(Author’s note: Neely’s memoirs are in italics.)
I discovered it! I was sitting on the curb one Saturday morning on the street in the small town of Lyons, Nebraska. I was 10 years old and in the fourth grade. My dad told me before he left for his barbershop that Mr. Bietrick, a tuba player in the Kaiser’s army in World War I and now the director of the Lyons High School music program, had something for me. Mr. Bietrick put a brand-new black leather case in my hands. Inside sitting on blue velvet was a shiny new silver Conn 22 trumpet.
“Harold, this is from your mom and dad. Treat it with the same love and care they have for you.”
He showed me how to hold it, how to pucker up and blow. It was my very first trumpet lesson. Donna Sandborn, who lived next door and was a grade ahead of me, came out to sit beside me and Jack Loppnow, my classmate came from across the street, joined us to see what we were doing. I couldn’t believe it. My own brand-new trumpet! I took it out of the case and was able to play a few notes.
The Neelys were a musical family. My dad was always whistling. Mother sang in the church choir. Howard, six years older, played clarinet and my brother Sam alto horn and later French horn in the school band and orchestra. I had been trying to play Sam’s alto horn (same type of mouth piece as a trumpet but slightly larger).
Lyons High, a Class C school, always had an award-winning band. The Lyons town band was one of the best town bands in the state and in the summer played Sunday night concerts in the beautiful Lyons Park band shell. Wednesday nights the stores were open, and Mr. Munson, the town marshal, rolled out the band shell onto Main Street, and we played a concert. As I said, Lyons, Nebraska, was a good music and football town.
Lyons had a proud musical heritage which started with Boyd Sentner, clarinetist of world repute at the turn of the century. In the 1930s Lyons High School graduates Stan Fritz, trombone, and Harry Turene, clarinet, carried on the tradition playing with the Schnicklefritz comedy band. They broke off and formed their own Corn Cobblers Band which was for many years featured in the famous Jack Dempsey Saloon in the Brill Building on Manhattan’s Broadway. The Brill Building housed, then and today, more music people and firms than any other building in the world. I had my New York office there for several years in the 1970s. In 1941 through 1946 Hal Neely’s Band of the Stars carried on in the big band tradition by playing Hollywood film star parties, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bel-Air Hotel, beach clubs, and other southern Californian special functions. But that’s getting ahead of my story.
In 1938 I formed my first 10-piece band with all Lyons kids in the summer before my junior year in high school. We started playing local area school dances, small country dance halls, grange halls. Wherever, whenever and whatever for a few dollars if or when we could. We spent it on gas, eats, and old standard big dance band music orchestrations I ordered out of Omaha. I was the leader, Hal and Art Anderson, trumpets; Jack Loppnow, trombone; Dick Shumway, Keith Payne, Helen Jean Stiles, saxophone; Mary Belle Stone, piano and violin; and Bob Sentner, bass.
Lyons had two piano teachers. Mrs. Moseman was a friend of my mother’s and tried to teach me—for free—the rudiments of piano. It was a good foundation for my later musical skills.
Mr. Kenneth Pace, Lyons High School musical director, encouraged us. We did not have a piano at our house, so we practiced when and where we could—school, the Lyons City Hall, in decent weather in Lyons Park band shell or in the American Legion’s dance hall. The whole town helped us. We had a ball and developed quite a kid following where ever we played. All of us were in the class of 1939, except from time to time other Lyons kids filled in and played with us. All of us played in the Lyons High band and orchestra.
We had fun. I was learning my future career. But, it was clear to me by this time that I wanted and intended to make my career in music. My hope and goal was to become a professional trumpet player and eventually become a leader of my own band.
In my 1938-39 senior year in high school I drove my dad’s Ford to Omaha to audition for trumpet lessons from the famed trumpet teacher Fred Elias, who discovered and developed a revolutionary low-pressure system for brass horn players. Mr. Elias had very few students, and he took me on for a lesson every two weeks. I would drive or hitchhike. My not playing on the basketball team my senior year didn’t set well with some people, but my family was all for it “if that is what I wanted.” Mr. Elias taught three national “superior” high school trumpet players, his daughter Evelyn Elias in 1937, Neal Hefi, who gained fame with the Stan Keaton band, in 1938, and Hal Neely in 1939.
To gain personal experience as a band leader, it was evident that I needed better and more experienced players. The other kids understood since after graduation some or even most were going to college or had other plans the next summer. Now 17, I’d reorganized the band with young players from nearby towns. Joe Casey, tenor sax; Dayton St. Claire, drum; Dale Keister, trombone from West Point. From nearby Pilcher, a bass player Ronnie Garrett. Dale Muzack, sax/clarinet, from Decatur, played with us until he joined a band in Omaha. It was a better-than-good 10-piece young big band.
We soon earned fame, popularity, a reputation and a loyal fan following. School kids in the entire state started calling us their own. We now made enough money per job to pay our gas expenses and split a few bucks each playing local area ballrooms, dance halls, and high school dances. We traveled in three cars. Joe Casey had a car, and my brother Sam drove my dad’s Ford V-8 sedan. I purchased a 1932 Ford V-8 coupe with a rumble seat for $210. It was my first bank loan. We would rendezvous for travel to our bookings in West Point or Lyons. Sam drove dad’s car and acted as our agent/bookkeeper counting the house and collecting our money, paying the guys their share each night.
It was a professional band system. Each guy in the band had a setup and breakdown job, except the drummer who had enough to do just setting up his own equipment (same in all bands). Each guy would do a job: setting up/taking down the stands, hooking up the lights, setting up the amps and speakers, putting the libraries/arrangement books (each arrangement carried a number not a song title) on each stand.
Standard procedure for big dance bands was to play a set of three songs. The leader would call the arrangement numbers and order of play sequence. We followed procedure.
In those late 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, Nebraska was in a depression and “no crop” drought. For adults, dances provided their favorite, and affordable, entertainment. Most everyone had an old car. Gas was 18 cents a gallon. Movies were a quarter, Coke a nickel, hamburgers 10 cents. Dance halls, at one buck per couple, were the favorite night out. They danced at least four nights per week in some good dance hall or ballroom within 40 miles of their hometowns in Nebraska, Iowa, South and North Dakota, Northern Kansas, Southwest Missouri and Western Illinois. This area was known to all bands and booking agents as the “Territory.”
We got our big break July 4, 1939. We were booked into the West Point Ballroom, the best, largest, most popular ballroom in North East Nebraska. It was the ballroom where all the best “Territory” and touring name bands played. We hit it big! From then on the bookings came. Our price went up. But summer ended, and we split up.
In the fall of 1939, five of us took jobs with the Bob Calame Band out of Omaha. Bob wrote “Bubbles in the Wine” which was Lawrence Welk’s theme song. He quit Welk and formed his own nine-piece band with his wife Jan as vocalist. Bob wrote all the arrangements in his own style. He, Jan and the seven guys in the band came to Lyons and stayed in the small Lyons Hotel. My mom cooked breakfast and supper each day with the help of several neighbors and packed a “go” lunch for us. The American Legion allowed us to use its dance hall for day and night practices. The townspeople came by to listen to the rehearsals. In two weeks we were ready. We were a good “Territory” band. Bob and his wife drove in his new four-door Ford sedan. His dad was a “wheel” with Union Pacific Railroad in Council Bluffs and found a good used panel truck which he converted into a van with front and back seats to accommodate four musicians. It also had racks in the back for our gear, uniforms and one small suitcase per musician. Four of us(Dayton St. Claire, Ronnie Garrett, Dale Keister and me) drove in the small converted van with the instruments. The Vic Schroeder Agency out of Omaha booked the band.
We worked a full schedule playing one-nighters and several week engagements in clubs, mostly in northeastern Nebraska, the Dakotas and western Iowa. We got a break and were booked into a club in Fargo, North Dakota. They loved us. We got some good reviews in the trade papers. Our price and booking went up. We worked steadily.
For the Christmas season, we were booked for four dates in western Nebraska–Minden, North Platte, Grand Island, Scottsbluff—and one in Laramie, Wyoming, when a job opened up through Bob’s dad with the Union Pacific Railroad in Council Bluffs, Iowa. After years on the road he and his wife were ready to settle down and play only local dates, buy a home and start a family. The Schroeder Agency said I should take over as leader of the band for the remaining dates. I hired an old friend, Jeep Harnett, to replace Bob on lead alto sax. We did okay, but it was soon evident that I was still not experienced enough to be a “leader on the circuit.” The rest of the Caleme dates were cancelled, and we all returned home to look for new jobs. Bob and I stayed in touch for many years. Nice man.
I was home in Lyons when I got a call from a Mr. Hall who was the booker/manager of Sammy Haven’s 10-piece band based in Columbus, Nebraska. They were desperate for a new lead trumpet player. He made me a deal. The next day my mom drove me to Columbus and then went on to Ogalla where she had family. Haven was a string bass player and a young guy singer fronted the band. He had a new sleeper bus. Mr. Hall’s son was our driver.
My dad knew Lawrence Welk, who was a baseball fan, for many years. He told Mr. Welk about me and my ambitions. Mr. Welk had gained national acclaim and popularity and was now a “name band.” He was playing a series of one-nighters in Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota. I graduated from high school on Thursday night and joined Lawrence Welk’s band Friday morning on tour. Mr. Welk would introduce me each night.
“This young man from Lyons, Nebraska, is the current high school national champion trumpet soloist.”
I would do my thing! I asked Mr. Welk if I could sit in with the band and played third trumpet.
“Okay.”
The band finished its Midwest tour and was on the way to Los Angeles for a long engagement. Because of this stint with a professional band I received a membership card in the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Mr. Welk asked me if I wanted to join the band as a regular member. I had to decline. My reason was because my brother Sam had a crippled left arm and had joined the Civilian Conservation Corps created by President Roosevelt to give employment to thousands of unemployed young men. Sam was sent to Montana. He was not a happy camper. Sam’s only ambition was to go to Wayne State College where he had a lot of friends. He wanted to study accounting. But, problems intervened. There was no Neely money for him. My dad was a barber and mom was sick in bed quite a bit during this time. Mr. Welk understood my problem.
“What’s your life’s ambition?” Mr. Welk asked me.
“I want to be a big-band leader like you,” I replied.
“Good for you. I suggest you work in as many bands as you can, learn your horn and gain experience. When you think you are ready, get in touch with me and I’ll try to help you. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“I suggest, if anyone asks, change the subject.”
A lie was never in Lawrence Welk’s vocabulary. And all my career no one ever asked my age, as I always passed as much older. Mr. Welk told me to play in as many bands as I could, learn my horn and the band business and to stay in touch. When the “opportune time” came he would “help me”. He became my inspiration and mentor.