Sounds from the Valley

There is a frustration while researching and writing history. The things one really wants to know about cannot usually be found. Will Durant wrote thus in the Story of Civilization series: Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians usually record while, on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the banks. You will find some interesting events in this history of the UC/UTC band, but you will not find everything. You will not find the name of the first song the University of Chattanooga band played, how Professor Blinn Owen felt about stepping down as the first dean of the department of music when it merged with the Cadek Conservatory, or what the reaction of the crowd was when the band played a Spanish tune for the first time in the late sixties. These are the kind of events and happenings that one would like to know, especially for the early years of the university band. This is not to be, however. Alas, we will have to settle for what witnesses selected to tell us, for it is unlikely that they realized they were historians at the time they recorded it!