Winters Brass Band
Winters, Runnels County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Focus of social life during Winters' early years, the band played throughout the area for box suppers, old settlers reunions, and political campaigns. Charles Grant organized the group in 1901 (seven years after the town was incorporated) and conducted when it played for the coming of Winters' first railroad in 1909. Grant served as bandmaster for fifteen years. Sunday afternoon concerts were presented in the bandstand (then located in Tinkle Park), and members traveled in a bandwagon drawn by four white horses to play in small towns nearby. Favorite tunes were "The Anvil Chorus", "Stars and Stripes Forever," and "Poet and Peasant." New uniforms, blue with gold stripes, cost $14 in 1905. After 1920, the retired members helped the city school organize a band by lending some of their instruments to the students. About 200 brass bands once flourished in Texas, and music was a cultural activity in the state's first colony in the 1820s. Many towns had started to build bandstands by 1850, using them for political rallies, church socials, fund-raising drives, as well as concerts. Once the largest brass band west of Fort Worth, the Winters group and others like it contributed much to the cultural growth of Texas.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized by Charles Grant in 1901, just a few years after Winters was incorporated, the town's brass band quickly became the center of local social life — playing box suppers, old-settler reunions, and political rallies, and heralding the arrival of Winters' first railroad in 1909. Members rode to neighboring towns in a bandwagon drawn by four white horses and gave Sunday concerts in the park, favoring rousing numbers like "Stars and Stripes Forever." Once the largest brass band west of Fort Worth, it later lent its instruments to help start the school band. At its peak Texas had some 200 such bands, part of a musical culture reaching back to the state's first colony.
Why it matters
Town brass bands were the soundtrack of civic life in early America, and Winters' shows how music helped a raw frontier town knit itself into a community.
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Related people
- · Charles Grant
Themes & tags
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