Marching band music from the former Linden High School — now part of North Montgomery — was donated to Andy Simpkins, North’s Director of Bands. The music was being discarded at Linden after Northridge Middle School — now North Montgomery MS — opened and became part of the Music Arrangement Trust’s assets.
“Mr. Simpkins was the logical person to receive this collection since Linden’s last band director, Gary Hiller, was North’s first director of bands,” said Mark Eutsler of Linden, co-founder of the trust.
Simpkins also co-directs the Montgomery County United Marching Band & Guard and MCU Symphonic Band.
“Most of the music was stamped ‘Linden High School’ and several had students’ names written on individual parts,” Eutsler said. “Former long-time Madison Township Trustee David Layton wrote his name on one Euphonium (Baritone) part from John Philip Sousa’s ‘The Liberty Bell March.’”
Layton performed with the Purdue All-American Marching Band in college.
“That part was given to Maria Yang of Columbus, Indiana, Layton’s daughter, to give to him,” Eutsler said.
In addition to Sousa, other famous march composers represented in the collection include Henry Fillmore, Karl King, Paul Yoder and Worthington, Indiana, native Fred Jewell. Some arrangements include drill team choreography, marching band formations and drill performance suggestions. Several marches published in 1954 were dedicated to the Purdue Band and its then-new director Al G. Wright who followed the first band director Paul “Spotts” Emrick after his retirement.
“There were parts to the Linden school song, “College Boy March” as well as handwritten parts to “Fight, Green and White,” the Veedersburg school song,” Eutsler said.
Students had also written on some of the parts “County Music Festival,” referring to the former annual Montgomery County Music Festival at which a combined band and choir from all county schools performed led by guest directors.
The 144 arrangements from Linden were published between 1896 and 1968 have a retail value of $3,840.67.
Mark Eutsler, Therese Eutsler and Bill Moffit, who followed Wright and was the third director of the Purdue All-American Marching Band as well as Indiana’s Music Arranger Laureate, founded the trust in 1988. Before his passing in 2008, Moffit had sold more music than any other living American. The more than 450 titles in his Soundpower Series have sold to date in excess of 1.1 million copies. He also authored nine books in the “Patterns of Motion” series. POM is the constant-motion system using four-player squads he devised.
