The June 30th Fort Dodge Celebrates 150 Years program
The June 30th Fort Dodge Celebrates 150 Years program
June 30, 2019 This was the fourth concert of the 8 week Summer outdoor season.
The program opened with Land of Plenty, a march by C. L. Barnhouse which includes the Iowa Corn Song, the best known and most popular song for the state of Iowa.
Karl King's 1922 march Hawkeye
Fair, dedicated to H.S. Stanberry and
the Hawkeye Fair Association
of Fort Dodge was the next to be presented.
 |
Listen to the 1921 march Hawkeye Fair. |
The band followed with two movements
of Suite of Old American Dances written in 1949 by Robert Russell
Bennett.
Western One-Step and
Cake
Walk were the two movements.
The music of local composers Dave Hearn and Shadric Smith was be represented with Shari Netz of Manson singing The Old Iowa Waltz. This song was premiered by the King Band at the Folk Life Festival in Washington D.C. in 1996 on the National Mall, when Iowa celebrated its sesquicentennial.
Dan Cassady, a local area musician
and educator from Twin Lakes,
performed (accompanied by the
King Band) The Old Home Down on the Farm,
the classic trombone solo by
Fred Harlow.
|
|
The Old Home Down On the Farm |
The mining of gypsum was also very important to this region. Karl King chose to highlight one of the greatest hoaxes of the 19th century when a block of local gypsum was quarried, shipped away, and eventually carved into the shape of a prehistoric man. King’s 1926 march Cardiff Giant commemorated one of the greatest hoaxes in American history.
|
|
|
David Swenson, a local composer
from Boone conducted his 2016 River Valley Rhapsody that was inspired
by a canoe trip through the
Des Moines River Valley near Boone.
Next on the program was some music that came from King's 1914 through the 1916 season days when Karl King was the director of the Sells-Floto/Buffalo Bill Wild West Shows. There was a need for music to fit the various acts, and King wrote the three-part “Western Sketches Suite” to meet that need. King and Buffalo Bill became close friends.
|
|
Listen to Western Sketches Suite. |
Shari Netz led the audience in singing a medley of songs titled the Good Old Days Sing-Along.
|
|
of Good Old Days Sing-A-Long. |
King’s 1927 galop, The Whippet
Race, commemorates the nearly 40 years (1921-1959)
when the King Band was the featured
musical group at the Iowa State Fair.
|
|
|
The final scheduled tune was Former Conductor Reginald R. Schive’s march, The Fort Dodge Messenger, which pays tribute to the support of the local news media with events happening in this region. The trio of this unpublished march includes the Senior High school song, Up Fort Dodgers.
This concert closed in the usual way, with the playing of our National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.
July 7 Concert
Andrew Glove conducted two tunes he had arranged, Song to the Moon, and A Trombone Family reunion.
This program shows what the King Band performed on July 7, 2019.
| Today's Karl King Band | the Karl King Page | Online Photo Archive of Fort Dodge Bands |