In the ‘60s Bob Talbert was one of the top writers for The State newspaper. The following are excerpts from a column he wrote in 1963, a day or so after attending the South Carolina State Marching Band Contest.
(Dateline Camden)
“When I was in high school…playing in the band was considered something akin to making chains out of clover flowers.
If you had told me one of the most exciting and thrilling things I could experience would be a marching band contest, I would tell you to stop chewing on those poppy seeds.
But Saturday afternoon and night I had my eyes and ears opened – The South Carolina High School Marching Band Contest was held here. And my eyes and ears never had it so good.
Judges for this years contest, men of high place in the band world, tell me that the quality of marching performance and musicianship in South Carolina’s high school bands is the best in the country.”
Including me, the 1964-65 edition of the CHS marching band had 28 seniors. Certainly it was a year very special to all of us. It was special because we were seniors. It was special because of our continued successes in competitions. It was extra special because our success was accompanied by the magnificent achievements of our school’s sports programs, especially the senior-dominated football and girls’ basketball teams.
But I think most of us, when we reminiscence about that period in time, reflect back on our entire band careers. Starting with director William H. Basden’s arrival in Camden in 1958 the CHS band’s development was a crescendo. We, as students, went on quite a musical ride.
I was very fortunate to be a member of the band during Bill Basden’s first year at Camden High. He came to us from Manning High where the previous year his band won the Cherry Blossom Festival competition in Washington, DC. Not counting majorettes, there were 48 of us. I was in 6th grade. And while I’d love to think I was chosen to be in the band because I was a magnificent trumpet player, the truth was much more a case of me being the next available warm body to fill that 48th and final slot.
We weren’t very good that first year. I remember our first public performance was in the Southern 500 Race parade in Darlington. Our first competition under Mr. Basden was at the Orangeburg County Fair. Our Performance was respectable but we didn’t win, place or show. The winning band that afternoon would become our arch rivals in the years to come…The Brookland-Cayce H.S. Marching Band.
The next year (’59-’60) we were better. We returned to Orangeburg and, in our second ever competition under Mr. Basden, garnered the first place trophy. We also got our first win over B-C. The next week we competed at the Florence County Fair. Again we toppled Brookland-Cayce to take first place. A month later we marched in the State Contest, held in Greenville that year. We finished third. B-C took the state title. We were Cinderella no more. We wouldn’t be surprising anybody again who was familiar with South Carolina high school bands. Camden would be a force to be reckoned with wherever they would go in the future.
The second member of the band to come from the class of 1965 was Brian Klapman. I remember because he also was a trumpet player and was pretty good. Other classmates soon followed and by the time we were seniors we represented 40% of the band membership.
During the course of our band careers we traveled to a lot of places and represented Camden well wherever we competed. We went to band camps at Camp Socareda near Brevard, NC, Camp Parker (near Greenville, I think) and just before our senior year went to camp near Walhalla, SC.
We marched in Savannah’s St. Patrick’s Day parade three times and stayed at the old General Oglethorpe Hotel.
We traveled to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington. We stayed at the Southgate Motel in Alexandria, VA. The competition was held at Georgetown University where we practiced the day before the contest. I remember several Georgetown students asking me who the really good looking blonde in our band was. They couldn’t believe Elizabeth Goodale was only a freshman. Anyway, the Brookland-Cayce band was also there as the official South Carolina representative to the festival and won the overall competition. We won the parade competition for bands which were not the official representatives for their respective states.
I marched in five South Carolina High School State Championship band contests at Zemp Stadium (We won the Class AA title each time). I will never forget the chill I felt go up and down my spine that night in late October, 1963 while we were lined up on the goal line waiting to start our performance in the state finals. As we stood there a cheer started from the stands. It was a bit muffled at first, but quickly we recognized a very familiar sequence of words. “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar. All for Camden stand up and holler”. At that moment everyone in the world stood up and cheered for us. Or so it seemed. I can’t speak for others in the band but because of that cheer I felt an overwhelming sense of pride in representing my school, knowing that our band had tremendous support from our fellow CHS students.
Based on the judges’ scores we absolutely blew away every other band in the stadium. Previously, over a three year period, Brookland-Cayce had beaten us for the SC Grand Championship (all class) trophy by a cumulative total of three points…out of a total 900 possible points. That night we beat them by three points…out of a possible 300 points to win the overall championship. There is no way to measure how big a factor that “Two bits” cheer was in our victory. To this day I think it was big.
And then there was New Orleans.
Everything we had done in our CHS band experience, individually and as a group, was validated in New Orleans the afternoon of Sunday, February 9, 1964. Endless hours of practice, countless public performances, the elation of victories and the heartbreak of narrow defeats all led up to that day. We were in the Crescent City to vie for the title of “Greatest Band in Dixie”. We were going to go up against seventeen other bands from the south. Thirteen were also state champions.
We stayed in old army barracks outside New Orleans at Camp Leroy Johnson and had the opportunity to watch the previous year’s champion, Emma Sansom High (Gadsden, AL) practice. I clearly recall watching them as they played the theme from “Lawrence of Arabia”. They were awesome. What else would you expect from a band with about 180 members? There were sixty seven of us and it would have been easy to feel intimidated.
The next afternoon as we readied for the contest there was a calmness among our band members. No one seemed nervous. My guess is that none of us (with the possible exception of Mr. Basden) felt we had any shot of winning. We were just a little band from a little town in South Carolina going up against a whole bunch of Goliaths from elsewhere in the south.
Mr. Basden told us if we were delayed in front of the New Orleans City Hall we would be either the first, second or third place finisher that day. When we performed our precision routine for the judges I felt we did about as well as we could, but with competition like we were facing…?
They stopped us in front of City Hall. We stood there stunned, whispering among ourselves that we must have finished in the top three. Why else would they stop us? Next thing we knew, Mr. Basden and Elizabeth Goodale were raised on a lift up to the reviewing stand where they were greeted by New Orleans Mayor Schiro. Then the announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you this years’ Greatest Band in Dixie, the Camden High School Band from Camden, South Carolina.”
WOW!
We won. More than forty years later when I think back to that moment I still experience that same feeling…WOW! How special it was. How unbelievable it was. And how lucky I was to be part of it.
The New Orleans victory, of course, took place when most of us were juniors. By comparison, our senior year was a comedown. Yes, we won our fifth straight SC Class AA State Championship. But we didn’t repeat as Grand (all-class) Champions. And when we went back to New Orleans in February we came in third place. At the time we were disappointed. But there were thousands of kids who played in bands everywhere who would have gladly traded places with us.
The rivalry we had with Brookland-Cayce was extremely intense. They beat us for the SC Grand Championship three years in a row by one point (out of 300) each year. In ’63-’64 we beat them by three points. In ’64-’65 we again fell short of the big prize. That was not the way I wanted my career versus B-C to end but that’s the way it looked like it would be.
Little did I know at the time but we would march once more against them that year. It was in Columbia in the spring of 1965. We won first place in a parade competition against them. My classmates and I went out on a winning note. And we beat B-C in doing it. How sweet.
After graduation many of us continued to play music. I understand some of my classmates still perform with the community band there in Camden. Brian Klapman plays “Big Band” music with Sweet Georgia Sound in the Chattanooga area. Jerry Sheheen still rocks and rolls with former CHS band members Sandy Sanders, Earl Rush and Johnny Rowland. Two of us from the class of ’65 fufilled our military obligations playing music. Robin Hough played oboe in the U.S. Air Force. My last duty assignment was with the 76th Army Band (Worms, Germany). We were the recording band for AFN-Europe (Armed Forces Network Radio). I played trumpet and French horn.
Regardless of graduation year, each student who marched in the Camden Band under William H. Basden was equally responsible for every victory as well as every defeat. We were a team in every sense. We had a rather impressive resume. And we owed it all to Bill Basden.
We will forever hold the highest level of respect, admiration and love for him. He created a high school band program of the caliber few kids anywhere have the good fortune to be a part.
He was a remarkable man. He was a stickler for detail and fully expected each band member to do his absolute best at every practice and performance. Nothing less was acceptable.
He was a modest man, deflecting all praise for his accomplishments to his band members.
He was fun to be around, an easy going man with a warm smile for everyone he came in contact with.
He was highly respected by the citizens of Camden and his peers throughout South Carolina and the southeastern United States.
To his band members he gave the chance to belong to something very special we could forever take pride in.
We miss him.