By Jack Weber

The legendary Alliance City Band will come to life in a special celebration on July 4.

As part of Alliance’s America 250 festivities, a “living history” concert will be performed inside Silver Park on Independence Day at 8 p.m., prior to the city’s annual fireworks display.

Presented by the Alliance Historical Society, Alliance Parks Department, and American Musical Productions, the concert will reenact a performance by the band from July 4, 1926, when Alliance was marking 150 years of freedom.

Joseph N. Rubin, a musicologist with American Musical Productions, will direct a period-authentic 26-piece wind band, attired in period uniform, in a 75-minute free concert based on a recently discovered program from that 1926 performance, which was held in Miller Pavilion with the audience sitting on the hillside.

Ahead of that concert, Rubin will present “Programming the Past: An Alliance City Band Encore” on Wednesday, July 1 at 11 a.m. at Rodman Public Library.

Registration is required to attend at rodmanlibrary.com.

During his library talk, Rubin will take the audience on a musical multimedia journey through his efforts to uncover and recreate turn-of-the-century band concert programs. Featuring video clips from his “living history” concerts throughout the state, he will detail newly discovered facts about the Alliance City Band and its longtime director Emil Rinkendorf.

The deep dive into Alliance’s musical past is a perfect prelude to the July 4 concert when Rubin, a Canton native now living in New York City, will portray Rinkendorf, who guided the Alliance City Band between 1917 and 1940.

It was during Rinkendorf’s tenure that the band, which provided music for the community from 1859 through 1992, was in its “golden era.”

The July 4 concert will feature many beloved band classics as well as a march written by Rinkendorf.

[Pictured above: Joseph Rubin and the American Musical Productions band]

By Ralph Holibaugh

By accident of birth, I had the great good fortune to have had more wonderful experiences in Alliance than I can count. The late Tommy Sudeck, my friend since childhood, referred frequently to our boyhood years in the 1950s as ‘The Golden Age of Alliance.’ The Alliance City Band was part of many of those experiences and had a huge role in my subsequent development and career choices in music performance, music education, musicology, and music librarianship. In previous blogs I’ve attempted to fill in some of the ‘backstories’ of ACB histories provided by Graydon “Gray” Ellis, Paul Hobe, and others.

Here is one further ACB story, my personal one.

On August 7, 1957, I performed Herbert L. Clarke’s trumpet arrangement of “The Carnival of Venice” with the ACB at the Molly Stark Hospital just outside Alliance. Performing its 20 variations on the old Italian melody was a technical tour de force with each variation highlighting a different aspect of the instrument’s characteristics.

Challenging, indeed, for a 15-year-old trumpeter.

Playing that piece successfully was a turning point in my life and confirmed a lifelong fascination and enthusiasm with the myriad aspects of music.

The years I had studied with Mr. Best using his favorite teaching tool, the thick and systematic Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet, had prepared me well for the performance. It followed the path already trod by Clyde Hunt, Ralph and Eldon Kropf, and many others. I’ve reflected on that ‘57 performance often and thought about the opportunities and nurturing the ACB represented then and the enrichment it could bring to young musicians.

Gavin Holman, an English cornet player, musicologist, and computer scientist has compiled hundreds of studies from around the world that document the significance of bands in supporting and promoting democratic ideals. With Holman’s work and my personal experience with the Alliance City Band in mind, I offer the following July 4th, 2026 wish:

HAPPY CELEBRATIONS
TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
TO THE ALLIANCE CITY BAND &
TO THE ALLIANCE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

Best wishes for future support of AHS, Karen Perone, Michelle Dillon and the AHS staff of volunteers as they preserve, protect, and promote the past material and artistic culture and heritage of Alliance, Ohio as an investment in the future.

[Pictured above: Alliance City Band, 1958. Ralph is pictured in the third row, third from the left, just in front of the sousaphone.]

By Paul Hobe

After twenty-three years under the direction of Emil Rinkendorf at least ten other men put their imprint on the band. For brevity, their names are Stump, Best, O’Donnell, Yagello, Kropf, Chick, Nash, Synnesvedt, Slimak and Shaffer.

The band survived the Second World War and continued being very active during the next two decades. The band still leads the parade or provides music for Memorial Day. Venues for outdoor concerts include Elks Flag Day, Molly Stark Hospital, and Copeland Oaks. Parades include Halloween parade in Alliance, Sebring Fireman’s parade, Minerva Homecoming and of course the Memorial and the Carnation Day Parades. The Music Performance Trust Fund still supports several of the concerts. Sometimes a winter or Christmas concert is scheduled. Members sported new wool uniforms with navy blue coats and gold pants in 1950. They are very warm for summer concerts in the sun on the cement pad band site at Silver Park.

1972 brought many changes for the band including new red blazers suitable for outdoor and indoor performances graced the musicians. In that year John Shaffer, director of bands at Minerva High School, became director of the City Band. He instituted a “contract band” in which each scheduled concert consists of one two-hour rehearsal and then the concert. All musicians are compensated financially at the prevailing union rate and supported through the Music Performance Trust Fund of the Alliance Local 68 of the American Federation of Musicians. I still remember the ring of trophies around the walls of the Minerva high School band room earned by the band under Shaffer’s direction. By this time females were part of the band.

Activities still include the Memorial Day parade and Carnation parade until about 1977. At that time the City Band becomes exclusively a concert band then plays at the cemetery for Memorial Day and a series of concerts at Silver Park. Alliance Federal Savings and Loan sponsored one concert in 1976. The new band shell at Silver Park was dedicated in 1979. For this a 40-piece band and 40-voice chorus came together to perform “John Marshall – Chief Justice” composed by Paul Whear, formerly of Mount Union college. Eleven supporters including the MPTF support the concert. In 1983, The Review writes that the “Carnation City Band” plays for Memorial Day at the cemetery. This name for the City Band can be confused with the “Carnation City Jazz Band” which becomes active and plays a different musical style.

Seven or more concerts were played almost every year from 1973 through 1982. Several concerts are recorded during this period and are available at Rodman Public Library in Alliance. 1983 shows two concerts, then for 1984 only one “due to lack of funds” on the schedule sent to band members. The Alliance City Band played their last and only summer concert at Silver Park on July 28, 1985. The band continued to play for the Memorial Day activities at the city cemetery until 1988. The band played “You’re a Grand Old Flag” for the massing of the colors and accompanied the audience in singing “God Bless America” and the “Star Spangled Banner.” Fittingly, the Alliance City Band, pretty much in existence since 1859, performed the National Anthem as its last piece on Memorial Day May 30, 1988.

In 1992, the Alliance City Band officially ceased to exist. Since about 1970 the band had built up the Alliance City Band Endowment Fund. That fund, amounting to just over $10,000, was transferred to the Alliance Symphony Association to assist needy students in their musical education.

So, what happened? The MPTF’s revenue was tied to record sales; as vinyl LP sales declined, so did contributions to the trust fund. Available funds declined 20 percent from 1987 until 1989. With dwindling funding from the MPTF and no major community supporters the band could no longer remain as an organization.

In 2011, I was realizing that the band had a very impactful history in Alliance and that its history should be consolidated in some fashion. With the assistance of Karen Perone, Sue Grove, and long-time member Ron Beutler I researched and wrote “A Band of Music, the Alliance City Band Story, 1959-1992.” For those interested it is available at ibew.org.uk. Several CDs are available at Rodman Pubic Library. The recordings were made during the Shaffer era. Frank Trunzo, piccolo player, who had marched in 45 Memorial Day parades thought that the band under John Shaffer was the best since the days of Emil Rinkendorf.

[Pictured above: 1972 photo with the band in their red jackets on the concert cement slab at Silver Park]

By Ralph Holibaugh

This now-famous quote from First Lady Abigail Adams applies to a more complete history of the Alliance City Band. Much has been written about the history of the band, as well as some of its individual members since its inception in 1859, two years prior to Abraham Lincoln’s rail trip through Alliance on the way to his first inauguration as U.S. President. However, one aspect of the band’s history needs more research and detailing: the participation of women within its ranks.

To begin filling in this historical gap, these are the names of women found in issues of The Alliance Review and in other online and print sources. The preferred names of women are listed here. Some also had family members in the ACB.

• Adams, Kathy
• Aberegg, Eleanor
• Bagley Phillips, Kay
• Barzda, Sue
• Bird, Grace
• Crawford, Marcy
• Gibson, Linda
• Krueger, Kim
• Kumbera, Diane
• Lamb, Bonnie
• Markovich, Rosemarie
• Morrow, Mary Jane
• Neidlinger, Nancy
• Perry, Cindy
• Reckner, Marilyn
• Robertson, Deanna
• Shanholtzer, Cathlene
• Trout, Marcia
• Wadsworth, Carol

This short, incomplete listing reflects the omission of ACB women in media coverage of the time, as well recognition of their contributions to the band.

Kathy Adams, perhaps the first woman in ACB, offers a revealing account. Around 1967, she was invited to play with the band. She said she “didn’t quietly slip into the last rank of the clarinet section.” She saw her friends John Gates (1st chair) and Zane Zigler and sat in between them. She says, “It’s interesting now to realize what a special experience I was having.” Women were voted in at the August 19, 1969 band meeting. It’s difficult to imagine a time when the August 20, 1969 issue of The Review ran the headline, “Women Will Be Welcome In City Band,” and reported, “The acceptance of women as players will make (sic) an innovation.”

The brevity of this initial report makes clear the need for research into all aspects of this important field of inquiry. If any readers have information about women who were members of the ACB, please contact the Alliance Historical Society.

Doing so will permit the historical record of the ACB to be more comprehensive and to “Remember the Ladies.”

[Pictured above: Kathy Adams with her clarinet in the Marlington High School Band, 1970]

By Paul Hobe

From the antislavery movement through to Carnation City Festival activities the Alliance City Band was willing and able to provide excellent music and entertainment for the greater Alliance area whenever it was needed or desired. The Alliance City Band was called upon to provide band music for various patriotic and political events in addition to the traditional Memorial Day – even as early as the 1870s—and Fourth of July events. In 1872 the Alliance Silver Cornet Band was one of the “bands of music” at various corners at a Grant Rally. It is likely that the band represents Alliance as one of sixteen bands present for a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic in Canton in 1880.

It could be counted on to help send off or welcome home Company K and other troops involved in the Spanish-American War or the First World War. The City Band is perhaps the one that represented Alliance as one of sixteen bands present at the preceding reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic in Canton in 1880.  During the late 1950s the band would provide a concert for Flag Day events held on the Alliance Elks (Glamorgan) lawn. In 1902 and 1908 (Youngstown) they played at a Republican meeting then in 1910 at a Democratic convention. A photo from November 12, 1916 shows the band at the laying of the cornerstone for the new Alliance post office. In May 1919 the band played a march, “Welcome Home Our Heros,” composed by Rinkendorf. In 1919 it led the civic division of the funeral parade for Col. Charles C. Weybrecht.

Besides asking the community for support, the musicians were willing to support the business community as well.  It led a parade of farm mowers in 1872. During the Mannerchor era the band was often found giving concerts downtown at public Square on Saturday nights. The stores would have their windows all lit up for passersby to observe their wares. The Mannerchor played a parade and concert at “Clerks Day” at Silver Lake. In 1906 they were featured at a real estate auction as mentioned in a Liberty Heights ad.

The Depression provided the band several opportunities to add to the economic recovery such as being included in a parade that included several other bands and many beautiful floats and other units to publicize the National Recovery Act in 1933 and a similar parade in 1938 “to stimulate sales.”  The band marched in the Carnation parade in early years and almost always had a concert at Silver Park for the Carnation Festival.

A medley of activities could include: cornerstone laying at Sebring Church of Christ and Lisbon High School and a concert at the Morgan estate to raise money for Boy Scout Troop 3. It raised $106. Venues before the Rinkendorf era include Goddard’s (skating) rink (1887), Public Square band stand, People’s Theater, Fairmont Children’s Home, Lake Park for the second annual Smith Township unemployed outing, Country Club, Congress Lake, and at a bandstand at Kiwanis Park at the “outskirts of the city.”

Rinkendorf era venues involved a large religious and patriotic community Christmas event on public square, big tree, and lights ablaze; and a concert series at Mount Union. They performed at the opening of a new playground, “Pleasant Heights” on the south side of Sebring (1924). We can add Brady Lake, North Park, the new dining pavilion at the new Silver Park, Molly Stark, Beloit, Stanley Park, Salem Kiwanis, Hazel Park, and the Alliance High School stage. In 1938 they marched in a parade that was part of a “sales stimulation parade downtown, a parade that “rivaled the NRA (National Recovery Act) parade of a few years ago,” at South Liberty School, and at Early’s Hill.

Post Reinkendorf events add to the list Minerva Park Day, Carnation parade, Minerva Parade, and Sebring Fireman’s parade.  In 1979, the band performed in the new band shell at Silver Park, the site for the reenactment concert July 4, 2026.

[Pictured above: Alliance City Band marching in a parade in Minerva, Ohio]

By Ralph Holibaugh

How and when music came to Ronald Edmund Beutler is not documented. Not even his family knows.

He was born in 1924 on Walnut Street in the north end of Alliance. Nearby was an intriguing scene of freight cars, railroad switches, junctions, spurs, and a water tower. Small pieces of coal lay on the ground. It was a blue-collar neighborhood where proud people worked hard with their hands and valued craftsmanship.

Stanley Lutz, school principal and band director at North Lincoln Elementary School, was the most likely link to Ron’s early interest in music. An article in the October 16, 1936 issue of the Red and Blue, the Alliance High School newspaper, reported that Lutz was holding a free “trombone class for beginners.”

The accidental death of Ronnie’s father, Edward, in 1933, during the Great Depression, left the nine-year old, his mother and brother Kenneth, in bleak economic circumstances. Little wonder he was drawn to the lure of music and the trombone when he read Lutz’s invitation. From November 1938 to April 1941, Ron’s earliest musical accomplishments were documented in the Red and Blue.

In WWII, Ron served in the 671st Air Corps Band in India and Burma. When he returned to Alliance in 1945, he was employed in my grandfather’s Northend sheet metal and roofing business, William Fites & Son. That same year The Alliance Review reported that he performed with the ACB. Later Ron became a trustee of the band which sometimes featured his playing in its programs. In 1957, The Review reported a concert in which Ron played the beguine, “Pipiya,” as a featured soloist. I played Herbert L. Clarke’s trumpet arrangement of “The Carnival of Venice.” I will always treasure the memory of Ron and I both being soloists on the same program.

By the end of his life at 91, Ron had played with the ACB, as well as at least eight other musical organizations He also had played with local dance bands led by Lou Naumoff and Vic Rogers. Both bands had leaders and members who were simultaneously in the ACB with Ron: Pete Chordash, Al Nash, Ralph and Eldon Kropf, Herman Pahlau, and others. I had the good fortune to perform in many of these bands with him.

Ron relished an honest day’s work, his family, and the camaraderie of playing band music.

By Paul Hobe

Music teachers are amazing. From elementary school to the most professional orchestral conductors, they are teaching. Most school district’s music departments will have some sort of concert or “band in the round” by which various band levels beginning say, at “fifth grade band” and each additional grade level band through high school concert or symphonic band gets to show their stuff. A director of a community or church choir hands out a new piece for performance. Through the hands or baton of a talented director the rough assemblage of voices, instruments, notes, words, rhythms, accompanists all come together to produce something good.

Born in Germany, Emil Rinkendorf, age nine, came to America with his family to Buffalo and then to Milwaukee where he studied music. An early career in performance and directing eventually led Rinkendorf in 1883 to Canton, Ohio, to conduct the Grand Army of the Republic band and orchestra. This association with the Grand Army of the Republic Band made him a close friend with William McKinley, that band eventually becoming called “McKinley’s Own.” Rinkendorf took the Grand Army Band to both nomination conventions and to both of McKinley’s inaugurations. He also took the band to the Industrial Exposition in Tacoma, Washington in 1891. That trip inspired the march “Across the Rockies.” “Across the Rockies” will be on the program of the reenactment concert on July 4, 2026 at Silver Park. Other trips included to New Orleans, Boston, and the Chicago World’s Fair. As president, McKinley offered Reinkendorf appointment as director of the United States Marine Corps Band (previously led by John Phillips Sousa) but he refused preferring to stay with the Grand Army Band in Canton Ohio. In his obituary it states that he did get to direct the Marine Band in his own march “Across the Rockies” about 1938.

Rinkendorf then appears as a director of the Modern Woodman Band, 1909-1910, which combines with the Alliance City Band about 1911.

While war raged in Europe Emil Rinkendorf became director of the Alliance City Band in 1917, beginning an association that would last until 1940. His reputation as a “builder of bands” must have justified his salary of $2,000 for 2018. Concerts were well attended with over 2,500 attending at the new bandstand at Kiwanis Park. Concerts in Alliance and many other area sites were “packed” by crowds. Weekly concerts were available for area band concert players.

The reader may get an idea of the Alliance City Band’s activities by looking at the eight pages of band activities during the Reinkendorf era in a “Band of Music.” Of note for this blog is that he directed the first concert by the Alliance City Band in Silver Park in June 1926 and then another concert a week after on July 4, 1926, exactly one-hundred years before the reenactment concert this coming Fourth of July.

“Rinkie” as he was known was well-liked and respected by his “boys.” Ed Trott who appears in the 1923 photo of the band with the cape uniforms was my math teacher and just a few years later as a colleague and friend very often would bring up his memories of the Rinkendorf years. An obituary story remembers that Mr. Rinkendorf was no “task master” as a director. “He had an especial faculty for conveying his desires at practice sessions and it seldom that the band was stopped for verbal instructions.”

The 1938 record describes a very active year for the Alliance City Band. It describes new uniforms, parades, concerts at various venues such as the high school lawn and Silver Park. The band includes old timers as well as youth in the band. It is not indicated who conducts the band in 1938 but is probably Dr. W. H. Hodgson of Mount Union college who “has been conducting in his (Rinkendorf’s) absence.”

In 1939 Rinkendorf “has come back from Florida to conduct the band.” 1939 concerts include Silver Park, South Liberty School, Earley’s Hill Park, Memorial Hall, and Public Square.

Interestingly, in 1939, an article in The Review states that John C. Haines, one of the founders of the Alliance City Band, is alive and well in Detroit at the age of 97. He still has “keen eyesight that allows him to read music as he plays his favorite cello.”

On February 25 the band had a concert to honor Rinkendorf, “the first concert he has not planned altogether or partially.” Some of the men have played in the band for forty years. Emil Rinkendorf died early the next morning at his son Paul’s home in Massillon, thus ending twenty-three years of leading quality music in Alliance.

By Ralph Holibaugh

The history of America is dotted with examples of “family bands” made up of spouses, their children, and relatives who made music together in vocal and instrumental groups or a combination thereof. Each band had a focus. Following the Civil War, the Alliance City Band was started by Charles, Columbus, and Foster Haines, an early family band in Alliance. But the original members of the ACB also included the Barniby brothers, Joshua and William.

While more research is needed because sources are sometimes incorrect or incomplete, many families have contributed a cavalcade of more than one musician in the 20th century to the ACB, eg., Baughman, Best, Beutler, Bowers, Calladine, Daniels, Davis, Donaldson, Ellis, Fites, Forbes or Forbs, Gehret, Howenstine, Hubbard, Johnson, Jones, Kropf, Marini, McDonal(d), Mil(l)ner, Parks, Rogers, Smallwood, Stevens, and Trott.

The Smallwood family whom I performed with in the latter 1950’s had the distinction of contributing family members from three generations to the ACB with their brass players, Harry M. “Bud,” H. M., Jr., and Todd playing Alto Horn, Sousaphone, and Baritone.

All of the names above are part of an entire constellation of musicians who were directors, soloists, and the ensemble players who were the visible fabric and structure of the ACB. But a volunteer band always has some of its members also serving behind the scenes in a wide variety of roles. I’m thinking of those who serve on the organization’s elected board like trumpeter-President, Bob Snodgrass, or its committee members, and librarians who keep the conductor’s score and all the individual parts in order, sometimes acquiring replacements for those that are lost. There are people who serve as band secretaries such as Eb Alto Horn player Charlie Moushey who feed minutes to archivists and those, in turn, can form the stuff of band histories. There are those who communicate band events and activities to the public. We see newspaper clippings based on their work, and program notes about sponsors, and the results of tireless fundraisers that provide the infrastructure to a band’s organization, to its sociology.

So as one sits back to listen to the music and admire the skills of the conductor, the musicians present and past of varying abilities, and the volunteers we don’t see, we should recognize this entire constellation that has brought a band performance for our enjoyment.

[Pictured above: Family members Daniel Braid, James Braid, and Richard Howenstine, all members of the Alliance City Band pose with their instruments and relative Edward, shown in his WWI uniform. Photo courtesy of Alan Howenstine]