Around the turn of the 20th century, one of the most popular ragtime songs in America was a tune by Theodore Metz and Joe Hayden, “There’ll Be A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”.
The song may be best remembered as the only song the Hooterville VFW Band knew how to play – albeit badly – on GREEN ACRES and PETTICOAT JUNCTION.
It was briefly known as the fight song for two Big Ten colleges: the University of Wisconsin (where it is still performed at football games) and the University of Michigan.
The lyrics are written in a minstrel-style dialect, with typical subject matter of boy-meets-girl. The first verse has some great lines, though: ‘Come along get you ready, wear your bran, bran new gown / For dere's gwine to be a meeting in that good, good old town / Where you knowed ev'ry body, and they all knowed you / And you've got a rabbits foot to keep away the hoodoo’.
The Pride of Tallassee, under the direction of Dr. Robby Glasscock and assistant director of bands Mrs. Melanie Skeen, has been back at work for several weeks in preparation for the Reeltown game. Dr. Glasscock is in his twenty-first year as band director and Mrs. Skeen is in her tenth year of teaching, her sixth at Tallassee.
For those out of touch with what is expected of marching bands, there’s a whole lot they have to do – top priority is performing at pep rallies and football games during the fall, and having already completed a band camp for that purpose, have settled comfortably into a two-nights-a-week rehearsal schedule.
After a few weeks of football go by, the Pride of Tallassee joins other bands from around the Southeast at marching band competitions. There, the bands are judged on the quality of musical arrangements and show concepts, the maneuvering of the feet, drill design, musical effect (pitch, rhythm, attacks and releases, intonation, dynamics, and tone, among other things), and the overall execution of the program.
This is where many outside the band business do not understand the Catch 22: in order for a band to win contests, they have to perfect a single show. So, for most of the season, the band performs a variation of that same show for the Friday night football crowd. As people who were in the band from the beginning through the 1980s think to themselves, “a, ha – when I was in the band, we performed a different show every week!”
Yes, but times have changed. The students could still learn a different show every week, but it’s doubtful they could win contests because the contests are based around how much movement and how much “flash and dash” the band has.
So a band has to decide: are we a Friday night show band, a competition band, or a hybrid of both? I would say that the Pride of Tallassee and other area bands are hybrids. There are a few straight-out competition bands in Montgomery, with some even ignoring Friday night football altogether (which defeats one of the main purposes of a marching band, but I digress). There are other bands in the River Region who perform a different show every week – but they do not participate in the marching band contests.
On Tuesday, September 13, all of the bands in Elmore County will perform at the Night of Bands, held at J.E. “Hot” O’Brien Stadium. You will read more about it in upcoming issues of the Tribune, but Wetumpka, Holtville, Stanhope-Elmore, Tallassee, and Eclectic will all be performing for one another and for a panel of judges.
So, the next time you see a band, consider what they had to do to get there. Dr. Glasscock and Mrs. Skeen have developed a “flash and dash” style unique to the Pride of Tallassee, complete with an audio-visual experience that accompanies the traditional music, marching, spinning, and twirling.
And with the exception of Thursday’s game against Reeltown, the band will see you on those hot times in the old town every Friday night.
