Paul Lavalle and the Cities Service Band of America

Jack Kopstein

Paul Lavalle

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Paul Lavalle was a conductor, composer, arranger and performer on clarinet and saxophone. He was born Joseph Usifer on September 6, 1908 in Beacon, New York, and died in Harrisonburg, Virginia on June 24, 1997.

Lavalle’s parents were Ralph and Jennie Usifer, both Italian immigrants. Graduating from Beacon High School, he planned to study law at Columbia University. After winning a scholarship there, Lavalle studied music at the Juilliard School and was a student of composition of Joseph Schillinger. He performed in many 1930s bands, including one in Havana, Cuba. In 1933, he became an arranger and clarinetist in the NBC Symphony Orchestra when it was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. His first composition to be performed with this orchestra was Symphonic Rhumba (1939), conducted by Leopold Stokowski on December 6, 1942.

Paul Lavalle has combined an ability in organization with a solid background in music performance, conducting, and composition. As the conductor of the Cities Service Band of America during eight years of weekly broadcasts over NBC Radio, beginning in 1948, his name became known in millions of American homes. With the help of his brother, Michael Usifer, conductor of the town band, he learned the fundamentals of most of the instruments, but preferred to perform on clarinet and saxophone. After graduating from Beacon High School, he began majoring in law at Columbia University, but upon winning a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music during his freshman year, he abandoned law for music. After leaving Juilliard he performed with a band in Havana, Cuba, followed by a series of concerts with the NBC Symphony, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. In addition to the famous Band of America–selected as the official band of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair–Lavalle founded the Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, the Stradivari Orchestra, and the NBC Highways of Melody Orchestra. In 1966, he organized the McDonald All-American High School Band. In 1968, he became director of music for the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, and in 1981 he began conducting the Wilton, Connecticut, Chamber Orchestra. Throughout much of his career, he guest¬conducted school and professional orchestras and bands in various sections of the United States.

Recipient of a number of honors and awards, Lavalle’s showy and energetic style of conducting won the approval of most audiences–as well as the criticism of a few more conservative conductors. Living in Wilton, Connecticut, for many years, Lavalle, learned to counteract a busy schedule in New York and elsewhere with hobbies, including gardening and golf.

Lavalle wrote a variety of musical works for band and orchestra, and several scores which he composed while driving into New York City each day. In addition to tone poems,  instrumental concertos and features, and symphonic arrangements, he  composed  a number of marches. All-American High School Band, Ballyhoo, Band of America, and Good Fellowship are listed in the 1982 Band Music Guide. Other marches included: Be Prepared (for the Boy Scouts); The Big Brass Band; Big Joe the Tuba; Boys Club of America; Bugle Calls A-Plenty; Dwight D. Eisenhower (built on the notes D-D-E we featured during the 1952 presidential campaign); The Merrymakers; and United Press.

Paul Lavalle applied for the conductor’s position of the Cities Service Band of America in 1948, and he won out over a number of other highly qualified applicants, including  Frank Simon, conductor of the well-known ARMCO Band in the 1920′s . Every Monday night for the next eight years, millions of Americans heard the introduction over NBC Radio begin with: “Forty-eight states . . . forty-eight stars …forty-eight men marching down the main street of everybody’s hometown! Here comes Cities Service Band of America, conducted by Paul Lavalle!” During the series of over 400 entertaining and stimulating broadcasts, this professional band entertained a vast radio audience, produced a number of record albums for RCA, and served as a beacon for school bands across the United States. He became instantly recognized and newspapers across America, including the Appleton Wisconsin Crescent,  suggested that “Maestro Paul Lavalle Walks in the Shoes of Sousa.”He became the inspiration for young band musicians across the USA and Canada. He travelled extensively performing and his recordings were snatched up immediately when they were released.

Lavalle worked on numerous radio programs, including The Dinah Shore Show (1939-40), The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street (1940-44), Plays for Americans (1942) and Highway of Melody with the Band of America (1944-56). On his radio shows he collaborated with Victor Borge, Mario Lanza, Robert Merrill and Dinah Shore. In November 1944, his jazz composition “Always” made it to number 29 on the top 40 charts. In 1940, The New York Times described him as “NBC’s ubiquitous music maker” and said he was “of small size, dynamic, dark haired…” Lavalle told the reporter, “Music is my life, and I am happy that it is so.”
In 1949, Lavalle and the band became one of the first musical groups to appear weekly on television. Beginning in 1964, the Band of America toured extensively and also became the official band of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, an engagement that lasted into 1965.

Lavalle guest conducted many orchestras, including the ABC Symphony, CBS Symphony, NBC Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1967, he was instrumental in forming the 100-member All-American High School Band (by 1968 known as McDonald’s All-American High School Band) which participated in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Tournament of Roses Parade.

Actress Muriel Angelus met Paul Lavalle while she was performing on the radio, and they married in 1946. She retired from acting to raise a family. They maintained an apartment in Manhattan and a Colonial home in Connecticut. Their daughter Suzanne Lavalle Bothamley was an NBC reporter and became a realtor for Coldwell Banker Funkhouse. Paul Lavalle died June 24, 1997 in Harrisonburg, Virginia at the Rockingham Memorial Hospital

•     Paul Lavalle’s compositions

•    Band of America March (1949)
•    Big Joe, The Tuba March (1950)
•    Boys’ Clubs of America (Marching Song) (1948)
•    Dwight D. Eisenhower March (built on the notes D-D-E; the official theme of the 1952 campaign)
•    The United Press March (1952, composed for United Press International)
•    United States Overture (1951)
•    (Information from Paul Bierley, The Instrumentalist, Marquis Who’s Who., and The New York Time )and Appleton Wisconsin Post Crescent, The Beckley Post Herald W Va)and Wikipedia,Encyclopedia

If you were influenced by the Lavalle broadcasts please feel to blog, we would love to hear from you.

At the time of the American Civil War, music played an important part in military affairs. On a practical level, commands and orders were communicated by drum, or by bugles or trumpets in mounted commands. Bugles and trumpets were also making inroads into dismounted units, where drums were still standard. For marching, company drummers were generally grouped into regimental drum corps, and sometimes fifes, and even a bass drum, were added to complete this “field music”. However, regiments that could manage it organized proper marching bands, generally brass bands of from 16 to 24 players, in addition to their drum corps. These were standard for US regular regiments, and were also authorized for volunteer regiments in 1861.

Wealthier peacetime militia regiments had often hired professional bands, either for the occasion, or even on a long-term contract. Many such bands, some of them of a high musical standard, marched off to war with the early regiments; some only went as far as the railroad station, but others went to the front, and served as stretcher bearers in battle.

Some of these bands could number as many as 50 players, and in an army corps where most Regiments had bands, there might be 40 or such bands of music. In July 1862, Congress abolished regimental bands and only the fifes and drums were left. The bands were sorely missed and brigade bands were authorized in their place, while some regiments raised funds to support more modest regimental bands at their own expense, a practice which worked well in the British Army.

In the Confederate service, no such cuts were made, no doubt because not quite so many regiments had bands in the first place. As a result, a few Confederate bands served right through the war.

A drum corps was led by one or two NCOs entitled “principal musicians,” one of whom was usually termed a “drum major” (or in mounted corps, a “trumpet major”), while “fife majors” were also sometimes appointed.

Where a band existed, one of the principal musicians would take charge and was generally termed the “leader.” While drum majors may have marched at the head of bands, leaders appear to have been musicians; the drum major’s main responsibility was for the drum corps, though separately organized civilian bands attached to militia or volunteer regiments would probably have their own drum majors.

Regulations covered the dress of company musicians, who wore the uniform of their unit,    but with “herring-bone” braiding in facing colour on the coat front. Sometimes a drum major might wear no more than musician’s uniform, with the distinctions of an NCO; no specific chevrons were prescribed, but a version of sergeant’s or sergeant-majors’ chevrons, with an additional star or crossed drumsticks, was customary. For bandsmen, regulations simply required regimental uniform with “such additions in ornaments as (the commanding officer) may judge properly.” In practice, this could vary from quite modest modifications to elaborate uniforms that bore no relation to what, when fronting a band, a drum major would wear.

Thus attired, drum majors could make quite a show; when the raw student recruits of Company “1″ of the Confederate 4th Virginia Infantry encountered a colossal warrior “with a fierce moustache waxed into rat-tails,” arrayed in a uniform that made their eyes clink, they were convinced that they met up with the “commander-in-chief of all the Confederate armies,” but were disgusted to learn that he was merely the drum major of the First Virginia Infantry!

One of the most prestigious militia units of the period was the 7th Regiment, New York State Militia, which in the dark early days of war was one of the first regiments to march to the relief of an anxious President and a beleaguered capital, its journey funded largely by its businessman Colonel, Marshall Lefferts. The Seventh’s brief period of service was up even before the battle of First Bull Run, but its arrival at Washington had boosted the morale of the North, and hundreds of its members later served as officers, and even generals, in the Union armies.

In 1858, the Seventh’s dissatisfaction with its band, under Bandmaster Noll, came to a head during an excursion to Richmond, when the “mutinous conduct” of Noll and his men proved too much; “The fatigues of the journey,” opined the regimental chronicler solemnly, “the heat of the weather, and perhaps the free flow of wine and lager-beer, had demoralized the band …” Thankfully, Noll’s contract was up that November, and the next month band-leader and composer C. S. Grafulla (Washington Grays march, see note 1) was engaged in his stead; 38 musicians were selected for the new band, and a contract made for new uniforms and equipment. Under Grafulla’s leadership, the band went on to establish a national reputation for musical excellence.

The full dress of the Seventh was a shako and grey tailed coat, but the band adopted a more modern style based approximately on US regulation patterns, with a dark blue cloth shako, dark blue frock coat with scarlet trim and “plastron” front, and sky blue trousers. The scarlet facings were, perhaps, a reference to the earlier artillery status of the Regiment. The drum-major’s dress differed in several respects, having gilt epaulettes, and no plastron, but outer rows of buttons, nine in number as for the centre row. The cuff patches bore three small buttons, and the collar carried a brass “7″.

Instead of a bandsmen’s shako, the drum major wore a bearskin hat with a feather plume, gold tassels and a scarlet bag with gold cord trim. His scarlet baldric had brass fittings – apparently an eagle of the type worn on US regulation “Hardee” dress hats, linked with a chain to a shield bearing miniature drumsticks. The remaining trim was gold lace.

The trousers were not the sky blue worn by the other bandsmen, but the grey trousers of the Regiment’s officers, with a double, gold lace stripe set on black. The waist belt plate is that prescribed by the New York militia regulations of 1858 – gilt, rectangular, two inches wide, with a raised bright rim, and bearing a silver wreath of laurel and palm encircling the letters “N.Y” in silver Old English characters. Though sergeants of this regiment carried straight NCOs swords, the drum-major, in common with the other senior sergeants, wore an M 1851 type company officer’s sword, without sword knot, in a scabbard studded to fit in a black.

Drum Majors proved to be an invaluable inspiration to the troops and bandsmen as they strutted in front of the Civil war bands and the custom remains to this day with the hundreds of military, civilian and School bands across North America. Federal bands often led troops in momentous battles and the drum majors played an enormous part in the performance of the duties of bands.

Main Sources : FP Todd Military Equipage 1851, Francis A Lord “Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil war”, Regulations for Uniform Dress of the United States Marine Corps 1859, January 1987 issue of  MILIITARY MODELLING©

1.    WASHINGTON GRAYS is performed on 5 ALTISSIMO recordings
The Bicentennial Collection
Forward march
Front and Center
The Great March
An American Patrol
Go to www. militarymusic.com for information

A CIVIL WAR RETROSPECT FROM ALTISSIMO

11th Gettysburg  Music Muster Sounds of the Civil War at National Military Park

27 August 2005

Performances by authentic Civil War musicians  filled  the air on Saturday, August 27, 2005 , at Gettysburg National Military Park during the ELEVENTH  annual Gettysburg Music Muster.  The concerts were one-of-a -kind performances, played mostly on original instruments, and featured  songs of the Irish Union soldiers, balladeers, Victorian dance music and dance performances, along with fife and drum, and more Music Muster performances began  at the park’s Cyclorama Center outdoor stage with  performances  by The  Federal l City Brass.

Returning for the third year were  *Jan Villenueva and *Mark Elrod who founded and the Federal City Brass in2002. The sound and appearance of a traditional 1860′s regimental band are recreated with music of the civil war

The band plays primarily transcriptions and arrangements in quintet format, closely based on original scores from band journals, published music collections and sheet music of the period.

The band, based in Baltimore, is comprised of professional and volunteer musicians, music educators, historians and re-enactors. The Federal City Brass is one of fourteen Civil War bands from across the country   that were selected to participate in the National Civil War Band Festival in2003.

The Susquehanna Travellers are composed of four members playing the guitar, banjo, recorder and violin. They play music of the Civil War, concentrating on Irish and Military Songs.

Music Americana is a-12-pieceorchestra specializing in period music from the mid-19th century. The repertoire of this dedicated group included old favourites as well as many lesser-known but beautiful waltzes, inspiring marches, lively reels and polkas. Instrumentation includes flutes, violins, clarinets cornets, and percussion. All Music Americana members dress in the style of the Civil War. Based in Harford County, Music Americana has performed in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

The 77th New York Balladeers took center stage at the Cyclorama, lead by cofounder John C. Quinn. Quinn along with the Balladeers  whom are dedicated to preserving the songs, history and spirit of the 1860s they use the original Civil War music arrangements and lyrics to convey the thoughts, motives, and sorrows of the men and women who lived during one of the most defining periods of our American heritage. The songs are sung as they would have been performed in camp or the family parlour in the 1860s.

Another great Civil re-enactment band is the 5th Michigan Regimental Brass Band from Novi, Michigan, consisting of 28 members. Today’s 5th Michigan Regimental band is a historical recreation of the 1861 Band of the 5th Michigan Volunteer Infantry. The Band’s musical repertoire includes popular marches, polkas, schottisches and waltzes that were played around the 1860s for parades, military balls, and musters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. The band director, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Smith, meticulously transcribed much of the music using material from the National Archives and original sheet music. The music is performed on period antique and replica Saxhorns and wood drums. The band wears copies of the wool uniforms worn by the 5th Michigan soldiers during the Civil War. Traveling with the band is a colour guard and ladies in Civil War period attire.

*Jan Villenueva  is the music historian who researched  and discovered the history of TAPS and has written a book on the subject.
*Mark Elrod is the co-author of Civil war era Musical Instruments and military bands and is a world authority on civil war music and bands.

From the pages and files  of the Frederick News Post 25 August 2005
We hope to list all Civil war re-enactment   groups in our pages shortly . Write a blog  and tell us about your activities.

The Golden Age of the Concert Band

Hello everyone! Continuing in our Air Force birthday celebration, this week’s New Music Tuesday release is The Golden Age of the Concert Band from the US Air Force Heritage of America Band. Featuring the works of John Philip Sousa and Edwin Franko Goldman among others, this album showcases the value of the modern concert band and also how the leadership, vision, and originality of these composers shaped the growth of the concert band by promoting a common ground for professional and student musicians across America. Even today, the music of the American Concert Band can still delight audiences of all ages!