. Gay marches are used to cover up accidents. When Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever suddenly breaks into any other music, it means just one thing—“All Out!” The circus people call it The Disaster March.

Evans had to use this march in 1944 at Hartford, Connecticut, during the worst fire in circus history. He was one of the first to see the flames racing along the top and he immediately swung into the Sousa march, leading loud with his cornet. Hearing the strains roll forth like a call to arms, the bull man in the back yard shouted, “Tails!” and forty elephants hooked up trunks and tails and swung out of the lot into the street. Trainers rounded up wild animals—not one remained loose. Troupers mobilized to direct the crowd out.

Evans and his band literally split the rafters repeating the stirring march until the kettle drums caught fire. Only when the main pole began to sway did he give the order, “Jump!” and the men cleared the stand. In this heroic action Evans’s band had again proven that circus bandsmen must be alert men of iron nerves and perfect control.

Merle Evans, self-made musician, has enjoyed an illustrious career. Besides his circus work, he has directed bands in the Middle West, on the coasts and in Europe—in programs that have included Bach, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. He has taught the art of cornet playing in universities of Texas. He has made recordings for Columbia, and an album entitled Circus was cut in the late thirties.

During the winter seasons of 1921, 1922 and 1923, Evans went to London to direct the International Circus band at Olympia. Members of bands of Welsh, Scotch, Irish and the Coldstream Guards made up the group that he led. They played at St. James or at Buckingham Castle in the morning and at Olympia in the afternoon and evening. Merle said, “I believe I am the only bandleader that ever went to Europe alone.”

Recently during the winter seasons, Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus has taken its feature acts from Sarasota, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, for five weeks of performances, at the Sports Palace, there Evans, taking his double drummer and organ, used fourteen Cuban musicians for his band. He said, “I had men from the Havana Symphony and from the Police, the Navy, the Army and the Municipal Bands. They surely did a fine job, too!”

Besides playing concerts for state fairs and other Florida groups, during the winter, Merle finds time in February to play three weeks for School Assembly Service in different parts of the country. At the different high schools he rehearses the bands in playing circus music in the morning. Then that is given as an assembly program.

“I play cornet with the band,” Merle says, “I use a whistle and change the music just as we do for acts in the circus, and you would be surprised how well they can do it.” In addition, he gives a talk on his experiences in the show business.

Merle has two obsessions—his love for popcorn and his love for his cornet. He must have his daily ration of the former both summer and winter. After a hard day’s work he relaxes at home by playing cornet solos or listening to good records—with a bowl of popcorn nearby.

Super-bandmaster Merle Evans has made a lasting name for himself—not only in circus band music but in concert band music as well.

The story of the Merle Evans Circus Band is in a big way the story of all modern circus bands.

However it is far removed from those of yesterday. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the circus had one or two fiddlers to furnish the music for their shows. But more often the owners relied upon the players they could get to help out in the towns where they appeared. The owner himself furnished the music in the John Robinson Circus, which made its debut in 1854. John propped his chair against a center pole and fiddled away while the bareback riders rode their cavorting horses and the acrobats performed their dangerous stunts.

A rival circus, Quick and Mead, boasted a two-man band with a hurdy-gurdy and a bass drum. The hurdy-gurdy player was a specialist hired for that job alone. But various members of the company took turns as parade drummers, sometimes with more noise than rhythm.

Doubling as musicians was the usual thing after the circus parade became a big feature of show day. Then clowns were required to fill in as musicians, and there were some very fine “clown musicians” such as the renowned Adler. A clown band not only marched in the lineup but usually played during part of the big show program. Sometimes the ticket sellers helped out. Gradually the size of the bands increased until there were as many as thirty musicians.

Then as now everything centered around the circus band. The um-pahs blaring forth from the marchers or from the top of the big, gayly painted band wagon drawn by eight coal-black horses became an unforgettable part of the memory of children and adults.

After the parade the band played an hour’s concert under the big top. The immense drum, on wheels fully six feet high, emitted tremendous booms as it was drawn about the arena.

During the acts that followed, the bass drummer could make or break an act. Acrobats, riders, and clowns timed their tricks to the boom of the drum. Stunts such as the midget rider falling off his horse, catching it by the tail, and lifting himself into the saddle with a thump were much funnier with the drum’s booms. The clown’s awkward falls and his antics which involved noises like exploding cigars were always accented by the thud of the bass drum at the right moment. Sometimes the bandmaster in order to amuse the audience would pick up the rhythm of the movements of a latecomer who was vainly trying to locate his family. And there seemed to be a march for every occasion and situation.

Now all that is changed. Ablaze with color and pageantry as the modern circus is, its band must furnish the circus atmosphere, during the entire performance. Besides playing an half-hour concert at the beginning of the show, it binds the acts together, as well as furnish the rhythm and swing to the individual acts.

The bandsmen today must be musicians of ability and of great endurance. In parade days they often played as many as fifty marches, but now the larger circus bands play more than 200 pieces during a three-hour performance. Frequently they must change tempo and score to follow the change of routine in some animal act. If a panther decides to “slink” instead of taking a bow as he usually does at that time, the band must instantly synchronize its music to the panther’s movements. It must be ready and alert to meet any emergency. There is not a moment’s relaxation during the two shows a day.

However a circus bandsman, like other members of the Big Top family, gets one whiff of tanbark and sawdust in his nostrils and is lost to other fields of music forever.