Don Lentz Interview, October 4, 1974

In June of 1973 and I taught part time last year up to July 15, 1974.

In 1937.

Immediately before I taught at Vermillion, South Dakota, prior to that I was in New York playing in orchestras.

I played with a lot of them including the New York Symphony, the Barrère Little Symphony and Radio.

No, I didn't. Emanuel Wishnow did, but I didn't. I was with the Sousa Band.

At Brookings, South Dakota.

I graduated from South Dakota State college, it's a university now. Then I went to New York and studied at Juilliard and studied with Georges Barrère, Virgil Thomson, Vladimir Bakaleinikov and other people there.

I had an orchestra up at South Dakota that won first place in the national contest and Kirkpatrick and Ernie Harrison and Don Berry, who were on the staff here judged me. Apparently there was a vacancy or opening, so they contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in coming to the University.

I came as Director of Orchestras, Director of Instrumental Music. Billy Quick had the band.

He was a fine person. Very kind and very generous person, and a good musician. I think his biggest fault he had was the fact that he was a little too kind. I know when I first came here his band got by with too much. There were no second or third parts among cornets or clarinets, nobody wanted to play second parts so he wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. He was just the finest person you had ever met.

Not as much.

He was in charge of the whole thing, but the band was ROTC at that time and he had a drill sergeant, Sergeant Ferris who was a real good drill master. Consequently the band basically did army marching routines like columns, countermarches, and things like that. That was the idea of the whole show. It was the same for every game.

It was controlled by the ROTC. I mean completely, all the way through. They had all the uniforms and they received a certain amount of commutation and I remember it was $28.60 a man at that time.

We had trouble the first full year that I had the band. I tried to do some shows and the Army didn't want anything but straight marching.

Yes, for football games. That wasn't the first year that I came because I didn't take the band until the next fall. Quick was still in charge the first year, up until in November when he had a stroke. I had to take the last two games. So, I decided to change the whole format from all military marching and go into a more diversified type of half-time show.

Well, the University is still getting commutation from the band, but there was an agreement between Chancellor Burnett and Colonel Oury, who was commandant at that time. He had been on General Pershing's staff. General Pershing was from Nebraska [Editor's note: Pershing was from Missouri, but from 1891 to 1895 he taught at the University of Nebraska]. Oury had stayed on for many years over the regular terms because of his association with the General. He was a very sympathetic man about the whole band deal but there was just a misunderstanding about whether the sergeant was going to run the band or I was. So, I went to the Chancellor and the Chancellor discussed it with Colonel Oury and decided that the band was a University's organization and the University would have jurisdiction over it, but that the military would contribute to the financial support in return for having the band play for weekly retreats in the spring.

About 1939.

He was small and a very refined and sensitive man. He was part Indian. He was a viola player and had played in the theatres a lot. When he died, Mrs. Quick gave me a great deal of his music, which is down at the University right now. It was orchestra music. When I first came here I was in charge of orchestra for about 4 or 5 years.

No, there has been a band here ever since way back in 1979. He was the 6th Director [Editor's Note: depending on who one considers to be a director of the marching band, Quick may have been the 10th director].

It had been up to the year in which I was hired. I think that I might have been the first person hired outside of the old Conservatory staff. About 45 teachers at the University School of Music (Conservatory) at that time on a commission basis. Kirkpatrick was the first person that was hired as Director of the School of Music when it was organized as a regular department in the University.

Yes, they gave private lessons in the music building which formally belonged to the Kimball Music School. The University had no jurisdiction over any of their scheduling or anything like that. Then the year that I came I think that they took in a large number of those people who were on the University staff teaching on a commission basis, and put them on the regular staff. Then they had to hire a new band and orchestra man, so I was hired to come in and take over that.

Howard Kirkpatrick. He was here just one year and then he had a stroke and Mr. Arthur Westbrook succeeded him.

He came here from Illinois Wesleyan. He was very much oriented toward the teaching phases of music education, which was just diametric to the concept that Kirkpatrick endorsed. These two policies were at odds and thing that was kind of important, was the fact that most of the staff that he had at that time were the Conservatory type teachers. In fact, all of them were. None of them were music education people. The other thing that is important is that about half of those people did not have University degrees. They had music conservatory diplomas or certificates, but there were few degrees. A lot of problems arose right at the beginning in getting some of those problems straightened out.

Yes, Mr. Westbrook changed a lot of the staff. All of those people without degrees were let out, which was about half of them.

He was very much to himself and he was a prolific letter writer. He wrote letters to everybody and he kept in good contact with all of the alumni through his letter writing.

He was a very thorough man. He had very definite ideas about everything that had to be done. He certainly followed those out, too.

Yes, that hat was kind of a characteristic of him. He always put it on and then put his hand on top to smash it down.

Billy had a stroke in about October or November. I didn't start that University at the beginning of the school year, I started about the first of October and Billy had the stroke in November and then I took over at that time. I had about 2 football games to do but I let the band do its regular military marching as planned by the ROTC Sergeant and then I took over the concert bands.

John Selleck had started a Band Day in about 1933 prior to my coming here. When I first came here I went through old newspapers and started to check on all these details and get as much as I could from John. The purpose of it was very different from our Band Day, there were very few high schools' bands in it. The stadium during those depression years apparently looked very empty without any people in it. In order to fill up some of the seats and to justify the expense of that stadium, they invited all of these bands to come into the place and just sit and watch the games. They didn't go out on the field or anything. The Burlington Railroad Band, lodge, municipal, industrial, and all kinds of bands came. There were a few high school bands. But mostly all other kinds of bands. Some of them from Iowa and Kansas. I checked the list when I first came here. At that time, when I came in 1937, the Depression was just about over, so they were starting to sell more seats, so there wasn't a need for the Band Day. They had decided to cancel it. I was new out here and didn't know any people around here, so I suggested that in order to make contact with the high schools, that we start a High School Band Day and it would take place of this other Band Day and Chancellor Burnett was very much in favor of the idea. The Athletic Department, I don't think, was completely in accord with me on the idea because it meant free seats at that time. It later proved to be a lifesaver for them and Chancellor Burnett went along. We set up a format whereas only Nebraska high school bands could come. It was a chance to visit the campus.

That was 1938.

We had 10 bands that first year and they had to pay their own expenses, but we gave them seats and we put on a little show at the half time. Of course, the first year was a bad start on account of the weather. We had a blizzard and I have pictures of the show at that time. It was not very conducive to making a big impression on the guys. The game was the last game of the year, because the ticket sales for that game was poor. They didn't want to give the seats in 1938 for the other games that had better ticket sales.

It was Oklahoma, I think.

Golly no, but I think we beat them. We did 3 or 4 times in a row about that time.

No, we didn't have any Band Day last year. Our last Band Day was in 1971.

Not a tiff, but a misunderstanding. Just to make the record clear on this thing, when we first started the Athletic Department was not 100% for it, because they were able to sell the seats, that was during the time of the Rose Bowl team. Immediately when we got back from the Rose Bowl, the large percent of the band, 26 of them in fact, went into the National Guard Band on the same day when they got back into Nebraska. The end result was, instead in a year or two very few came to the football games. I've got pictures and we showed them to the band this last Christmas in which there were probably about 200-300 people in the stands. So, at that time, the Band Day was the big deal for Nebraska. It saved the Athletic Department because on that day, even with gas rationing, people came and the stands would fill up for that one game. I remember when Potsy Clark was Director of Athletics he come over one time and said, "Can we have Band Day every game?" and I said, "No," because I knew there would have to be retrenchment later. Potsy was very sympathetic towards the band. He did everything to make it go. He'd helped me so much that I felt obligated to a large extent. I felt that if we had to cut back to one Band Day when conditions got better, that it would reflect upon the public relations between University and the band men in the state. He went to Chancellor Gustavson and Gus called me over with Potsy and I said, "I don't think it would be wise to start another Band Day." Potsy just wanted it to save the Athletic Department. Chancellor Gustavson left it up to me and he said, "I think your point is well taken that if you ever have to retrench, it will have a bad popular effect on the state." But at least we had one, George, but for many years, probably from 1941 up until right to the end of the war, the only thing that saved the Athletic Department was that Band Day, because ticket sales were very low for the other games.

3,600 all the time.

Well, the idea was that 3,600 seats in the stadium when you're selling them out cuts into the crowd quite a lot. He didn't want them on the field because he felt the band would pack the field and make it too hard for the football players. I didn't agree with him, because when you have frost and stuff like that, the field is much harder than a band walking on it.

In 1971.

We went by train and we didn't know until a few days before we went that we were going to go. It was kind of a new thing for bands to make trips like that. There had never been anything like that in Nebraska. We had a fine football team, Biff Jones was here at that time. The Athletic Department was just very lukewarm about the whole thing. Dean T.J. Thompson went to bat on that thing and was able to press it through. It was under the guise that it had to be an educational trip and in order for it to be educational, someone came up with the idea that we go down into Mexico which was close to our route and it wouldn't cost much more. So, we went into Juárez and it was very educational and a very momentous trip. The train stopped at El Paso for only a few hours and we went across into Mexico by three buses.

Oh yes, it was four days. We had the freshman football team with us which I was to chaperone on that trip.

Oh, that was a pain in the neck.

Oh terrible. All the coaches had gone out a couple weeks ahead and I had to keep those guys in line. The biggest problem was getting them back on the train after we stopped. We stopped at many points en route. We stopped at Kansas City, and all the big cities en route.

We put on a concert. We got out and played a little bit at each place.

The movie studios had set up starlets to be assigned to the band. I remember Laraine Day, who was Leo Durocher's wife. She was assigned to the band and she was a very good hostess.

Yes we did. Colonel Frankfurter was with us at that time. I remember he was an older gentleman and he marched all the way through with us. That was a long march. I remember we stayed at the New Rosslyn Hotel and another incident was kind of amusing, I told the men that on New Years Eve everyone had to be in because we had a big show tomorrow and "it's got to go." So everyone checked in at 11 o'clock. I couldn't understand why they were checking in so early. Finally right about twelve when all the sirens were going below, L. E. Gunderson, who was the comptroller of the University and Bob Devoe, one of the Regents and Regent Long, called me up from across the street and woke me up and said, "Get out and get your men." I said, "They're all in." What they had done was they had come in, but there was a railing around the 11th floor of the New Rosslyn Hotel which was about 18 inches wide. The men had brought reams of paper sacks and would fill them with water and drop them on people's heads. The police tried to stop it and they couldn't because the men had got out on this rail and the police were afraid to go there. So, I had to get them all in off the rail. They were in the hotel, they were not violating any of the rules.

No, because it was the whole band.

We took 120. The situation was very different then than it is now, George. Our physical plant we used to rehearse in the Temple Theater and the room was only about 40 feet square and up on the 3rd floor. You couldn't get that many men in there really conveniently. So, later we moved down into the first floor. It was a tough job carrying those basses up and down those 3 flights of stairs. Besides the band could not be increased too much not only because of the physical plant but also because we had few instruments.

We put a show on "Bells." We had all different types of New Years bells moving and things like that. That was the first time, I guess, from what all the papers out there said and all the sprts writers that any type of show of a moving type had been put on anyplace. We had dance steps and for some bells we did a waltz step, and we changed it instead of just picture shows and straight marching all the time.

Yes.

Those shows take quite a lot of time. To design a show it takes about 40-50 hours. There is a chart for each man. The thing that happened to us out there, the show was all designed prior to going, but the ASCAP strike went into effect at that time, so there was no music available. All the marches I had planned -- "Purple Carnival" and "Glory to the Gridiron" and such were ASCAP, even "Nebraska U", so we had no music to play, none at all.

Well, a counter organization that was set up to combat the situation (BMI) and there were a few tunes out probably two-three weeks prior to the first of the year. We got some tunes, "Ciribiribin" and things like that and some of those old popular folk tunes. I had to write all those out. We had to use tunes like, "Bells of St. Mary's" and "Hear Them Bells" and all those things.

We couldn't use the ASCAP music at all.

Harry Pecha, who was a graduate from the University. He sold the rights to the Melrose Brothers.

He had offered it to the University for a life football ticket and it was refused. In spite, he sold it to Melrose Brothers who froze it.

We used it at the University, as we had the old set of parts.

No. It was ASCAP. At the parade, I told the men not to play it. They had it all memorized. Everything was memorized and as they went by the Broadcasting stand they played it, on their own and that shows the resourcefullness of that band. I anticipated a suit from ASCAP as they had warned us against using any of their music, but there was no reaction. That was a tough parade. We were at the head of the parade right behind the sheriff's posse and we started right at 9 o'clock and finished at 12 o'clock and didn't stop for one second on the route anyplace. It was a continuous parade down Colorado Boulevard. The men alternated and kept the music going continuously.

Yes, we made that educational, too. We stopped at the Presidio at San Francisco and at Salt Lake City.

That was the first one. The war changed the fortunes of the football team. The next bowl was in 1955, which was the Orange Bowl. That was a hard trip because again we went by train, but it was a very educational trip because the men were able to see conditions through the south that they had no idea existed. All the later trips were taken by airplane, you look over and see a lot of things, but you don't go through the areas that we went through with that train. It was about a four day trip. At my retirement last June, I think there were 15 Rose Bowl men that came for that retirement from all over. They were all commenting about the value of that train ride through all of those places. We stopped at all those places and played you know.

Yes, that's right.

No.

In 1956 we didn't go. The next one was 1964 which was another Orange Bowl game.

I've been there every time except for the last one in 1973. We made the Orange Bowl in 1964, '66, '71, '72. The Cotton Bowl in '65, the Sugar Bowl in '67, and the Sun Bowl in '69.

It does and in the initial stages no one knew exactly how to proceed. Now there is kind of a format that is set up and it's very easy to follow that basic format. But in the first place, the Orange Bowl supplied no money for the band and so it all had to come out of the Athletic Department or the University as a whole which made a real tough deal. So, we went to the Orange Bowl and when we were down there we asked them if they would earmark so much of the money that went to the Big 8 to bring the bands in because they expected the bands to come. They did request that money be available for the bands. Bud Wilkinson who was Athletic Director at Oklahoma, George Cross who was a former classmate and friend of mine was President of the University and Leonard Haug, who was Director of the Band. We were able to work with the Orange Bowl people and get them to put pressure on the Big 8 to make money available to the bands.

Well, it had a built-in motivation for us that you don't get from anything else. It's just like the deal right now. Many of these bands are having trouble recruiting enough men to fill out their personnel. There is no problem like that in Nebraska. The band looks forward to the bowl games and considers them to be important events.

Yes it is. I mean all the side effects, the travel and trying to do something as well as you can do, I think that's the most important thing. The music is geared to the general public so it's not of the highest quality.

That's very difficult to do, George. The bands right after the war, say from 1946, '47, '48, when these veterans came back, were more mature, older men. They had been through the tribulations of a war. About half of them had been playing in bands, and they all knew how to march. They had been disciplined to the 'nth degree and they welcomed a chance to be in a university band or a band that was under civilian control and there was no horse play and it was strictly a business deal with the men. They really produced and enjoyed it.

1946, '47, '48. They were really outstanding bands.

They were older men, they were very mature players and most of them had the training of the Army bands.

The most important thing is that it's got to be a good musical organization. That's the thing that is being sacrificed by so many of the band directors now. The music is secondary. In the first place, from the very beginning it seemed apparently, I was at a disadvantage. My marching band experience had been very limited when I came here. I had been with the Sousa Band, but basically I had been an orchestra player. The compromises one had to make from this artistic concept to that of an athletic event, were very difficult. You had to appeal to the big mass of musically illiterate people. Consequently, the music is picked with compromise in mind. I've never used too many real popular things. I tried to use good solid musical numbers that the crowd would like and I think that's the most important thing.

I think that's the first and most important thing. In the national contest for high school bands, they use seven judges. The sound counts 1/3 of the total rating, so if you give them a second division in sound, you've killed them. Whereas the precision and marching, all the things that uninitiated public sees and reacts to is very low. So, basically the musical side has to be stressed all the time.

They have to. It has more appeal to the average public than a concert number. You have to be very careful that you don't feed them something they don't like.

Yes.

We played on tour all the time.

I was with them for just one year and one short session at Willow Grove where we did some recording.

Oh yes.

He was very proper, quiet and had nothing to do with the men at all. He was a good conductor and violinist. The year I played with the band, he had fallen off a horse. He was an avid horseman. He had fallen off the horse and had some trouble with his right arm. He couldn't use it to conduct too much. He had to use a very restricted motion. He played good things with the band, most of them were orchestral transcriptions and then numbers of his own. They were of a dated type. They were of the 1920 vintage.

He was elected to the Hall of Fame this last year.

Yes, he did.

Women formed the main nucleus of the band all during the war years. I hope no one forgets that.

We had nothing except women.

We had a few men who were classified as 4F in the draft. During those war years we had to rely on the ladies all the way through. [Editor's Note: 4F draft status meant the individual was found not acceptable for military service]

They were very smart and very quick in picking up designs. I felt that they never had quite the precision or snap that the men do and they didn't have the endurance or didn't have at the time that the men had. They march, of course, instead of marching on a plane that is parallel to the direction of movement, they march at right angles with their hips to the direction of motion.

Oh no. We had women throughout. During the war we even had to play for an ASTP program. The ASTP was established here on the campus.

That's the army training deal here on campus. They were based in Love Library. We had to play retreat every afternoon for that group. I think we had 10-12 men. They were 4F's and couldn't walk, the rest were ladies.

Every day. We even played "Taps" for them at night.

We've only used one twirler and that was the format that I followed because I felt that as you watch television today the cameras focus mostly on th girl twirlers and the band is absolutely neglected. So, I made it a set rule to have one twirler that would work in with the designs and not detract from the band at all or the musical part of it.

That's what I said before, are you going to cater to the musical part of it or are you going to cater to the entertainment part of it? I don't think that there is enough value in the band program to keep the good musicians if one stresses the entertainment part entirely.

It does set the focus on the band. You are compromising so much anyway to appeal to the crowd.

Flute.

I played clarinet first. My mother was a musician. She was a pianist and I had to play the piano when I was 4-5 years old. Then I started on the clarinet and I heard the Minneapolis Symphony play and I liked the flute.

There are certain prerequisites that you have to have as far as the lip formation and things like that. Everyone can play the drums or saxophones or something with very little problem, but the flute--if you have certain peculiarities in your lip formation, it's impossible to play it. It's not difficult other than that.

Well, the concert band, George, is basically the groundwork for your marching band. I think that's what Potsy Clark understood. He was cognizant of that fact and he even underwrote some of the concert band trips from Athletic money because he felt it was important that the concert band get out in the state. The mere fact that the people associated the two band programs, the concert band and the marching band together, we had large crowds for those concerts. We toured every year. We started touring in about 1941. The different schools in the state would pay all of our expenses, except for little minor details.

He was a small man for a football player. He had been All-American Quarterback, I guess. He had played pro football with the Detroit Lions, I think. I felt that he was a good man.

Yes, but he was not a pushover by any means at all. At least you could argue with him. If Potsy would tell you something, you were pretty sure that it was going to go through.

It's hard to estimate, George. I would say about 5,000-6,000 in the University Nebraska band.

Oh all the time. At Christmas time I have several hundred letters come in from former bandsmen. The Band Day kids, I figured that out once, I figured out about 3,600 kids per game for all those years. That comes to about 125,000.

Many of them. They are all over in industry right now. There isn't a week goes by that I'm not in contact with some of them. Nolan Summers, who was one of the masters program recipients here last year, was one of the presidents of the band. He's with American Cyanide now. They are all top executives. Nyquist is with DuPont, John Welch one of the top surgeons of the Mayo Clinic, was the first president of the band with Dick Faytinger, who was my second president of the band, is a top executive with General Electric. They are all over the country. Not only in this country, but they are all over the world. I get letters from George Eagleton from Delhi, Manila, Hong Kong, etc, at different times.

About 6 times.

Doing research on the tonal and rhythm systems of the different non-western cultures.

Yes, that was the main approach. When we were in Java and Bali, we taped maybe a thousand Gamelans at that time.

I took those tapes and analyzed them on a stroboscope to find out what the pitch frequencies were. From these, concepts of the tonal system were formed. They are very different from those of the western world. I have books published on the Hindu and Indonesian systems.

Yes, we have hopes to go back to Burma and Sumatra this winter.

Yes, I have a dozen or so publications that I have published by Carl Fischer, Whitmark, Tempo, Belwin, Boosey Hawkes, etc.

Well, yes you would have to say a lot. Basically the good bands back in the 1930s and 1940s were just as good as the bands are today. Maybe some of them better. This Lincoln High Orchestra when I first came here was an outstanding orchestra. But, there were different philosophies and different approaches. But the difference today is the fact that you've got 30 or 40 bands at the same calibre today where you had 1-2 before, which makes a lot of difference. Earlier most of these high school musicians were trained by private teachers, which is an advantage over class method of teaching which is used in all the schools today.

That's a very important thing. During my early years at Nebraska, we were so handicapped by not having many instruments like the bass horns and larger instruments because the kids don't buy them. Now every high school in the state, no matter how small it is, has a whole compliment of instruments and none of these things existed even when I came to the University. We had only two old beaten basses when I came here and they were badly dented and leaked.

We had a bass drum and two snare drums and the Army gave us 28 instruments, but they were not in good shape. Many of them were even in high pitch.

The large instruments are owned by the University. They own the drums, French horns, and euphoniums, and instruments like that. It is common in all Universities that they own those instruments, even the small Universities do that. But, the small instruments like the clarinets, flutes, and cornets, and saxophones are personal property.

I think it is much better if you don't have to do it. We've been very fortunate. I think this Bowl trip idea has been one reason why we haven't had to offer scholarships. We have a great many more people try out than we can accept. That's not the case in most schools. We are very unique in that case. I'm sure all the other Big 8 schools have scholarships. Some of these scholarship programs go back over 20 years or so. Some of these places have these good healthy scholarships.

No, the men enjoy and have pride in the organization.

I think that is most important. You've got to get your discipline through the idea of pride, that they're doing something important and that they are doing it well. Because it takes a certain pride or dedication to do something well. As far as discipline is concerned, the men are tougher on each other than I would ever be, because they want to maintain that esprit de corps. The band officers enforce it.

Oh yes, I think practically around 75% of them are former University of Nebraska bandsmen.

Yes it has. It has standardized the procedures and it's made easier for us because many of the bands use the same procedures that we do. Now, I think we not only have bandsmen out directing these bands, but we have band players out all over the United States.

Right, they belonged to the Army.

No. I remember the first concert I gave in the Coliseum with the orchestra. We'd have crowds of around 3,500-4,500. People would come in on Sunday to hear our concerts. C. K. Morris, who was in charge of Public Relations at that time, decided that it would be a good idea to record this. There were no tape recorders at the time. He made an arrangement with the telephone company who fixed it so that they could clear a line right from the Coliseum down to the radio station and the whole concert was recorded by telephone.

Yes, I mean it wasn't adequate for a large size band and the parade band had to rehearse on the mall in front of the Coliseum. I remember some of the professors were disturbed because they had classes at 5 o'clock and had to compete with a band.

They wanted to move us. We had to change, we had to try and find a place where we wouldn't interfere with anyone. Of course, the real problem didn't surface until the schedules of University classes were changed to the half hour.

Well, one of the most important things, George, is the concert bands. You haven't mentioned too much about them. We have always had a strong concert band here. I think that has been instrumental in drawing the better players from the high schools wh are really interested in the musical part of it and this phase has been very satisfying to me.

Well, I taught Ethnomusicology at the University and then taught flute out at Wesleyan this past year. This year, I'm not teaching. I retired at the end of the summer session.

Yes, I am but that's just because I don't want to give up the flute. I want to keep that going and I have some good students. Also, I'm working on a couple books and I'm working on the outlines for these now.

One of them will be the comparison of Eastern musical concepts of music as opposed to the aesthetic concept of the western world. I think that the music and the arts of the western world are suffering from not fitting into life. I think some of the eastern concepts might rejuvenate or build this up.

Yes, that one out there in that pasture just got back.

Yes, she's awfully high powered yet. She hasn't relaxed enough. I have another out there that just came back a few weeks ago.

They work the horses before the sun comes up at Ak-Sar-Ben so you get up early to see them work.

I don't know. I've had it for a very long time, I guess. Ever since I can remember.

We have about 6 or 7 horses.

We have a four month weanling colt.

I do. Velma and I have broken all of our horses up until this last year.

No, if you go slow you can do it a lot better than if you hire somebody to do it for you. I mean, if you hire someone, they often don't have the patience with them and these are high powered horses. They're racehorses.

I shoe them myself.

Always have.

Well, I'm not going to do it for anybody, but at least you know you get them shod the way you want them.

No, I think that hits the main things, George, about the band and all. One of my deepest satisfactions is that Jack Snider, a former bandsman, has taken over my position as Director of Bands.

Thank you, George, I appreciated the chance to visit with you.