The music of soft jazz floated on the fall breeze with an audience tapping toes while sitting in folding lawn chairs.
The four-man combo played under a carport at the condos off Dawnwood Drive. White-haired Don Miller with his white beard led the band from his position at the keyboard. He didn’t need music to move his nimble fingers effortlessly in classics like “Fly Me to the Moon” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”
Fifty years earlier, Miller spent Wednesday October afternoons with a bullhorn in his hands hollering directions to dozens of marching band students. He spent some historical years at Orange schools teaching music and marching.
Wednesday’s concert showed he also taught his love of music to his family. Two grandsons and a son made up his jazz combo.
Grandson Andrew Borel on lead guitar is a professional guitarist who studied music at Belmont University in Nashville. Wednesday, Andrew also sang a bluesy original song as the family band backed him. Son Steven Miller was on bass guitar and grandson Brian Miller was on the drums.
Don Miller retired from schools some 40 years ago. He recently moved into the Little Cypress condos because his house in Mauriceville flooded in Imelda. It also flooded in Harvey.
He lost the scrapbooks he kept about his bands at Stark High, West Orange High, and then West Orange-Stark. They included the “wonderful articles” reporter Rebecca Flickinger wrote for the Orange Leader about the bands.
Miller is now 83 years old. He was 31 when he began as band director at Stark High School in 1967, a year for major changes to local public schools. All grades became racially integrated and the high school went from 10th through 12th grades to 9th through 12th.
In addition, the old Orange Independent School District had dissolved and the then-county school board attached the district to the West Orange-Cove district.
He also mentioned that he replaced the popular Joe Beneke as band director. Beneke was a native of Orange who became abn assistant principal in 1967.
Miller, who had black hair slicked back with Brylcreem, had a different style than Beneke. Wednesday, he joked with former band members about breaking the director’s baton or tossing it at a trumpet player was strategy. “I wasn’t mad at anyone,” he said. “It was strategy.”
His strategy sometimes brought tears to players and some dropped out. But the effort paid off. He talks about getting UIL ratings in marching, concert band, and sight-reading. Bands that get ranked a 1 in each contest win a Sweepstakes trophy.
After half a century, he can still tell what year the bands earned 1’s in two categories before winning Sweepstakes. Then his bands racked up the Sweepstakes.
“A high school band can do anything that a college band can do, but the music,” he said. “They can sit up straight, hold up their horns, and look at the director.”
Looking at the director was a major part for band members in the rehearsal hall. He would look individuals in the eye and they had better immediately return the look. If not, he would stop until the errant band member looked back at him. The pause would cause a bit of embarrassment to the one not paying attention.
Miller said he specialized in trumpet when he went to college, but he was also adept at a variety of instruments, including the keyboard. He played piano around the area for years for dance bands, including some at Sunset Grove Country Club in the days when adult dances there were popular.
He said he tried to leave high school band directing after 20 years, but was talked into going to West Orange High. Then administrators convinced him to stay for the consolidation of the two high schools into West Orange-Stark.
After finally leaving 40 years ago, he worked in business and investments, but kept up his music.
He recalls his days at Stark High with one of the smallest bands in the district, but the bands brought him what he considers the best compliment from a professional.
Back in the days, band directors on Saturday mornings would hang around Swicegood’s Music store in Beaumont. They would drink coffee and swap band tales.
Jimmy Simmons, who became the area’s most famous band director when he became president of Lamar University, told him band directors would always check the schedules for UIL competitions.
“He said no one wanted to play after Stark,” Miller recalled.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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