09/21/2026
The Adelphi Community Band Played HOW Many Times?
The band has typically kept its own official records of its activities through the years, to include the where and when the band played, and what musicians participated.
However, there was one musician, Gilbert, who kept his own records for several decades of what the band did. This included not only all of the above, but where everyone stood/sat, if anyone arrived late or left early, how much the fish sandwiches cost (the favorite festival food of the musicians....no I didn't make this up.......he actually recorded the cost of the fish sandwiches and his opinion of how good they were!.....), and what songs were played and how many times.
Sadly, that musician has passed, but we are grateful to have received his records so that we can add that information to to our digital library in order to remember among ourselves and to share with others.
Attached is his record for 1981 showing how many songs were played at each perfromance.
Several things about this document are important.
1. He tracked this same information, and much more in other reports that he prepared, for parts of at least 4 decades
2. Despite being a computer programmer in real life, he never used a computer and every record he produced was done with pencil and paper.
3. He would often compile this information for several years side-by-side just to see the comparisons. We have those records, too.
4. The band was VERY active for many of the years he kept records.
We would often play at 2-3 different cities on the same day.
For a couple years, the band would play at Ashville in the morning of July 4th, then in another city in the afternoon, and then wind up the evening by playing at the Ohio Village in Columbus.
Plus for a few years, we would play for as many as 5 different cemeteries in parts of both Ross and Pickaway counties for Memorial Day.
5. The band would also often (VERY often) do two concerts or more at the same location on the same day. This would happen a lot for the Circleville Pumpkin Show, the Ross County Fair, Clarksburg Field Day, the Hallsville church fish fry, and for several other performances.
6. This specific report does NOT include the information from band practices...strictly performances.
7. Why are there sometimes "1/2 songs" documented?
Because no matter how handsome the musicians think that we are, when we are in parades, we know that the audience wants to HEAR us and not just SEE us. So we will often start songs at the end of the parade route and not have enough parade left to finish the song.
Plus, when we play for harness races, we know that the announcers are more important than we are, and so we will stop playing whenever they have information to relay to the people in the Grandstand. Often, then, we may not have enough time to finish the song until the next race started and so we would just typically move on down the concert list.
Gilbert was conscientious enough about the details of the information he captured that he would track that the band even just played only a half a song,
8. The band is listed as playing as many as 18, 20, 21, 24, and 27 songs per location.
I go to many community band concerts all over Ohio, and it is pretty common that the usual play list per concert for them is only 10-12 songs, with or without an intermission.
9. The grand total of the number of songs performed by the band in 1981, just for performances, is listed as 379 and 1/2.
10. The number of performances listed for 1981 is 24. In some years we did as many as 30-36 performances. There are many community bands who will typically do less than 10 performances a year.
All this wonderful trivia about the band helps to show that The Adelphi Band musicians are, and have been, a pretty tough....and busy....bunch.
Plus, while this document is just a list of objective numbers, these numbers help to bring back a lot of great memories.
While I do not yet have any pictures specifically from the band from 1981 in our digital library, the following are from 1982.
