Harmon’s Histories: Missoulians applaud band music since earliest days

By Jim Harmon

Missoulians have always loved music, especially band music. Within a few years of the city’s establishment, the Missoula Coronet Band was formed.

The band, wrote the local paper, was “progressing finely, under the instruction of the efficient teacher, Professor A.B. Charpie."

“Additional instruments have been ordered, increasing the number to nine, and others will perhaps be added during the fall. Not withstanding the arduous labor connected with it, the interest is kept up and the band will be a success.”

The editor of the Weekly Missoulian, however, was decidedly not a fan.

In the May 28, 1874 edition of the paper, he declared: “The brass band, we judge, has followed after the many enterprises of the kind heretofore originated – plenty of wind to spare, but no money! Cayuses are cheap in comparison with horns.”

While professing to have wanted the band, he then reveled in the difficulty boosters were having in raising funds, and expressed his past experiences with well-meaning but inept musicians.

“There is nothing under the broad and round canopy of the heavens calculated to awaken the worst attributes of sinful human nature, and to make a man talk back to his widowed grandmother, than the remorseless grinding of those brazen, serpentine, long winded, coronets, altos, baritones, and a thousand other outfits of the same ilk.”

By the fall of 1874, however, the band was “gaining rapidly in proficiency.” The press became more supportive, including this review: “We expect soon to have a band that will be highly creditable to our town and the persevering gentlemen who comprise this horn-blowing association.”

Flash forward 50 years, Missoula had a total of six bands: Missoula City Band, Missoula high school band, Daily Missoulian band, State University Grizzly band, Masonic band, and the Boy Scout band!

All of them gave great performances and were extremely popular.

On July 1, 1925, “hundreds attended the concert given by the Missoula City Band at the West Side Park and enjoyed the program presented by Director Lawrenson and his players. Refreshments in the form of ice cream were served by the ladies, the proceeds to be applied to the fund for the improvement of the park.”

On February 23, 1925, the Old Reliable Missoulian-Sentinel Silver Coronet and Concert band made its first public appearance in the Garden City.

The newspapers organized their band “to add to the gaiety of life in our much beloved city of Missoula and to strengthen the bond of good fellowship and loyalty that prevails in the Missoulian office.”

“A liberal portion of concert receipts will go to the fund to restore the little victims of the infantile paralysis plague."

Meantime, on campus, “Albert H. Hoelscher of Davenport, Iowa,” it was announced, “will direct the State University band this year.”

The Missoula Boy Scout Band, organized at Seeley Lake in the summer of 1924, was revived in September 1925, making its debut at courthouse square, to a “hearty welcome by hundreds of citizens who gathered to hear the concert.”

The Scout band was short-lived, though. By December 1925, the local press was reporting rumors “that the organization had been disbanded.” Though some scout leaders disputed the rumors, the fact is the band made no further public appearances.

The Missoula High School band opened its ranks to any former member of the Boy Scout band, but few joined.

Only the Masonic Band seemed to be doing well. Three hundred persons attended the Masonic picnic in July at Milltown’s Riverside Park, at which the band played.

One hundred years later, high school and university bands are still extremely popular in Missoula and throughout Montana.

As for the City Band? It’s still as popular as ever. Gary Gillette is busy, as we speak, arranging 2025’s summer concerts in the park (7:30 p.m. every Wednesday, Bonner Park, Missoula).

Jim Harmon is a longtime Missoula news broadcaster, now retired, who writes a weekly history column for Missoula Current. You can contact Jim at fuzzyfossil187@gmail.com. His best-selling book, “The Sneakin’est Man That Ever Was,” a collection of 46 vignettes of Western Montana history, is available at harmonshistories.com.