“A Grand Gathering of Glorious Song”
by Richard Huggins
Page Two

"MIRACLE" SATURDAY

Tthis is the day that it all had to come together in the remaining 23 hours: Maryland with California, youth with, er, seasoned, Dry Bones with Rejoice and September Song with tears. Could it all happen equally well?

8:30 REHEARSAL

Rehearsals moved to Yarborough Auditorium for this morning and the first miracle was that people were upright after the previous night's bender of fellowship. By 8 a.m. the university had a wonderful spread of munchies set up in front of the Yarborough stage, including hot quiche and hot coffee. This worked out great; the only thing left behind was missed notes. The Little Sisters, the Angell Bisonettes and the Fallen Angells started out in separate rooms while I speed-dialed Marvelous Mary Kay Parrish to tell her the pianos were locked! Naturally she knew how to solve that problem, as she had solved countless others.

Today was the day to tackle Dry Bones and Hawaiian War Chant (HWC) and other than trying for a high F at 8:30, all went well. Gotta admit that I've always thought there was a certain elitism in (1) being able to climb up and down the huma skeleton in sequence and (2) being able to sing HWC with the animatronic tiki birds at Walt Disney World, the only known continuous performance of HWC in the western hemisphere. Only BGCers can do both!!

Dry Bones and HWC were allowed only minimal rehearsal time but in fact that's all they needed. Jim Vernon, who was assigned Dry Bones, wisely had left the striking of the bones to the current BGC members, I guess to minimize the risk of personal injury. (After all, Bruce Magers and David Cox ARE lawyers...) However, alumni DID get to be the testifiers and performed that task admirably. I personally assigned Dale Higginbotham to do HWC's "hoo ah la," his being the best "hoo ah la" I recall from my own days.

The rest of the time was largely set on two of the three "biggies" for the concert, Salvation is Created and Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, those being new additions to any of the previous gatherings. (By the way, that song and several others in the program by him testfied anew just how huge the late arranger and alum Jim Cram was to BGC music. What a talent he was, and what great stuff we undoubtedly would have seen from him through the years. Indeed he departed too early for our admittedly selfish desires.) Battle Hymn was deferred to the afternoon setup, when instrumentalists would join us.

10 A.M. MULTI-PURPOSE

At this hour some folks had free time while the Tuneclippers and the Bradley-era BGC had more rehearsals. (The clubs that had sung under Randall Bradley had been wanting to have a reunion, and when this event was announced they elected to have a reunion within a reunion, which worked out wonderfully for our purposes and, I believe, for theirs. After their special rehearsal they had a luncheon fellowship. They sang separately in the evening concert as well...more on that later.)

The Tuneclippers...well, what a group! Obviously they got some work done-- their concert segment was solid--but I do not see how. "Still crazy after all these years" would apply to the TCs. I gotta thank you guys for a job well done! Remember: this was a group that existed for only a couple of years or so.

FILM

One option at 10 a.m. was a showing of a documentary produced by Chesterfield cigarettes in the early 40's about the making of The Chesterfield Hour, a twice-nightly, 5-days-a-week live radio broadcast featuring Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Dean talked of these broadcasts often when he talked about his Waring days. I sure wish he could have seen this, and that I could have watched it with him and listened to him bring it to life.

As best we can calculate, this was made during the time that Dean Angell was in the P's, so there's some certainty that he was in the film. In fact, it was fun to show those that stayed to watch it the place in the film where David Driskill and I believe we are seeing Dean Angell.

The film is really interesting, as you see how the broadcast was put together, how the arrangers would do amazingly fast work during the morning, the P's would learn it in the afternoon, then the broadcasts at night (to two, packed live audiences). One scene almost sends chills down my back as we see in one room Fred Waring and his famous arrangers: Harry Simeone, Roy Ringwald and Hawley Ades. These four men left an imprint on American choral music that is indelible.

After seeing the film, some fellowshipped, some visited Ford 3 (some for the first time since college) and some visited Dean Angell's gravesite. Lunch was either on-your-own or with a reunioning class. Setup was to be at 1:30