Monday Memory: Happy Birthday Bluecoats!
Adorning some of our merchandise, you see the year 1972 as the origin of the Bluecoats. But would it surprise you that the birth of the Bluecoats is a little complicated? Not if you know the history of the only drum corps on the planet to win a World Championship after the corps had folded and re-organized. And Bluecoats did that twice!
The original Boys Club entrance
Around 1966 Ralph McCauley, the Assistant Director of the Canton Police Boys Club, was approached about adding a musical group to the club’s activities for area youth. Little did he know how this musical element would dominate his life and enrichen it beyond belief. The Canton Police Boys Club Drum & Bugle Corps started with about 30 boys and did a couple of parades that first year. In 1969 local businessman Art Drukenbrod came along, having been part of nationally-acclaimed drum corps in Canton and Massillon in his youth. Art was a drummer and taught some of the youngsters percussion while operating a men’s clothing business in downtown Canton. He had his eyes on turning the Boys Club corps into a touring drum corps as in his day.
On December 3rd, 1972, Art, Ralph and club director J. Babe Stearn officially began a management collaboration to start a new approach to the Boys Club group. But it was not called the Bluecoats to start. 1973 would be an organizational year and saw the corps do what it had been doing: parades in the area. That first parade tune? The quirky 1950s Latin pop crossover Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.
Early key stakeholders in the Canton Police Boys Club Drum & Bugle Corps
In August of 1973, Art invited Ralph and a few other Boys Club folk to the U.S. Open, one of the nation’s most attended drum corps events of the time. The U.S. Open in 1973 had two shows, running on two days, simultaneously in different parts of town, weeding down the near 100 units down to a Finals competition in three classes. The third day wrapped up prelims and later that night hosted the Final show. The 38,000 person town of Marion in the 1970s was such a drum corps hotbed it had its own drum corps, the Marion Cadets, and it’s own feeder corps, the Marion Jet-ettes.
One of the performing units that Drukenbrod and McCauley saw on that 1973 visit was the Philadelphia Police Athletic League (PAL) Cadets. It raised the eyebrows of officer McCauley, who wondered if their little Boys Club corps could do the same. The notion of spreading the name of the Canton Police Department across the country in a musical ambassadorship of good will was the hook. The concept of moving from the streets as a parade corps to a touring field corps was made.
March 18, 1974
The Canton Repository did a feature article in December of 1973 to celebrate their first anniversary. Buried at the end of the article was a short and unceremonious line: “… the corps wants to retain its ties with the Canton Police Department. The corps has adapted ‘Bluecoats’ as its official name.” Later in March of 1974, the corps again appeared in the news with the heading “Drum, Bugle Corps Known as Bluecoats.”
During the Winter moving into 1974, a full color brochure was developed and distributed seeking contributions to outfit the corps in real uniforms. For 1973 the unit had used blue windbreaker jackets over discarded high school marching band pants as their uniform. It was time to take the next step. Ralph also began recruiting, reaching out unsuccessfully at first to the three high schools in Canton but also. with more success, .area elementary schools, which at that time were mostly 1st through 8th grades.
Brochure asking for donations to put the corps into uniforms for 1974
So this week, 48 years later, the little corps that started, stopped and started again at least three times since 1966 marks its Birthday and a long legacy that was, at first, uncertain. It took 16 years to make “associate member” status in drum corps, but then that following year landed in the elite Top 12 where it has remained for 31 out of the last 32 years. Only five corps in the history of the activity have a longer Finalist streak.
And that World Championship? 44 years is one of the longest stretches in a DCI corps’ lifespan before winning their first title. Something that two police officers and a tailor never saw coming when they sat down to organize the corps on December 3rd, 1972.
The early Canton Police Boys Club Drum & Bugle Corps
