Summer is coming. As it does every year, warmer weather gets people outside, perhaps after being cooped up all winter is the reason. We look for entertainment and since its first days, bands making music have been a huge reason to get out and enjoy a spring/summer evening.
The Hickory Military Opera Brass Band is credited as the town’s first. Numbering over 20 members, they played brass instruments from trumpets to trombones and tubas. Their repertoire was the music of their day, which included a lot of rousing tunes, written by the march king, John Phillip Souza and one of the big hits of 1888, “Oh Promise Me,” a song that went on to be a wedding standard for the next 75 years.
Among the members of the band were Dr. Richard Baker, Hickory’s most preeminent physician, the one for whom Frye Regional Medical Center was first named. A.A. Shuford, perhaps the city’s most distinguished businessman, also played in the band.
Initially funded by Hickory entrepreneur Daniel Shuler, the band gave performances from a bandstand over near the old mineral springhouse or Union Square Park as it was known during the era. It’s now named Sally Fox Park. Folks came out for afternoon concerts, regularly.
The Hickory brass band was known as “the best band in western North Carolina” so it was no surprise they took their instruments to nearby towns for concerts. While playing for a political rally in Lenoir, the local paper remarked, “it will be worth the trip to see members of the band dressed in their beautiful uniforms, finer and more gorgeous than that of a Major General in the Army, and behold the grandeur of their drum major.” Beyond the visual grandeur, the music was described as “splendid.”
F.A. (Frank) Grace was the drum major who got special notice. He was a friend of Shuler’s and a fellow Michigan native. Primarily known as a painter and architect, he gave Hickory some of its first mural sized images (frescoes) on the walls of the Bank of Hickory, Harper House and the Elliott Opera House. In addition, he designed Oakwood Cemetery.
Grace’s skill as a drum major might have come from his time as a member of the Queen’s Guard in London. When marching, the tone of his whistle and the twirl of his baton instructed the steps of the musicians. A snappy precision complimented their musicianship. He was such a show in himself that one observer said, he “took the breath away from everyone who saw him.”
Over the years, the band performed statewide, also serving as the regimental unit for the 4th Regiment for the State Guard. Naturally, they played for all the big events in Hickory including the opening of the Hickory Inn, as well as parades, at the fair, anywhere music adorned an event, from Asheville to Wrightsville Beach.
As you go out for a show this summer, maybe a musical event, know that the tradition of live music in Hickory goes back over six generations to a time when there was one band in town, and everybody came to hear them.
Photo: Current view of the original Hickory venue for music and musical relics of 1888.
