Annual concert slated for Sunday
The Peabody Community Band will present its second annual concert in Santa Fe Park at 7 p.m. Sunday. The concert will follow the Farmer's Market dinner.
More than 40 area musicians will entertain with a variety of marches, show tunes, classics, and novelty pieces.
It has been many years since Peabody had a city band. The dozens of cornet bands and military bands of Peabody's first 50 years were replaced by high school bands when, following World War I, the government donated hundreds of instruments to the public schools.
Gwen Gaines and Ross Baker remember a band in the 1930s and '40s called the Rube Band. It was made up of businessmen and whomever they could convince to join them. They wore funny hats, horizontally striped socks, and rubber noses. They marched in parades throughout the county. Among those who played in the Rube Band were Paul Baker, Dave Sterling, and Ora Moffett.
Gaines and Baker also remember that for several years in the early '40s the high school band, directed by Merle Waters, was expected to perform on a flat-bed wagon in downtown Peabody every Saturday night from 7 to 9 p.m.
Peabody has had a reputation for great high school bands during the past 60 years, and many members of the Peabody Community Band, who will entertain Sunday evening, performed with those bands.
Bring your lawn chairs Sunday evening and enjoy music and homemade ice cream in Santa Fe Park.
