The history of the All-American Marching band
In the early years of the Purdue University, the year 1886 to be specific, the Purdue Student Army Training Corps formed a small drum corps, whose purpose it was to play music for the cadets during their exercises in the morning. It started with five members and then grew to 50 members in 1904 but the band still had no director.
Paul Spotts Emrick, an Electrical Engineering freshman joined the band in the same year and due to his previous experience as a director he was elected as band president and director. During his 49 years as the band leader he was responsible for all the fame the band got. He was a perfectionist and used his creativity to improve the performances of the band. For example in 1907 it was his idea to make the band leave the normal block formation and to form the letter "P". This was the first time a marching band did something like that. He also made them do many other formations which were used even 70 years later. Under his leadership the band had many other great achievements, like being the first band to carry all the colors of the opponent's school in the Big Ten or playing the opponent's school's fight song. In 1921 the bass drum called "World's Largest Drum" was introduced, which is one of the most lasting symbols of the band and the university. One of the most important events during the time of Emrick was the light show in 1935. They had a performance in the evening and with the help of the College of Engineering they put border lights on their instruments and played their songs. At that time this was a large technical accomplishment and the radio broadcaster Ted Husing said that the band was truly "All-American", a term that was usually used as a title for the greatest college football players, and that is how the name of the band became "All-American Marching Band". In 1939 the band had 150 members but was still not the biggest band of the "West", which was one of the goals Emrick was aiming for. The era of Emrick as the band leader ended when he decided to retire in 1954 and since then band has been under the direction of five other men. Dr. Al G. Wright, the director after Emrick, also made many big changes to improve the performances and make them more special. Next to increasing the band he also added baton twirlers. Purdue's Golden Girl, one of the four twirler positions, has always been one of the highest ranked twirlers of the nation but when the tradition was introduced in 1954 there was also the position of the Golden Boy, which until lasted for a very short time. Another change of Wright was the uniform. Until that point the uniforms had a more military oriented style and he changed it to the current look. He also introduced the tradition by creating the "I Am An American" speech, which is read before each game while the band is playing "America Is Beautiful". The idea behind this was to make the band as the name suggested "All-American". One of the greatest accomplishments of Wright was increasing the popularity of the band across the world by performing with the band all over the world, for example in Japan, Germany or Venezuela and the band even got an invitation by the Chinese government to perform in international cultural activities, which was the first time that a marching band was invited to China. In 1995, under the direction of Dr. David A. Leppla, the band was awarded with the Sudler Trophy, which is the most prestigious award a college marching band can receive and Purdue's All-American Marching Band is currently the only band without a school of music to have received the trophy. Currently the band has 353 members and is under the direction of Jay S. Gephart since 2006. |
Performances of the all-american marching band
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Here is the pregame show of the Marching Band in 2013 in the match against Notre Dame
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In this video the band is performing the song Hail Purdue in Ireland in March 2013
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