Two Drummers, Two Legacies

The Percival certificate, 1821. Note the second rule, which confirmed that old drummers’ joke “It starts with a seven…everything starts with a seven… Courtesy David Pear, Colchester, CT

On May 15, 1821, Hezekiah Percival of Moodus, Connecticut, was issued a certificate attesting to his proficiency on “the different Beats above named on the drum.” On it, his teacher, Samuel G. Willcox of Middletown’s Upper Houses [present-day Cromwell, CT], declared that the 20-year-old Percival “has been very diligent” and thereby “merits the approbation of his friends, and the recommendation of his Teacher.” Willcox had purchased the certificate from a local printer — a more or less generic form with blank spaces that allowed him to personalize it with date, name, and signature. Despite its fairly commonplace nature and easy availability, only one other such certificate has been discovered. It was prepared some 31 years later by another printer for another teacher who used a similar certificate and similar language to confirm the competence of his own student:

This is to certify that H.J.H. Thompson has been very diligent in attaining a knowledge of the above Rules and Beats, for which he merits the approbation of his friends and the public, and the recommendations of his teacher.

Courtesy the Connecticut Historical Society, https://chs.org/

The certificates are quite similar, even though one is dated 1821 and the other 1852. Both were professionally and attractively printed, the latter by Patten’s Job Press in New Haven, CT. They clearly outline a basic and rather traditional repertory that any 19th-century student of military drumming would be expected to master; many of the rules and beats listed thereon are included in the teaching repertory of Massachusetts drummer Benjamin Clark (1797) and are found in a variety of early-to-mid 19th-century American drum instruction publications.

The rules (rudiments) are listed on both certificates in much the same order: Long Roll, Seven Roll, Double Dragg, Single Dragg, Flam, and Flam and a Half. Also included are the Compound dragg, Firing Strokes, Cease Firing Strokes, and Perediddle Strokes as well as the three, five, and eleven-stroke rolls. However, in 1852, Thompson was taught five rudimental combinations that Percival was not: the perididdle drag, 7 roll and 4 singles, 7 roll and 6 singles, the 3 roll and compound drag, and the 3 with 6 singles. He was also expected to master the Paying [poing] Stroke. These additional rudiments were not unknown in the 1820s; indeed, the poing stroke has a long albeit unclear history that was clarified and taught in the American repertory at least by 1810. Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain why they are missing from the 1821 certificate. It is entirely possible that the combination rudiments could represent developments that occurred in military drumming over time, but another likely hypothesis is that Percival, learning to drum in a small Connecticut village, did not need to master everything expected from a city drummer like Thompson. It might also be speculated that he already knew them or learned them by necessity later on in his career. This latter interpretation becomes more viable when perusing the list of Beats, three of which (British Grenadiers, Hail Columbia, and American Eagle) appear on the Thompson certificate but not on Percival’s, even though two of them are readily found in the 1820 military march repertory and one of them, British Grenadiers, has long been a continuous staple in the core Ancient repertory in general and in the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps specifically.

The lists of rules on each certificate would be unremarkable were it not for the annotation Willcox inserted regarding their performance.  He labeled every rule (except the Compound Dragg Strokes) with either “hand to hand,” “change,” or “change hands,”  emphasizing the importance of playing the rudiments “hand to hand.” That is, the drummer should begin the first rudiment with the right hand but should start the second with the left, the third with the right, and so on.  Thus, in executing the string of rudiments that comprise a beat, the drummer will play hand-to-hand,  starting with the right hand and alternating with the left as the beat continues (except, according to Willcox, when playing the compound dragg and, in practice, when performing the single stroke roll).  This is the basic tenet of rudimental drumming, so important that Willcox dared not leave it out of his written instructions but so common that Beach did not bother to write it into his.

Percussionist Robin Engleman writes that this is the earliest known drumming for the Reveille [Three Camps]. George Winters, 1777, Courtesy Robin Engleman, https://robinengelman.com/category/articles/fifes-drums/page/2

Both Percival and Thompson were taught to beat Reveille in the sequence prescribed by their teachers:

Percival, 1821	Thompson, 1852
Three camps	Three Camps
roll
Hussion	Hessian
roll
French	French
roll
Double Dragg	Compound drag
roll
Single Dragg quick
6 rolls
Scotch slow	Scotch
Three rolls
Scotch quick
Three rolls
Three Camps	Revelly [Three Camps]

Of note are the rolls that define the divisions in Percival’s Reveille, which are lacking in the 1852 certificate. Percival’s reveille also features a Single Dragg played quick as well as two versions of the Scotch. Even though both drummers learned their craft in Connecticut, these differences likely represent regional rather than chronological variations, especially when one realizes that it is the Percival version of the reveille, not Thompson’s, that more closely resembles what was in the mid-19^th century air. (As an aside, the reveille was not standardized until 1869, when Strube’s Drum and Fife Instructor was officially recognized by the United States Army; even so, regional differences persisted beyond that date.)

Reenactors at Genessee Country Village (2006) dressed in uniforms of the NY State Militia, c, 1812. Their “tall hats” are called shakos.  Courtesy of the Village, http://www.1812marines.org/news-and-events/photos/2006-events/grand-tactical-2006-genessee-village-ny/

The 1820s-30’s did not offer much occasion for Percival to practice his craft. The federal army remained small following the War of 1812; however, enrollment in Connecticut’s militia companies was strong, thriving, and required. Training days, mandated by Connecticut law, were welcomed venues for the military drummer (and fifer) to demonstrate their skills:

In 1816, there was a general re-organization of the militia throughout the State, which was preserved till within a few years [of 1884]. It is within the memory of our young men that “Training Days” were great events in the history of the town, from which all other events were dated. Soldiers with their tall hats and taller plumes, dressed in showy uniforms, met in companies in the different societies in town, once a year, where they were drilled in the manual of arms-marched in sections, platoons, and by company, and dismissed after several general discharges of musketry. How the boys reverenced these famous soldiers! The greatest scalawag in town, upon these occasions, was transformed into a hero, in their eyes, as long as he wore the regimentals.

Indeed, it was in the militia that Percival’s teacher, Samuel Willcox, found opportunity to drum. He was so good at it that he was elected drum major in 1819, two years before he taught young Hezekiah.

I have yet to find Hezekiah Percival’s name listed as a member of the local militia; however, it would be an interesting but immaterial fact if it was. Regardless of where Percival practiced his craft, his unique and lasting contribution was made in what is known as “Ancient” (rudimental), not military drumming. That occurred in 1860, when he co-founded the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps. This was – and remains — significant in many ways. Moodus is not the earliest drum corps – there are several other candidates for that, most notably the long-defunct West Granby Fife and Drum Corps. However, it is the earliest drum corps to survive continuously (it is still active today) and, more importantly, it is the earliest drum corps to survive with its primary written documentation. Furthermore, its members retain a respect for the founders bordering on reverence; therefore, very little has changed over the years in the Moodus style of tempo, performance, dress, and drill. In fact, Moodus drumming is easily traced in a continuous line from the 1821 certificate right up until today, 2018.

Studio shot of the early Moodus Drum and Fife Corps sometime after acquiring their first uniforms. According to one old-timer, they marched in street clothes until they could afford to purchase uniforms. Original unlocated, copy from Author’s Collection.

The Moodus corps is in truth a sort of musical invention. The Percivals – and maybe the West Granby men – were among the very few who could envision music of the fife and drum outside their historically traditional military confines. The sheer volume of the drums coupled with the shrill, unrefined pitch of the even-hole, straight-bore fifes precluded their use as parlor instruments, but these same features made them perfect for transmitting military commands over the din of large groups of men, ordering their marching, and regulating the functions of the military camp. In fact, the general 19th century public did not regard either the fife or the snare drum as true musical instruments at all; to them, they were simply military signal instruments that belonged outdoors. And outdoors is exactly where the Moodus corps originated in 1860, at a picnic attended by Percival, his brother Orville, and a few family members and friends. However, it wasn’t until 1861, when these same participants began to gather on occasion at the local train station to provide a patriotic musical send-off to Civil War enlistees, that the concept of a marching band comprised solely of civilian fifers and drummers, unsupported by and disconnected from the military, jelled into reality. It took only a few years for the corps to become the pride of Moodus, as this confused but essentially correct memoir relates:

The band was organized in the autumn of 1864, under the tuition of the veteran drummer [Hezekiah] W. Percival. . .many changes have occurred during the 20 years existence of the corps, yet a goodly number of of the original members remain, and the leader, Mr. PERCIVAL, though he has long since laid aside the drum and sticks, finds pleasure, in his 85th summer, in listening to the practice of his boy[s].

The author of these words, who included them in a town history published in 1884, went on to say:

The style of their playing is that of the days when their teacher was in his prime, and their costume is of the old continental fashion. Their drums, too, are of the old style, and several are now more than 100 years old yet in a perfect state of preservation.

While not a perfectly accurate memory (the corps was founded before 1864, and the “several drums” would not approach 100 years of age until about 1920-25), the author did aptly describe what the Moodus corps so admirably did and continues to do today.

Percival died in 1888 but his legacy, embodied in the certificate of merit he earned in 1821, lives on not only in the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps, but also in the many other Ancient corps it inspired. His certificate of merit remains in private hands.

The course followed by Henry James H. Thompson differs markedly from Percival’s. He, too, was 20 years old when he successfully completed his course of drum instruction, but this was during the tumultuous antebellum years that would soon culminate in the War Between the States. While Percival and his musical companions were busy inventing the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps, Thompson was serving in the fife and drum corps of the 15th Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers. The letters he wrote to his wife, Lucretia, have been preserved along with many of her replies; while these don’t reveal much about Henry Thompson the drummer, they do teach us a lot about Henry Thompson the man.

A thief in the 55th Masschusetts is paraded out of camp in 1863 to the tune of The Rogue’s March. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/cwp2003001683/PP/

The letters are chatty and loving, albeit not necessarily grammatical. Thompson describes the weather, the countryside, and camp life to Lucretia; at one point she learns about the discovery and punishment of a camp thief, the musical ceremony for which her husband was well prepared. He writes of his hopes (although a strong “McClellan man,” he hoped that the election of 1864 would bring peace), and he writes of his disdain for the south (New Bern was a diseased city full of loose women), but mostly he writes of his worries, especially about the progression of the war. He was one of many who believed, in the words of historian Randall C. Jimerson, that the Civil War was a “white man’s war” fought to preserve the Union; to Thompson, slavery was an increasingly bothersome nonissue.

Thompson took a dim view of the African American soldier and worried about recruiting them for the war effort. He was certain that they would be undependable in the field, and in May 1863 he told his wife, “they are all for getting out of the way when there is a battle afoot.” His negative suppositions turned into anger as the war dragged on into the summer of 1864, when his view of slaves and slavery worsened. Every freed slave, he complained, has “cost 4 thousand dollars & 1 white mans life thus far.” He fumed that, at that rate, “we shall loose 1 million of lives” and “4 million of dollars” to free a thousand slaves and concluded his rant with a dismal estimation of “3 million [slaves] yet to free.”

His opinion of white southerners was hardly better. Jimerson notes an incident that occurred in October 1862:

After returning from a raid into eastern North Carolina, [Thompson] reported that the inhabitants ‘dont know that there side have ever fired on Fort Sumpter we asked them if they didnt read it in the papers they said they never had any. they eat with their hands they have no knives & forks.’

He continued, “I dont know what you think about such an ignorant class of people in the United States but I know what I think And I am surprised & astonished!” He further assured a possibly incredulous Lucretia that “all I have wrote is true.”

Group of freed slaves in Richmond, VA. Copied from an 1865 stereocard. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/cwp2003005762/PP/

The brutality of the war, though, was what shocked Thompson the most. This is what echoes throughout the letters they wrote and saved. Early in his enlistment he confided that, “I have seen horible sights men with their heads blowed off and legs and armes and shot through the body.” It’s little wonder that he wrote even more somber thoughts to Lucretia only two days later, “We are all tired of the war the whole army we never shall whip them.” To him, the war was nothing but “a great slaughter of lives.”

Lucretia agreed. She missed her husband terribly and several of her letters urge him to “take a long step” and “return home to comfort and protect his family.” Jimerson, though, discovered that Lucretia lured her husband with more than just her desire for protection and comfort:

In closing one letter, Lucretia added. “3000 kisses PS if you was at home the[re] would [be] something done besides sending kisses.” Henry felt the same. “I shant tell you what I dreamed last night olney I was 2 home and we was 2 bed.”

They would have to wait until the summer of 1865 for Henry to complete his three-year enlistment and lawfully head home. The reunited family lived unpretentiously in the New Haven area for many years. In 1885 Thompson was awarded a pension for his wartime services, and by 1900 his name appears on the roster of the Admiral Foote Post No. 17 in New Haven, Department of Connecticut, G.A.R. But not for long. Thompson died in 1901 at the age of 69. His certificate is preserved in the archives of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford.

Copyright January 2018, History of the Ancients Dot Org.  All rights reserved.

Book Review: Field Music Revisited, Ten Years in the Ranks and Drum Taps in Dixie

Delevan S. Miller, author of Drum Taps in Dixie (1905) Frontispiece, “A Wartime Photograph.” Author’s collection.

Although contemporary first-person accounts are preferred over memoirs when it comes to accuracy, detail, and reliability, Ten Years in the Ranks U.S. Army and Drum Taps in Dixie are two candidates for the exception to this rule.  The authors, Augustus Meyers and Delavan Miller respectively, penned their memoirs early in the twentieth century, when leaders of the Grand Army of the Republic thought it wise to preserve memories of the Civil War by encouraging veterans to publish them.  Miller, himself a G.A.R. official who had served in the New York Second Heavy Artillery, was 55 when he authored Drum Taps in 1904.  He also wrote A Drum’s Story and Other Tales (1909), a lesser-known series of anecdotes that, while interesting, lack the charm of his earlier work.  Meyers’ Civil War experiences were predated by several years of service on the western frontier, but the most fascinating part of the story he told in Ten Years (1914) is of his antebellum training at the army’s music school on Governor’s Island.  He wrote about this at age 72, some 60 years after the fact, but did so with amazing clarity nonetheless.

Augustus Meyers, author of Ten Years in the Ranks (1914).  Image taken in 1856 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Augustus_civil1 _war_02_001.jpg

The appeal of both Ten Years and Drum Taps arises from the candid recounting of what it was like for a couple of boys from New York to train for and serve in the Yankee army — not so much as fighting men but as musicians.  Because of their youth (they were just over 12 years old), both Meyers and Miller ended up in the field music.  Since fifers and drummers seldom saw actual field service (they had “nothing to shoot back with,” Drum Taps p. 83), musicians were seldom on the field, although there was the occasional “fight in which it was all “front” and no chance for the musicians to get to the rear”(Drum Taps, p. 142).  In any event, immediately upon enlisting Meyers was directed to the music school:

We reported to Sergeant Hanke, who was in charge of all the non-commissioned offices and music boys in that battery. . .Sergeant Hanke, after looking me over, asked whether I desired to be a drummer or a fifer. When I expressed a preference for the former, he made some remarks about my slim and very youthful appearance and advised me to think it over for a day or two (Ten Years, p. 1).

This proved to be sage advice:

I watched the boys practicing and noted how difficult it seemed to be for some to hold the drum-sticks properly and beat the first exercise, called “Mammy-Daddy,” without hitting the rim of the drum as often as the drum-head, which would bring down upon them a reprimand from the instructor or in some cases a rap across the knuckles of some persistently awkward boy. When I took note of the exceeding large and heavy drums used in the service at that time, which the drummers were obliged to carry, I resolved to become a fifer. . . (Ten Years, p. 6).

 

The training Meyers received utilized both note reading (he reports struggling to “understand the meaning of the notes in my music book”) as well as rote learning.  He found that Sergeant Henke

had a habit of taking a boy’s fife out of his hands and playing part of the piece for him to show him how it should be done. As he was an inveterate tobacco-chewer this was very disagreeable. Wiping the fife on the sleeve of the jacket did not remove the strong odor. In my case I used soap and water as soon as I had the opportunity to do so (Ten Years, p. 11).

accessed from http://www.nationalcivilwar brassmusic.org/GovernorsIsland.html

Otherwise, Meyers remembered his instructor fondly, “He often listened painstakingly to our complaints and forgave us for many minor transgressions,” such as when he noticed “a pipe stem protruding between the buttons of [Meyers’s] jacket” (Ten Years, pp. 11, 14).  He had no such memories, unfortunately, of Michael “Daddy” Moore, the drum instructor:

I once threw a basin full of dirty water out of a window and inadvertently dashed it over Sergeant Moore, who was passing. He saw me and immediately got his rattan and gave me a good whipping (Ten Years, p. 14).

 

Miller, too, was destined for the field music.  His enlistment in New York’s Second Heavy occurred at a pivotal time:

. . .only one company [had] got their guns and horses when it was decided that no more light batteries were wanted.  So the balance of the regiment was turned into heavy artillery (heavy infantry). This change called for fifers and drummers. . . (Drum Taps, p. 19).

Illustration of the drum corps of NY 2nd Heavy, from Drum Taps in Dixie (Author’s Collection)

Miller “was the first drummer the regiment had” and recalled with pride how his drum was “a present from the officers at Forth Worth” (Drum Taps, p. 19).

Evidently Miller was already a proficient drummer, since his first assignment, participating in dress parade, occurred the day after he received his instrument.  Not so for Meyers, however.  His first dress parade was still weeks away while he toiled with the other “music boys” at the Island in learning the basics:

I was handed a “B” fife, the kind that was used at that time, and was shown how to hold it and place my fingers over the holes and my lips over the embouchure. I found it difficult to make a sound at first, but after a time I managed to produce some noise. I struggled with the gamut for a week or more and spent another in trying to play a bar or two of music correctly. After that I got along faster and commenced to learn some of the more simple calls and to understand the meaning of the notes in my music book. . .after about two months I had made sufficient progress to take my part in playing the reveille, retreat and tattoo. After that, I learned to play marches and other pieces  (Ten Years, p. 11).

 

http://www.civil-war-journeys.org/images
/gaines_mill_photo1.JPG

Both authors recounted the particulars of their military service, which extended beyond learning and playing music.  Meyers’s 10-year career began in 1854 with his assignment to Carlisle Barracks.  This was followed by several stints at various forts on the western frontier before the outbreak of the Civil War forced his unit’s return to the east.  They were attached to the Army of the Potomac, where Meyers set aside his fife to serve in the commissary department.  He described either witnessing or participating in a number of battles including the bloody Seven Days of the Peninsula Campaign.  One instance in particular “made such an impression. . .that I had no difficulty in recognizing it many years afterward when I revisited the scene.”  We can almost feel his terror as he recalled that day.

I noticed a great cloud of dust which seemed to be approaching, and when it neared the gap I could make out that there were horses, but was not sure whether it was cavalry or artillery. . . My doubts about this were dispelled in a few minutes when I saw a sudden puff of smoke and heard the familiar sound of a shell passing over our heads.  We heard the command to lie down and obeyed it promptly. . . Each time I heard the scream of a shell coming our way, I hugged the ground so close that I broke the crystal and hands of an open-faced watch which I carried in my pocket. . . (Ten Years, pp. 228-229).

Miller’s record with the Second Heavy is less clear as he wrote in a more random, spontaneous fashion.  His story is admittedly anecdotal (“[m]emory awakened furnished material. . .each article recalling faces, forms, scenes and incidents from out of the misty past” Drum Taps, p. vi).  He remained a musician throughout his service with Grant’s army at Fredericksburg (1862), Cold Harbor (1864), and during the Petersburg siege (1864-65).  The carnage of war so clearly described by Meyers is sometimes lost, since Miller recalled soldiering as a secondary duty.  He was, first and foremost, a musician.

. . .my precious drum was put out of action by a piece of a rebel shell at Bull Run and was among the trophies gathered up by the Confederates in the stampede that followed.  Its loss I regretted exceedingly, for its equal in tone and other good qualities I never tapped the sticks to again.  It was a beauty, too, and was my first drum (Drum Taps, p. 20).

 

Card found in Author’s copy of A Drum’s Tale and Other Stories (1909).

These memoirs are important for several reasons.  The historian can rely upon them because so much of what the authors remembered is confirmed by genealogy, military records, and published chronologies.  Additionally, both the academic and amateur scholar of historic military studies, especially those interested in field music, will find an accounting of just how the fifes, drums, and those who played them related to the overall function of the mid-nineteenth century army, proving how closely the dictates of the period military manuals were followed — or not.  Using standard music bibliographies, they can prove that tunes cited by Miller, such as “Yankee Doodle,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Rory O’More,” and “The Campbells Are Coming,” remain part and parcel of the Ancient core repertory. It is perhaps these latter interests that resulted in both Drum Taps and Ten Years being reissued by modern presses long after they had been out of print.

What this writer found most important, though, is their empiricism.  The authors clearly define an additional, emotional connection to the music.  This is not something that can be easily detected, much less verified, in other historical sources, and it takes a close reading of both Drum Taps and Ten Years to discover it as an underlying theme. It is more obvious perhaps in Miller’s work — it is, in this writer’s opinion, what makes Drum Taps so charismatic.  Both Miller and Meyers internalized the music they played, making it a part of their own personal identity.  Because other fifers and drummers did the same, the field music was more than a functional military necessity; it was also a social community, binding its members together with an affinity for the music that rose above its physical nature and thereby enabled its survival long after it had been deemed old-fashioned by others.  A like assimilation occurs with Ancient fifers and drummers; maybe that is why so many remain in the community lifelong.  It also accounts for why the core repertory, although old, is never stale.  It is a bit surprising to discover, via Meyers and Miller, that this identity was not created by the Ancients but was inherited by them.

 

Souvenir pinback from G.A.R. convention held in Buffalo, NY (1892). For sale by Military Antiques and Memorabilia, September 7, 2014, http://www.milantique.com/misc%20GAR1.htm

This phenomenon might be partly explained by the power that music attains from its emotional baggage.  Briefly, “emotional baggage” is what the late music historian Arthur Schrader identified as “a nonmusical factor in our perception of songs or melodies that consciously or unconsciously affects our thinking and rhetoric about them.”[2]  Certainly Miller recognized the intensely patriotic baggage carried by the old military music when he declared, “there is nothing like martial music of the good old-fashioned kind, such as inspired the continental heroes at Lexington, Yorktown and Bunker Hill, and rallied the boys of ’61, and later led them in all the marches through the South” (Drum Taps, p. 23).  Emotional baggage is what makes parade-goers “go wild” whenever the Ancients play “Yankee Doodle” while marching up Monument Street in Boston toward the Bunker Hill Memorial on the Fourth of July, much as the old veterans did when they heard it played by a continental-styled drum corps at the 1892 G.A.R. convention (Drum Taps, p. 24)

Drum Corps Family (and Friend) at Deep River Ancient Muster, 2012. Author’s Collection.

Emotional baggage notwithstanding, there are other ways that Ancients “feel” the music just as Miller and Meyers did.  Much of this is an unconscious process that is seldom articulated, only sensed.  However, it is the reason Ancients plan weddings and vacations so as not to interfere with muster season.  It explains the communal satisfaction of playing music together, which allows for friendships to develop while new players improve their skills and more experienced players indulge in theirs.  It also explains the muster etiquette that demands, as a mark of respect, no spontaneous playing while others are “on stand” and mandates enthusiastic applause for both the experienced player and the newbie, simply because both are fellow Ancients who deserve accolades for doing what they can to perpetuate the craft.  It is why Ancients preface their signatures with the phrase, “In the Ancient Spirit.”

“My drummer was a tall, haggard man with a sallow face. I was still a few inches short of attaining five feet, and when my tall drummer and I marched at the head of the company we were called the “long and the short of it,” which greatly annoyed me. . . (Ten Years, p. 38). Apparently the old joke stuck around for many years, judging from this whimsical postcard dated 1905. Author’s Collection.

 

Meyers demonstrates this kind of feeling but with subtle understatement.  He laments that his first companion was not “a drummer-boy of about my own age, with whom I could chum” (Ten Years, p. 38).  Worse, he could hardly hope to enjoy sharing music with him since “he was not a very good drummer, and would not take the trouble to learn any new and fancy pieces” (ibid.).  Like the Ancient who suspends his-or-her own musical interests in favor of playing pieces that all can enjoy, Meyers’ drumming companion forced him to “content myself with the old repertoire” (Ten Years, p. 39).  Later, while serving on the frontier, Meyers found other ways to share music with others of like abilities, such as when he

. . . bought a flute from a member of the band, and took lessons from him. As I understood something about music and played on the fife, I made rapid progress on the flute and had become a fair player when Lieutenant Curtis asked me to come to his lonely cabin and play duets with him. He was an excellent player, and had a lot of music books. . .[and oftentimes] we played music until tattoo. . . (Ten Years, pp. 101-102).

The East Hampton Ancients, [ca. 1922?] Author’s Collection.

Meyers also encountered what would become an Ancient custom — but in reverse. He relished how, as a fifer, he called the musical shots, since “the fifer was considered to [out]rank the drummer and in the absence of special instructions could order the drummer to play such tunes or marches as he chose” (Ten Years, p. 38).  This would change in Ancient practice, as tune control was, in the absence of the drum major, relegated to the drummer, who now was considered to outrank the fifer.  So it was that the fifers remained silent while old Ed Palmer, drummer and then drum major of Connecticut’s East Hampton Ancients called the tunes, something he was overheard to do at a field day in 1946 in his inimical, “swamp Yankee” way:

Drummahs play Golden Slippahs, Fifahs play whut ye hev a mind to.[3]

 

Miller was much more ebullient than Meyers in his recollections, perhaps feeling the musical emotional connection more keenly.  His fondness for the old-fashioned military drum corps of his youth jaded his later view of anything contemporary:

 Martial music seems to have gone out of fashion in these up-to-date days, and what little there is, is but a poor apology, with the bugle blasts interjected between the rub-a-dub-dubs of the drummers who hardly know their a b c’s about snare drumming (Drum Taps, p. 23).

Perhaps what was missing was as much psychological as it was musical:

[R]ight here it may be proper to say that an old army drum corps in the sixties could make music.  A boy would not “pass muster” in those days unless he could do the double and single drag with variations, execute the “long roll,” imitate the rattle of musketry, besides various other accomplishments with the sticks.  And when a dozen or more of the lads, with their caps set saucily on the sides of their heads, led a regiment in a review with their get-out-of-the-way-Old-Dan-Tuckerish style of music, it made the men in the ranks step off as though they were bound for Donnybrook fair or some other pleasure excursion (Drum Taps, p. 19).

Miller, too, experienced a musical custom that was destined for the Ancient community:

The first two years of the war we were brigaded with a certain Massachusetts regiment…Their drum corps was a good one, too, but of course the boys of the Second New York thought they were a little better than the Bay State fellows, consequently quite a little rivalry existed between the organizations, and when the regiments were out for a review or brigade drill the stalwart drummers from down East would always try to drown out the lads of the Second Heavy (Drum Taps, p. 26).

Camp Grant, Portland [ME] G.A.R. Convention, 1885. Accessed from https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/1937/page/3186/display?use_mmn=1

What the Massachusetts men were doing became, in Ancient parlance, “bearing on.”  The purpose of bearing on was to play with enough vigor and volume to confuse the target corps until their music became disorganized, forcing them to stop.  Bearing on continued in Ancient practice until at least 1885, when one newspaper reported an incident that occurred between the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps and the Portland Regimental Band, both of whom had attended a G.A.R. event in Maine.  “The keen rivalry [that] existed between each organization” resulted in a contest from which only a skilled and enthusiastic Ancient drummer could emerge triumphant:

It was considered great sport to attempt to drown out all other opposition bands or drum corps.  The Moodus Corps were overwhelmingly victorious upon this occasion.  It appears that the Portland Regimental Band was playing before General Headquarters as the Moodus Corps arrived and marched alongside of them.  With their big powerful instruments the Moodus Corps were so dominant that the Portland Band was unable to hear themselves play.[4]

The losers did not take their “derision and defeat” lightly.  They protested with “one blast with their horns in the ears of the Moodus players” before breaking ranks.[5]

The antique drums (and drummers!) of the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps, 2009 (Author’s Collection).

The Moodus Drum and Fife Corps continue to carry the “big powerful instruments” that they did in both 1885 and 1935, when the incident was reported.  Nearly all of these, which date between 1818 and 1846, were produced by the Brown family of Bloomfield, Connecticut.  They are “square” drums; that is, their width equals or nearly equals their length, and are perfect for performing in the thunderous, slow-tempoed manner that was once common throughout New England but is now uniquely preserved by Moodus drummers.  Miller referred to this style as “chunks of pudding and pieces of pie” but attributed it to age, not region:

[The Massachusetts regimental drum corps] were all full grown men while our drum corps was made up of boys all under eighteen years of age.  Their music was always of the “When the Springtime Comes, Gentle Annie,” and “Chunks of Pudding and Pieces of Pie,” style, played in 6/8 time, just suited to the stalwart men in their ranks; while ours was more of the “Rory OMore,” “Garry Owen,” and “Get-out-of-the-way-Old-Dan-Tucker” sort, which we played 2-4 time, better adapted to the quick-stepping New Yorkers behind us (Drum Taps, p. 26).

At the time of this writing, an online search yielded no findings for Ten Years and only two copies of Drum Taps in original issue.  However, inexpensive modern reprints were located in quantity.   Drum Taps in Dixie is also available through several online book sites, including the Smithsonian (https://archive.org/details/drumtapsindixiem01mill) and The Gutenberg Project (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41608/41608-h/41608-h.htm/0, as is Ten Years in the Ranks U.S. Army (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45949 and https://archive.org/details/tenyearsinranksu00meyerich).

[1] Augustus Meyers, Ten Years in the Ranks U. S. Army.  New York:  The Stirling Press, 1914.  Hereinafter Ten Years.  Delavan S. Miller, Drum Taps in Dixie.  Watertown [NY]:  Hungerford-Holbrook Co., 1905.  Hereinafter Drum Taps.
[2]Arthur Schrader, “Emotional Baggage and Two National Anthems,” The Bulletin of the Society of American Music Founded in Honor of Oscar G.T. Sonneck.  Vol 28, No 2, Spring 2002, p.17.
[3] Edmond Palmer, “Interview with Ed Palmer,” Edward Olsen, ed.  Collected September 24, 1952.
[4] “New England Traditions Fostered by Village Drum Corps.”  New Haven Register, September 17, 1935.
[5] Ibid.

 

Copyright, History of the Ancient, 2014.  All rights reserved.