cascade high notes
Cascade horizon band
Founded January 2003
Volume 4, number 2 march 2009
milt emerson
I was born and raised in Pasadena, California. At the age of nine I took clarinet lessons at school, in those days an after school activity at no cost. In junior high, high school and Pasadena Junior College I took Band as an elective and got to participate in the Rose Bowl parade and see the Rose Bowl football game. In college our band went on a tour of the western states in our own private train during the summer. One of our stops was a 4th of July parade and concert in the city park in Baker City, Oregon, where I was introduced to a fifteen year old girl named Georgann. We wrote to each other all my time in the service, but that’s another story.
Uncle Sam “invited” me to join the US Marine Corps in 1943. After boot camp I was assigned to the US Marine Band, with band duties during the day and playing in the officers‘ club dance orchestra in the evenings. I was shipped out to Pearl Harbor as a replacement for band members who had been there on December 7th. Duty consisted of band practice every morning and playing several times a week someplace on the island, usually in the evening. Besides clarinet, I played tenor and baritone sax in the dance band.
After bidding the USMC goodbye, I had had all the music playing I wanted and gave my clarinet and sax to the Pasadena Boys Club. Georgann and I were married. She worked as a dental assistant and I attended college to become a Civil Engineer.
Several years later my neighbor, who had a Dixieland band, had a gig to play and needed a replacement for a clarinet player who was ill. He pleaded, I gave in and it went well. To make a long story short, the clarinet player got well but the
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bass player moved away. I was talked into buying a sousaphone along with six lessons in the deal. Would you believe, I had a great time and played Dixieland tuba for ten years. We played dances at a zillion Elks Clubs in LA county, but our greatest claim to fame was when we played in the Rose Bowl as the pre-band to John Scott Trotter conducting the Pasadena Symphony on the 4th of July program.
Move ahead a few years after a couple of moves due to job changes. We are now in San Diego where I joined the 150 member San Diego Community Band playing tuba (yes, I moved it around with me). After three years I got tired of lugging it around, sold it and bought a clarinet which I played in the Community Band for another three years.
When not playing, my professional career as a Civil Engineer included primarily Water District management, City Engineer and structural design.
After leaving San Diego I didn’t do much playing until we moved to Bend in 2005 where I joined the Cascade Horizon Band.
(More pictures of Milt on Family Album pages)
