I read recently that Western Carolina University’s Pride of the Mountains marching band was named number 2 in the nation by USA Today. I was both pleased and surprised. Pleased that I had a connection, no matter how distant, with an organization that was recognized as being one of the very best. Surprised because it seemed so unlikely that this school, stuck in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains and not much else could do that.

I marched with the band nearly 70 years ago. That and the campus newspaper were my tribe since I wasn’t terribly social. Seeing the article brough back a flood of really dusty memories.

I was, for instance, the only soloist I know whose director felt called upon to apologize for him after a solo. Our swing band (also known as a stage band) was on a tour. We were in the middle of a number where the tenor sax had a solo (that was me!), and I stood up and found that I was completely lost. Aaron Hyatt, our director, tried to explain to the audience that I was a long way away from the drums and couldn’t hear them well. The truth was I had no idea where I was in the song.

We marched in the rain, in the mud, in the heat, and wherever else we could get invited. It was wonderful.

There have been a lot of changes in the intervening 70 years. One is that it was the Western Carolina College marching band, rather than Western Carolina University. The change was made for political rather than academic reasons.

Another is that when I was marching and getting mud all over the white spats I had spent hours cleaning, we had 48 members. Now it’s about 10 times that. The Pride of the Mountains is also known as the World’s Largest Funk Band.

When we toured, we went to Sylva, Franklin, Dillard, and the like. This new version has marched in both the Macy’s Parade and the Rose Bowl. Their world is much larger than ours was.

I recognize from this distant vantage point that there was a sort of weird nerdiness about the band (which may be true of most bands). I can’t remember any of our band members who belonged to a Greek organization. We did have a flute player who was homecoming queen one year, but that surprised us. We just weren’t as social as some groups.

And we had our own set of football cheers. The one that I remember was our impassioned plea for defense. It went Impede them/Impede them/Please get in their way, accompanied by the percussion section in waltz time. Obviously, our cheering wasn’t all that effective; in the four years I was there, our cumulative record was 16-20-4.

There are a couple of areas, however, I won’t concede that new version beats the old one. One is the quality of the student musicians. A few of them would hold their own against any competition. There was, for instance, Ray Hainey. Ray was a little older than most of us. After high school he’d spend several years gigging around Washington, DC. He was a fine trumpet player.

The two directors we had when I was there—Aaron Hyatt and Richard Trevarthan—were both fine musicians and dedicated teachers (although I still blame Mr. Trevarthan for my rocky freshman year. I had never been to college, and he had never been a student advisor. We made a perfect puddle of ignorance. I found myself signed up for six music courses, Chemistry, and Orientation.)

However, the one who really stands out in my memory is Grace Hedwig West, better known as Hedy. She would have been a phenom in anybody’s music department.  I took piano from her for a quarter before the music department collectively decided that trying to make a musician out of me was a waste of time. She was, however, patient and tried very hard.

During her professional career, she performed as piano soloist with symphonies, played flute and piccolo in other orchestras, and played guitar, banjo, and fiddle on folk dates. She composed an impressive catalog of folk songs, the most famous being “500 Miles.” It was recorded by pretty much every well-known folk singer or group of the time, including Peter, Paul, and Mary; The Kingston Trio; The Journeymen; The Highwaymen; Elvis Presley; Reba McEntire; Sonny and Cher; and Justin Timberlake. It was a number one hit for Bobby Bare in 1963 and in France for Richard Anthony in 1962. Her career spanned about four decades in the United States, England, and Germany until she decided to retire and spend the rest of her life tending her garden.

Our tiny band of blowers weren’t, I suppose, the pride of anything, but it was an opportunity to associate with people like Hedy and Ray and a bunch of others who got some joy from making music and tried to provide others with a similar joy.

Congratulations to the WCU band. May they continue to fill the mountain air with song.