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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. |
