Eric Perrilloux:  "I used to take the train to Philly to Reilly Raider rehearsals. I'd get back about 5 am.  Did it for three years. 

 

The 1957 version of Reilly was a Perrilloux effort to use snare, bass and tenor drums as separate voices at times, leading the ear more around the entire section.  Other arrangers listened and remembered.  Eric loved the Ancient “7” but was changing accents in rudiments, creating more interesting mathematics, something picked up by a young Mitch Markovich.

Professionalism is the display of difficult skills done with consistency under pressure.  Reilly Raiders were breakdown drummers.  Contests were now decided by grace note control, not the ability to play downbeats together as in the 1920’s.  New stickings and rudiments required more coordination and endurance. 

 

The ability to perform continuous rolls with accents was not foreign to fife and drum -Three Camps the example - but arrangers were becoming more mathematically unpredictable. Accents could now be placed anywhere, something fife and drum technically achieved, but refrained from using because of tradition.  It was also foreign to the drum set.  The short duration rolls of Krupa and Rich were not used nearly as often as single stroke patterns. Drum set players were still trying to develop technique and the mixing of single and double beats independently with four limbs, watching rudimiental drummers to absorb technical clues.  This one item – continuous Ruff-Rat-Roll-Drag combinations - gave drum and bugle corps its unique competitive sound.  Reilly’s long Gray Ghost solo difficulty is seen in works such as Fred Johnson’s 1959 Magoo and the Caballeros 1960 The Bomb, then extended solo work of the mid 1960’s Connecticut Hurricanes and Hawthorne Caballeros using higher pitched snare drums. A 13 1/2 minute show had about 9 tunes and the opportunity for two short drum solos and one long one. This pressure raised the talent level to the next performance plateau using Swiss Flam coordination and 24th note accented singles. 

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Bobby Redican:  “The Reilly Raiders were really slick!  If there was an error or if it got ragged, there might be two or three quick ticks.  Their drummers respected that.  They were one of the finest M&M lines.  Reilly Raiders were very intelligent to talk to.”

 

Bob Adair was an Osmond Cadet horn player from 1941 to 1951, winning VFW nationals in ’48 and ’49.  Knowing that drummers have the most fun, he became a Reilly Raider snare in 1952 and 53. 

            

Bob Adair (Reilly Raiders): “Reilly was unique for the time.  The corps had a military style but would do dance steps and crossover footwork.  The drills would have three or four company fronts.  There would be rank and file maneuvers. We had an Irish theme: When Irish Eyes Are Smiling was our signature piece but played  The Irish Washer Womanand A Great Day For the Irish.  In 130, contests the corps never took lower then third!  The drumline was strongest and most consistent part of the corps.  There was always a corps you wanted to beat. You had territory rights!  Archer Epler was nearby.”

            “Hawthorne didn’t have as difficult a drum book as we did.  They had a Latin theme.  Skyliners were there - Hurricanes and Prince.  Hooten didn’t like Archer Epler but always said, “if it wasn’t for them, Reilly Raiders would not be as good".  Our drumline enjoyed a lot of success.  It was our strongest section and resulted in many championships.  The corps was daring and would open up the drill patterns.  That was not common then.

            “Too many of us were raising families so you had to prepare at home.  It was an individual effort.  For a big show we had extra practices.   It was a weekend thing.  You had a job and raised your family.  There were many little practices and sectionals during the week if the guys could make them. Every Friday evening there was a contest.  A good instructor might make $10.  There was not that much money going around then. In 1959, I think our budget was about $19,000.  You could get by running a corps with $10,000.   Prize money wasn’t much. 

            “Most corps had 21 to 27 horns and a 3-3-2-1 drumline.  A nine-man line was consistent for many years.  Maybe there would be a fourth snare or tenor. We had 39 horns to start the year in ’58.  Then we added a back row of 12 more with a separate drill.  After the season we picked up more.  Hooton was considering adding 12 more.  Most of them were junior members from out-state.  Besides, paperwork would then have to be “juggled” for the VFW and American Legion.  Everybody did it.  Sixty-three horns?  That’s sticking your chin out too much.  Hooten figured that the new addition would be the target of judges.  They would look for and pinpoint them.  It was a good year already so why risk it?  

            “Today, drum corps all sound alike.  If I want to listen to orchestra, I go to the indoor venue.  They have no melodic interest to us.  You used to go and leave the stadium whistling the songs you heard.”         

 

            Reilly Raider snare drummer William “Willie” Curlott earned his bachelors from Drexel University and Doctorate in Business Education from Rutgers in 1974.  He lives in the splendor of New Mexico desert. He was the (1951 or 1952) and ’53 VFW Jr. National Snare Drum Champion with the Osmond Cadets (’52 New York City and ’53 Milwaukee).  He was a member of the U. S. Marine drum and bugle corps from 1954 through 1956.  Mr. Curlott has a definite streak of Moeller. "I was one of the first to join the “peace corps” and went to the Ukraine.  I wrote a docu-novel, “Peace Corps, The Toughest Job They Ever Mismanaged.”

 

William Curlott (Reilly Raiders, Liberty Bell Cadets): “I’m not a person to go with the norm.  I played horn in Reilly rather than play Eric Perrilloux’s “New York” style.  We used to call New York style “press drumming”.  It was lower, like bag pipe, Scottish drumming. I was a hardcore rudimental drummer.  I played horn instead of play low.  The tenor drum twirls of the late 1940’s went out.  They didn’t do the Scotch twirling anymore."

            “We used to practice on our own - rudiment breakdowns. It’s hard to get breakdowns clean.  It’s more precise; you move fast and it might be imprecise.  The corps would go one night a week.  We’d learn the parts together; none of us could read.  We learned Paradiddle sections and Flamacues by rote.  You had to make sure the sticking was together.  Rhythmic patterns were written where they would fit in the music. 

“I used to go up to musters.  We would play Downfall with Reamer, a drumming icon from Philly; he taught McCall [Bluebird’s].  He would use all 26 rudiments. Connecticut was very wide open.  Reamer was a good man - real gentleman type.

            “My snare solo was original - different.  It had quick Paradiddles and speed.  There were 32nd notes, Ratamacues, Flamacues and Flam-a-diddles….  I would practice seven days a week.  It was tough on the neighborhood!  Finally, I went on a bicycle outside the city.  When individuals got closer, I’d practice more often, a couple of hours every other day if not every day near a contest. I won 2 nationals; 5 total.  Took second with a rope drum but I was beat by a better guy, an Archer Epler snare.

          

Corps didn’t travel long distances except to attend nationals.  Sometimes the individual contest would lack entrants if corps stayed home. The 1954 contest in was in Philadelphia, a drum corps hotbed, meaning many more contestants and east coast trained drummers if not judges. There were two distinct styles: Les Parks was using a lower no arm motion style similar to Perrilloux, who had lowered his heights for M&M corps and Bobby Thompson high accented low grace note style.

 

Jack Cassidy was a Bracken Cavalier from 1950 to 52, wearing Reilly green 1954 through ’58.  Bracken was 2nd behind St. Vinnies in the ’51 American Legion championship.  He judged for over a decade, 1958 to 1972. “We didn’t get paid anything to judge – 35 dollars at most.  You did it because you loved it.”

 

Jack Cassidy (Reilly Raiders): “We had two short drum solos and one long one. The show was about 13 1/2 minutes to 15.  Bracken was a small town – maybe 5000 people – not a bad corps for a small town. There were 15 corps in Philly at that time; 4 senior and 11 junior.  They drew kids in and taught them to play the instruments.”

            “In late ’59, the snare line for Reilly was Jim Bowser, John Dowlan, Jimmy Giles and myself.  It was a four and four line.  We were concerned with execution.  Other corps – Sky and Archer Epler – played more difficult stuff.  Our music was easier - the Irish Washer Woman.  

            “They would do “trick” drills.  You had to master the “guillotine” where every other horn player did a 180 over the guy who knelt down.  It was a snappy move and you better duck!  We played a lot of drag figures and long rolls into drags - different figures - Paradiddles into rolls; long rolls into singles.  Reilly didn’t do Swiss at that time. The long solos were brutal!  The drill would have two big company fronts back into each other from forty yards apart and then wheel into one company front.

“When Eric Perrilloux was brought in to teach Reilly in ’57, he cleaned us up another two points.  He added dynamics and expression.  Jimmy Giles had a low left hand; Harry would play higher with his right.  Eric matched our styles and worked on uniformity.  He improved us 1 1/2 points in a week!  He gave us figures to work on and after we picked them up, the mistakes went down!”

            “Reilly Raiders played similar to Bobby Thompson’s style but without the left grip.  We didn’t do the pinky thing.  We didn’t see a benefit to it until we sat down with Bobby and he showed us the benefit of the style.  We tried it and - IT WORKS!”  

            “An instructor came in hot and critique took off.  Judges back then could all play. If challenged, they would bring out their sticks and show them.  It was not uncommon. In order to judge you had to be a pretty decent drummer.  

"We worked on caption uniformity a lot; a uniform tolerance from all the judges.  Some were style prejudiced.  You can’t do that.  If execution was different within the book that was one thing but if you didn’t like the sound that was “beside the point!”  It worked out more or less.  There were big problems in the Northeast.  Some put down the Latin music corps. Hawthorne was getting 4th or 5th in drums.  They might go from 2nd to 6th.  We worked all captions to try and get some similarity - no prejudice.  We tried to be very fair and accurate.

            “There were similar problems in Canada.  We were hired as outsiders to come in and judge.  They seemed pleased and were judged on merit.  Same thing happened when upstate New York would meet the Boston area.”

            

            The wife of Reilly’s drum major has keen wit.  Carol Hooten explains Bill’s success with drum corps score sheets and rules.  He had the corps march without intervals to increase marching scores. Bill Hooten was someone who wanted to understand the different elements of a competing corps, so he took 13th in the ADA snare drum competition at the August, 1940 World’s Fair.

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Carol Hooten (Reilly Raiders): “I was married to "Wild Bill" for 39 years.  I have been in corps since I was a drum major at 7 years old.  I studied trumpet for 17 years at the Eastman School of Music in my hometown, Rochester, NY.  I had my picture taken with him when I was 11 years old at nationals.  I was the drum major of a small rinky-dink corps and Bill was, of course, with Reilly.  I told him then I was going to marry him when I grew up.  He said, "That's nice little girl", and pulled on one of my pigtails.  I was writing for one of the drum corps magazines and not marching for the first time in my life when I ran into Bill for the second time in 1959.  We got into a heated argument after he told me all drum corps writers knew was that "the field is green with white lines".  We married six months later.  Bill was 16 years my senior and I had a problem keeping up with him.  The man was a dynamo.

“I learned much about drum corps from Bill.  He had the entire performance scientifically broken down into components.  In an era when a corps had to be on the field 11-13 minutes, he had his show timed to 11 minutes 10 seconds.  He calculated how many tenths a corps lost per minute and determined how to get the corps over the finish line as quickly as possible.  I'm sure he would have timed it for 11 minutes period, but built in a 10 second safety margin.  He could never understand why other corps were on the field for 12 minutes, 30 seconds.

“Bill was not only Reilly's drum major, he did the drill, and arranged some of Reilly's music.  That was him as a snare drummer at the World's Fair in 1940.  He was the Drum Major for Street Post American Legion.  He just practiced with the drummers when he didn't have anything to do.  He was a good snare drummer at one time.  He and Eric Perriloux used to kid about an individual contest that they both entered.  Bill won, Eric was second.  Bill's score was 98.8 and he always rubbed it in saying, "Eric, I lost 0.2 in inspection,.  Think how it would have looked without threads on my uniform!"

“Bill was never the director of Reilly.  He was never interested in administration of any kind.  He just did the show, wrote and taught the M&M, cleaned up the horn line if someone else had arranged a chart, and collaborated with the drum instructor on positioning the drums.  He was a reasonable dictator.  He would listen to any member with an idea, but he alone made the decision on whether to use it."

 

Nick Piscotti was a Yankee Rebel from ‘55 through ‘57, with Reilly in ’58 and 59, then back with the Rebs from 1960 to ’68.

            

Nick Piscotti (Yankee Rebels, Reilly Raiders): “In those times it was mostly 27 horns, 3 and 3, 2 bass and an honor guard. Back then drum solos were like street beats.  John Flowers was playing higher in ’60, ‘61 and ‘62.  He was doing alternated Lesson 25’s in the early 60’s. 

            “Reilly was doing Swiss rudiments in ‘58 or ‘59 but never played them on the field.  There were people from Switzerland with Soistman. Harry Ginther was instructing in ‘58.  That Reilly line in ‘58 -‘59 never lost a show in drums: Johnny Bowser, Jimmy Giles - the Grey Ghost. Their tenor line did not play an open high style but could play all the snare parts: Billy Kaufmann, Bobby Hall and Harry Force.  Jimmy Giles was always ready to go! 

“In the 50’s, Archie and Reilly had a crying towel at the shows.  They carried it out on the field with them all the time.  It was a big deal to carry it out there.  Whoever lost that night would get the towel.  They would walk over and give it to them.  They were like neighbors, some of them in Archie and Reilly, but when you got to the competition - “FORGET IT!”

            “Ludee at [Connecticut] Hurricanes wrote parts and I still don’t know how he did it! At one time they had 12 snares.  That was the line we were trying to beat!"

            

Archer Epler was Reilly’s nemesis.  Charlie Cornielus was with them from 1960 through 1966. The corps respected each other so much that as years went by and times became tough, the two corps merged.  Bill Reamer tried to out-gun Reilly for many years with a tougher book.  Duke Terrari was with them.  The Musketeers were right behind the Shamrocks most nights.  Bill Kaufman marched in both corps.

 

Charlie Cornielius (Archie, Reilly): " Reilly had a big corps in '59,'60,'61 and '62.  We had a drum line that was out of this world with Dowlan, Ginther and guys from the Baltimore area that came in…..We [Reilly] went undefeated in ‘58 and ‘59.  It was a tight group.  Some of the trips were long.  Upstate New York was 6 or 7 hours bus ride.  Remember that roads were not what they are today!  We always left the night before.  We would put the drums in an old hearse and drive up.  Albany from Philly was a hell of a drive!  When we got there, we played until the contest started.  We’d go to the contest site – some gym or something – and unpack then start playing.  We just played the book – 100 times if needed - fix trouble spots….. There was no such thing as a warm up.  We didn’t think twice about it.  If you have solid teaching, you don’t need to warm up.  Kids at band shows have to warm up.  Give me a break!  You can do that before breakfast!”        

 

Bill Maling:  “Dowlan, Reamer and Jack Corey were the Archer Epler three man line. Archie and Reilly had excellent drumlines.”

Lorne Ferrazzutti:  “The senior corps guys were a nice bunch.  They’d go and get a beer after the shows."  

Gus Barbaro:  “After a show the judges would come in.  Pratt would be there playing on the table.  We would show each other's music and play each other's parts.”

 

Tommy Falzone scored a second and two first places in the Archer Epler Individual Contest.  It was considered by many to be the true championship of that time period.  John Flowers NJA judged.  Steve Gadd wrote the solo for Falzone.

 

Doug Reynolds (Former Canadian National Champion, DCI Judge): “For those of us that era, the only “real” individual competition was the one held by Archer Epler.  Such national individual title holders such as Dick Filkins (Air Force), Tom Falzone (Rochester Crusaders “twice”), John Flowers (Air Force), John Bowser (Reilly Raiders), Tom Malley and others won there.  In 1971, the national contest was held in Bridgeport, Ct. In ’57, I was a teenager – seventeen - up against Jonh Bowser, Dick Filkins, John Flowers and Redican.  He was absolutely unbelievable!  He was powerful but imagine playing pianissimo rolls at eye level!  

 

"Archer Epler’s individual contest was considered by us to be the national championship. I won that in 1971.  I competed in the 1957 National contest at the 62nd street armories. It started at 10:00 am and finished a 3:00am the next day.  The required rudiment was the single drag.  There were so many contestants, over 100, including the quartets. What a deal!  Earl Sturtze was one of the judges. The winner was Bobby Redican and John Bowser was second. Eric Perrilloux was there (first time I met him) but just as the instructor of John Bowser; he was Reilly's instructor at the time.  Many of us from those days competed almost every month. That's how popular it was then.” 

 

Eligibility to march in VFW senior contests was overseas military duty. Tony Scheletca or not, they found a way to fix that. Don Mihok used Ed Lamb's name; he had served overseas. John Flowers used Herbert Bush's, and Jim Bowser used Harry Ginther's, Reilly’s instructor many years. John Flowers won the 1961 Senior VFW snare title borrowing a name to sidestep “veteran rules.”

 

Rita Macey (Audabon Bon Bons): “Ed Lamb definitely DID NOT win the 1957 VFW Senior Nationals. Donald Mihok of Archer-Epler won.  Ed Lamb was a bass drummer well before 1957, at which time he wasn't even in the corps.” 

 

These were America’s good times, typified in the movie “American Grafitti”; popular music included pure “Doo Wop” ballads.  Some 55 million television sets were making shows like “What’s My Line” and “I’ve Got A Secret“, popular in 1955.  The 1954 IBM 704 computer used Fortran, the size of a room in with less computing power than a modern laptop.  Simple electrical amenities (washers, dryers and televisions), and long drives into the countryside on weekends with the family were common.  Gerry Thomas sold 10 million TV dinners (they looked like small televisions) for his Swanson company in 1954. Russia shook United States confidence by the first testing of an intercontinental missile on August 21, 1957, the first successful orbit of a man made satellite into space on October 4, 1957 in Sputnik I. Suddenly, America went into overdrive, colleges piling homework onto students and creating NASA in 1958 . Soon, America would launch toward the moon.