University of Florida Performing Arts

Sponsored by Best Western Gateway Grand 

For turn-of-the-century, small town inhabitants, the town band was a familiar fixture.  Harper’s Weekly estimates there were 10,000 such bands in the United States in 1889.  Made up of ordinary citizens such as the hardware clerk and the feed merchant, their enthusiasm often outweighed their musical abilities.  That didn’t keep them from playing everything from Sousa to opera to works from Tin Pan Alley at saloon openings, funerals, political rallies and parades.

In 1892, Mr. Jack Daniel decided that he wanted his own town band.  With $230, he purchased a variety of instruments from the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog, handing them out like candy when they arrived.  For 20 years, Mr. Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band was a staple of life in Lynchburg, Tennessee, which had a population of about 360 in the late 1800s.  Then a little thing called progress arrived and town bands, including Mr. Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band, lost their luster and faded from memory.

About 80 years after the demise of the town band, Dave Fulmer happened upon a photograph of Mr. Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band and thought, “I’d give my eye teeth to see a band like that today.”  He began researching the phenomena of the small town band era, eventually becoming an expert on the culture and facets of small town American life at the turn-of-the-century.

With some help from friend Greig Ritchie, a composer/arranger, and a grant from the Jack Daniel Distillery, Fulmer set out to recreate Mr. Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band.  Finding instruments was tough.  Some were imported from France, while others were found only after scouring attics and antique collections.  By the fall of 1978, the new Mr. Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band had produced an album and appeared in two PBS specials.   The success of the albums and PBS specials convinced Fulmer that the show could go out on the road, and the first of many tours was undertaken.  Named after the first PBS special, Hometown Saturday Night, the show was divided into two acts with the “Perfessor” as the unofficial emcee, telling stories interspersed between musical numbers.  There was no rock ‘n’ roll, no amplification and no electronic instruments.  Everything – right down to the period costumes – was authentic.  With, perhaps, one notable exception: the musicians were professionals.

Since its debut, the band has toured to all 48 of the contiguous United States; played Lincoln Center, Disneyland and the White House; and appeared on NBC’s Today Show and National Public Radio.  Still following the same format it established 20 years ago, Mr. Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band presents a slice of American life that is long gone.

“Nothing like it is around today,” says Fulmer.  “Getting the Original Silver Cornet Band together and rounding out its repertoire is a project that allows me a real living glimpse of America’s past.”