Onward Christian Soldiers

This march was an instant hit with the band. We broke a rule about how many times we would practice a piece before we played it in public. The weekend after we got this march for the first time we played it in the Houston Opera house.

Our first bench in the cornet section were all women. These were great cornet players who had all won top honors through the years at the Southern Territory's Music Institute. These women were tireless and the quality of their playing did not diminish at all over our three hour rehearsals. Our first and second cornet sections included some great players too. One was a high school band director and several were corps officers. Our Soprano cornet player was the corps officer at Houston Temple and played the Soprano Solo "The Prayer Meeting." Our flugelhorn player was from Houston Temple and worked at the Houston Area Command.

One January rehearsal I asked the band if they had seen the SA band in the Rose Bowl parade. Most of them had seen it. I asked what they thought of the march that the band played. Our Flugelhorn player said, "I think we have the music for that." I said, "What are you talking about?" She then told me there was a bunch of music at Houston Area Command that we had never played. I couldn't believe it. The next Monday, I went to the Area Command and got the music. We had been playing old stuff. I couldn't believe nobody had told me about the new music. We went through that stack of music and switched over to all new stuff except for the timbrel music. This march was in the stack of new music. Until that point the band had never played any Festival Series music. Suddenly most of what we played was Festival Series.