Oral History Interview of Francis Christmann
Interviewed by: Elissa Stroman November 3, 2011 Lubbock, Texas
Part of the: Women’s History Initiative
Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program
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An oral history release form was signed by Delbert Trew on November 3, 2011. This transfers all rights of this interview to the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University.
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Preferred Citation for this Document:
Christmann, Francis Oral History Interview, November 3, 2011. Interview by Elissa Stroman, Online Transcription, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. URL of PDF, date accessed.
The Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library houses almost 6000 oral history interviews dating back to the late 1940s. The historians who conduct these interviews seek to uncover the personal narratives of individuals living on the South Plains and beyond. These interviews should be considered a primary source document that does not implicate the final verified narrative of any event. These are recollections dependent upon an individual’s memory and experiences. The views expressed in these interviews are those only of the people speaking and do not reflect the views of the Southwest Collection or Texas Tech University.
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Transcription Notes: Interviewer: Elissa Stroman Audio Editor: David Rauch Transcription: Emilie Meadors Editor(s): Katelin Dixon
Interview Series Background:
The Women’s History Initiative began formally in June 2015 with a concentrated effort to record the stories of prominent women from across the South Plains. The interviews target doctors, civic leaders, teachers, secretaries, and others whose stories would otherwise be lost.
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Transcript Overview:
This interview features Francis Christmann of Lubbock, Texas. Christmann talks about her experiences with both Allegro and the Lubbock Music Club. As such, Christmann discusses how these groups functioned in her life and the manner in which these groups have evolved over time. Christmann also talks about the structure of the groups and her involvement at local, state, and national levels.
Length of Interview: 01:28:19
Subject Transcript Page Time Stamp Background 5 00:00:00 High school years 9 00:08:51 Early involvement in music clubs 11 00:13:03 Changes in club demographics 13 00:17:59 Children 15 00:22:43 Other music club involvement 17 00:27:46 Working way up in music clubs, roles held in the club 21 00:34:04 Club meetings, order, locations 23 00:38:25 Favorite programs 25 00:42:11 Current involvement 27 00:47:44 Federated aspect of the club, hierarchy and structure 30 00:55:50 Summer music camps 33 01:01:36 Changes in the process to become a club member 35 01:08:45 Singing in churches 37 01:12:48 Legacy of the clubs 41 01:19:57
Keywords gender roles, music clubs, social clubs, women’s studies, West Texas music
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Elissa Stroman (ES): This is Elissa Stroman, and today’s date is November 3, 2011. Today I interviewed Francis Christmann at her home on Fourteenth Street. This interview is a part of the series of oral history interviews I’m conducting with members of the music club communities of the South Plains. Ms. Christmann has been a member of both the Allegro and the Lubbock Music clubs since the 1950s and she’s been involved in the Texas and National Federation of Music Clubs since the sixties and seventies, so we spoke on her involvement with all those organizations. Okay, so the first question I’ve been asking all the ladies is where and when were you born?
Francis Christmann (FC): I was born at the Edna Gladney Home in Fort Worth, Texas, November 15, 1928.
ES: 1928, okay.
FC: And adopted nine days later.
ES: Really, okay. Well then—interesting, okay so tell me about your parents, what did they do?
FC: Well, my mother at the time, I was—she adopted me, was just a housewife. We moved to Thurber, Texas, as I say, when I was nine days old. Thurber, now, is a ghost town.
ES: Right, it’s got a really great restaurant though.
FC: Oh yes, and that’s where the First Presbyterian Church used to be up on what we called New York Hill. The house that is still there, the big white house by the Smokestack, was our home because my grandfather was superintendent of the brick plant. All the brick you find in Lubbock, Tarleton, Texas Tech, all over at the time, he made.
ES: So when I go by and eat at the Smokestack and I look at that white house, you grew up there.
FC: If you’ll look at the Smokestack you’ll see my grandfather’s name, Joseph Lee Watson.
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ES: Oh, that is one of my questions. What’s your maiden name? I guess I should have asked.
FC: My maiden name was Dalmasso.
ES: Okay.
FC: A good Italian name, and I married a German and so we fought constantly, but it was fun making up.
ES: Now how do you spell Dalmasso?
FC: D-a-l-m-a-s-s-o.
ES: Okay.
FC: And my father actually sold Thurber when the miners went on strike. It was the only totally unioned [sic] town in the United States, but he sold it house by house. My father was with Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company. So when the miners went on strike, they said, “To heck with you.” They discovered oil in Ranger which was eight miles away.
ES: Right, so just move over there.
FC: So we moved from oil town to oil town. I actually went to the first grade in Thurber. My mother had graduated in 1925 from Thurber High School, and as I say, we went from oil town to oil town until he was sent for the last oil town to Kermit and my mother had had it. So my grandmother and grandfather were here; my grandfather, as you can tell when I was born it was the Depression years, so this is my second time around, had lied about his age to get a job with the state highway department repairing roads. But anyway, my mother decided it was time that she did something for me. I was ready for high school, and she went to work for the Dunlap Company and ended up buying for forty-two stores, junior sportswear. She was a go-getter.
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ES: Especially in that day. Well, I mean I guess it makes sense.
FC: Well this was in the forties.
ES: In the forties, okay.
FC: I graduated from Lubbock High School in ’45.
ES: Okay.
FC: And North Texas State in ’49.
ES: Okay and what were your degrees? What did you get a degree in?
FC: Voice with a violin minor.
ES: Okay, when you were growing up did your mom play any instruments?
FC: No, but she sure kept that hickory stick close to be sure I practiced.
ES: Oh really? Okay so y’all had a piano in the home?
FC: That was why I chose the violin in the beginning. At four years old when I started, we owned a piano. I’ve always been different.
ES: So you had a piano in the house, but you wanted to learn something else so you picked up the violin? Okay so you took various lessons from different people?
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FC: Yes.
ES: So as y’all moved around you would find different teachers to teach you violin? Nice.
FC: I studied with the Dunn Sisters in Lubbock.
ES: Oh okay, okay yeah.
FC: Dor. Dunn’s two, Bula and Mary for piano and Bula for violin.
ES: I’ve heard their names passed around. A lot of people have taken from them.
FC: Tech didn’t really have a music school at that time. We had one professor, Dr. Julian Paul Blitz. We were on the third floor of the ad building, and he was the only teacher. He stood at the blackboard and laughed at himself most of the time, but his son was a terrific cellist. And he’s the one who started and directed for fourteen years, I know of, The Seven Last Words of Christ each year, which a couple of our Lubbock music club members participated in all that time; Madge Webster and her husband.
ES: The Seven Last Words of Christ.
FC: Uh-huh.
ES: So this was a theatrical production?
FC: Every Christmas we did it.
ES: Okay and where did it take place?
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FC: In the only auditorium we had that was in the ad building which was actually just a big classroom that they had a portable stage with three steps.
ES: But did it draw a big crowd?
FC: Oh yes, then we moved it to the First Baptist Church and got even a bigger crowd, and I think that was really the start of First Methodist group that has carried on since then with their plays and what have you.
ES: And this was in the forties then? The late forties?
FC: No, the early forties.
ES: The early forties, okay. I can’t do math very fast in my head, so—
FC: Well actually middle forties because that would be ’46, 7, and 8 before I transferred to North Texas and luckily studied with Mary McCormic, who was Mary Garden’s protégé. They were known for their Micaela’s [from the opera Carmen] all over the world.
ES: Okay, so I’m trying to think, other than the Last Words of Christ when you—what other musical memories do you have of Lubbock from your high school years?
FC: I was a charter member straight out of high school for the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra, but it would be the orchestra from Lubbock High, which Ms. Dunn directed at that time.
ES: Because the Lubbock Symphony as we know it now came about in the late fifties, right?
FC: No, actually ’46 will Bill Harrod.
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ES: Okay.
FC: And then the Allegro Music Club sponsored the children’s concert which I chaired for seventeen years until the school system and the government could not get along. There was an accident with a school bus and a train that had nothing to do with music, but through the years our husbands borrowed busses from the different churches in Lubbock and they would drive them. They would take a bunch for the ten o’clock performance. They’d pick them up as they delivered the second bus for the twelve o’clock performance. Then they’d go pick them up again, but anyway, it was a full day, and as I say, our husbands were the drivers of the busses or got their friends to help them drive the busses, but the law came about that you must have a chauffer’s license to drive a bus and carry liability insurance. Well, of course we couldn’t—as a music club, we didn’t have the funds to do that. So that’s what happened. We charged each student. It was third through sixth grade, fifty cents, and return that to the music division of Lubbock High School. See, that was even before Coronado or Monterrey.
ES: Ah okay. So it was a way of putting money into the music department while letting the grade school kids get interested in performing. So Lubbock had school busses. Could y’all not get one of the regular Lubbock busses?
FC: They said it would interfere with their pickup and delivery of people and of course, they would have to come up with funds, too, for insurance.
ES: That makes sense. And so it was an optional thing for the kids then. They didn’t necessarily have to go.
FC: Like National, right now, and when I hold the Ellis [Competition for Duo Pianists] in Jackson, Mississippi, we were with an insurance company that will cover that two day audition for the small fee of fifteen dollars because we’re so large they cover it to one million dollars.
ES: Oh wow.
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FC: So all the junior festivals and everything now through National are covered, but we couldn’t cover it with school system.
ES: Okay, okay. What else? What other musical things do you remember from high school? Is there other stuff that the music clubs did?
FC: Not really, not really. Lubbock wasn’t that big then, either.
ES: That’s true. So you went off to college and then you came home right afterwards. Did you join music clubs like the minute you got back home or what got you invested in it?
FC: No, when I married in 1954, is when I joined the Allegro Music Club and I had to audition.
ES: That’s what I’m hearing, that used to be the standard. You’d have to audition.
FC: But Lubbock Music Club—I didn’t join Lubbock Music Club for several years after I joined Allegro. We used to fight for prestige.
ES: For prestige, okay. So, what made you choose Allegro over Lubbock Music Club initially?
FC: Because particularly of those two women in that picture.
ES: Okay so it was the ladies.
FC: At the time, this lady was president of—had been president of Texas Federation at the time I joined. This is Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Raymond Marshall. She became my mentor. She would always say, “I have the car if you’ll drive,” when she would go around the state visiting clubs and what have you.
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ES: Was she the one that told you, you should join?
FC: Sure and encouraged me and what have you. Incidentally, she was the first homecoming queen for Texas Tech.
ES: Really?
FC: Except she always said, “I don’t know why I was Homecoming Queen. We had nothing to come home to. It was the first year for Texas Tech.”
ES: There was an admin building, right? They at least had one building that first year?
FC: Well, but this was during that first year that she was homecoming queen.
ES: Nobody else was coming home. They were all just there.
FC: Yes.
ES: So that’s kind of the idea I’ve been getting is that most people joined music clubs because they had other people tell them, “Hey, you should come out to the club.”
FC: Right, and it’s still that way.
ES: Right, its very word of mouth, very if you know somebody that’s already involved.
FC: Allegro’s new member from North Dakota, it’s because our national president at this moment is from North Dakota. I had known her—North Dakota used to be part of Central Region and when I was vice president of Central Region, she was the state’s vice president. So when I found out
12 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program from Carolyn Nelson that she had moved to Lubbock, I immediately called and said, “Hey, when are you going to the meeting with me?”
ES: Right, right okay. What do you remember about the club meetings in the early years? What were the meetings like? Like Allegro, when did it meet and where did it meet?
FC: We always met on Wednesday afternoons because—let me put it this way, the two music clubs were more or less designed for the musicians and teachers. Lubbock Music Club always met in the morning. That was for the private teachers. Allegro met at three thirty or four for the public school teachers. If that helps give you an idea of how come.
ES: Well that would show different demographic—who was at Allegro versus who was at Lubbock.
FC: And it’s still—well, we’ve all gotten old and the world has changed. The juniors are the ones that are keeping us alive and going and the Young Artists. That’s why I love to work with the Young Artists and always have. We seniors are getting old, but we seniors are the only ones left that don’t need jobs. We’re retired. It’s a horrible thing to say, but the younger members are just barely making it. They can’t afford to go to these meetings and what have you.
ES: Well, I was talking to Marsha Evans and Madge Webster. I went to tea yesterday at Market Street and we were talking about it and they were like, “Well what are you going to do when you graduate?” and I said, “Well, I’ll probably move, get a teaching job somewhere.” And that’s kind of the problem right now, especially in the younger generation, I’m moving around a lot. I’ve got teaching jobs, or I’ve got other stuff going on and it takes up time and it’s a problem. There’s just not as much time to devote, it seems, to club work as there was.
FC: Well even, I think, when we had our children, that worked better for me, too, with Allegro because I had a wonderful husband and he was more than happy to take care of them when he got home from work which was right at the time we were having the Allegro meeting.
ES: Right, okay, well, and I would think Lubbock Music Club would be good if you had school-aged children because while they’re at school, you could take a break from being cooped up in the house and go to a morning meeting maybe or something.
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FC: But that was my whole purpose of the retreat was to say, “How are we going to get the young marrieds back in the music club before we all die and it folds?”
ES: Right.
FC: What incentive can we give them? See, these Young Artists take their money and run. They don’t come back and join the club. Steven and Naomi have the duo pianist. They have been wonderful. They are my kids. In fact, they sign all their e-mails, “Your kids.” All the others that we have had, maybe I hear from them for six months and then they’re gone, they’ve moved, they’re doing something else.
ES: You know, I’m trying to—this research that I’m doing right now, this presentation that I’m giving, I’m kind of serving as—I feel like I’m serving as spokeswoman. I’m saying, “This is what the club is,” and I’m telling other people about it to the rest of the class. So I’m trying to figure out a way of understanding, you know, the aging demographic. Is it a change in just women’s roles in the home or how women are in society? How do you see it?
FC: Right now, most of them are forced to work. When I joined the music club, it was not only a learning experience, but it was social, interacting, feeling like you were really doing something for your community. Now, what can the community do for me?
ES: Ah, okay, yeah, it’s more—tables have turned.
FC: Yeah it has just changed.
ES: But the community really needs—and I feel like especially in this day in age when we’re losing arts funding—students in public schools really need an opportunity to go to symphony orchestra concerts.
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FC: Well, they tried them and still, until we changed directors in the high school music department, they tried for a while to do the symphony concerts on their own, but it just didn’t work. We were too old to run up and down those steps. I mean, if you do record this, it’s all right.
ES: Hold on, I can pause it.
FC: Oh okay.
ES: Let’s see if I can.
Pause in Recording
FC: I’m telling all of my children.
ES: Well tell me more about your kids. How many kids do you have?
FC: Two.
ES: Two.
FC: And one of them is the big one up there with the Tech sticker.
ES: Nice, nice.
FC: That’s Charles Junior and he’s with the next one, the lieutenant governor from New Mexico, but he is an electrical engineer from Tech.
ES: Did you have your kids learn music when they were growing up? Did you have them in lessons?
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FC: No, Charlie loved music. He was in the choir. In fact, he went with Coronado to Los Angeles when they won some competition, but that was almost caused a divorce in junior high. We did music, now not piano, my daughter did piano, but when he came to junior high his father thought it was time for shop and football. He was a big boy and when he would come home with bruises from here to here, Momma didn’t like that.
ES: I don’t blame you.
FC: So we sort of changed that when we got to high school and he went back. He does have a beautiful singing voice, but that was just his recreation. My daughter Carol got her degree from TCU in modern dance. She started at the dance department at Tech, and at one time was their pom coach, but she has a dance studio here, and I’ve always thought of her as an awfully good hoofer, even if modern dance was her degree.
ES: That’s great.
FC: She has had her students all over the United States in contests and what have you. I’ve driven three-fourths of them over that distance.
ES: That’s wonderful. So at least music’s being passed down through the generations.
FC: And it was wonderful for the fact that when Carol started teaching dance, we no longer had the pianist, it was strictly records. Which he had had enough music, she could count.
ES: That’s always helpful, yes.
FC: So her students were always on beat or I would have killed her. But that was the reason they always came home with one of the prizes. But as I say, she had them all over the United States in different competitions and workshops. But she was lucky, as I was lucky. My husband, her father, could afford to let us do it.
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ES: Has she ever been involved in club work? Did she ever join any of the clubs?
FC: Not really, no because she was always teaching, the little kids in the morning and the big kids at night, you know, after school. And she still does that.
ES: I’m wondering if it’s a generational thing. Like almost the next generation after y’all, the women started working more and taking on more responsibilities.
FC: It could be; it could be.
ES: Do you know of very many daughters of club women that are in the Lubbock music clubs?
FC: Not really, they come as guests and perform for us at times, but actual membership? No, I don’t think so.
ES: That’s something interesting to think about.
FC: No, I don’t think so.
ES: I never thought of that until just now, I was thinking if it was passed down generations—at least a love of music and a love of the arts is passed down.
FC: Choir members, church choir members and things like that, yes.
ES: Right, right. What other things through the years, you know, in the last seventy years, have the clubs done either Allegro or Lubbock Music Club as outreach stuff? There was the symphony orchestra stuff. What other community involvement can you remember?
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FC: Well, let me think. We have presented that piano that is at the Women’s Club was purchased by the Allegro Music Club for the officer’s club at Reese during the war for the USO. When Reese closed, we got our piano back. You mean something like that?
ES: Yeah, something along those lines, but that’s a really interesting story. Was there ever a music club out at Reese or anything along those lines?
FC: Yes, we had a club out there at one time.
ES: What was it called, just the Reese Air Force Base Music Club?
FC: I think so; I don’t honestly remember.
ES: But it was for like the officers’ wives?
FC: Officers’ wives, yes, and we would invite them to come to our programs or we would help furnish programs for them.
ES: Okay, interesting.
FC: And I don’t think we let Lubbock Music Club help us much. There was competition between the two of us, and actually, in a way, there still is, but that’s good in a way.
ES: So Allegro broke off of Lubbock Music Club. Do you know why? Were you ever told that story?
FC: No, I don’t honestly know except for the fact that they felt like they needed to have a club that the public school teachers could attend.
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ES: Okay, and Madge just told me yesterday there was a music appreciation club?
FC: Yes, we at one time had four music clubs actually in Lubbock, but they were all small. As district president, which Marsha is now, you know, there are three clubs.
ES: Right.
FC: I had twenty.
ES: You had twenty?
FC: Yeah, I had all the way from New Mexico border down to Post and Snyder.
ES: Yeah, Marsha was telling me that there were about nine clubs about a decade ago. There were still nine clubs, but now it’s down to three. And so in 1970, you were district president in 1976?
FC: No, I was state president then.
ES: Okay.
FC: So this was in the sixties.
ES: In the sixties.
FC: There were twenty.
ES: Twenty clubs?
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FC: It’s like when I was central region vice president I had twelve states. Now there are just five for southcentral because we split northcentral, but that’s the difference in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Texas. You know, they honestly felt that the five clubs we have in south had more prestige and more clubs at that time, and they didn’t have a shot at ever doing anything nationally. So that’s why we split. Let the truth be known.
ES: I thought it also might have been a traveling thing. It’s logistically a little better.
FC: It’s a lot to do with it, but we still travel just about as much.
ES: And that’s amazing to me.
FC: I visited all twenty states during that four years and did a monthly newsletter from them. That’s why I know all these people nationally. And nobody right now wants to work their way up. They want immediate gratification that’s a younger generation.
ES: See, I know I’m on the low end of the totem pole being a new member, you know, and I know it’s going to—I feel like I should pull my weight.
FC: Sure.
ES: I was telling them yesterday, I was like I feel like I should be performing at one of the music club meetings or bringing food or something, but since the program was already set, but especially next year for sure. So in the 1960s when you were district president, did you attend every meeting at every one of these towns?
FC: Oh no, not every meeting.
ES: But at least visit them once?
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FC: I was getting invited to each one of the clubs to be their guest and their speaker during that time.
ES: Do you remember some of the towns that had clubs that don’t anymore?
FC: Sure, Snyder, Post, Crosbyton, Idalou, Levelland, Seagraves, Plains, and Brownfield, bunches.
ES: So almost every town had a club then, a bigger sized town. Amazing.
FC: But we had nothing better to do and money to do nothing else. Really, we were just coming out of the recession then.
ES: Right, and especially in the fifties there was a lot of—yeah, that makes sense.
FC: That gave us something to work for.
ES: Well, especially in Lubbock when the towns were still building up on the South Plains. It was something to help the towns have this sign of music. I’m trying to think, so how did you work your way up? Tell me about that. You became district president in the sixties. I’m sure there were positions before that?
FC: I was both club presidents and then a district president, then state vice president, state president.
ES: And that was in the seventies, right?
FC: Yes.
ES: Okay.
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FC: And then at that time we had what we called a national district president so we were divided then with about five states in each one. I served as a district president. Also, our main job was to hold the young artist auditions before they went to national. After that, I was a regional vice president, and after that I did the manual which gave me my first opportunity to serve on the executive committee, and I finished last time, my twenty-first year, and I will be on it, if I live that long, to have been the only person who’s served more than twenty years because by then I would have served twenty-five years as a member of the executive committee. But in between, I’ve had chairmanships galore I did the Young Artists for nineteen years before I just ran out of time and energy. Then I started helping them. Golly Moses, just name the committee; I’ve had it at one time or another.
ES: So what got you so interested in being so involved?
FC: People ask for my help and advice and I decided, “Well dad gommit, being an only child, adopted, selfish, I ought to get something out of this.” That’s honest.
ES: Yeah, well, I’m an only child so I understand that. It’s just there’s a lot of people that attend club meetings and they just go for the hour or two and then that’s enough for them, and I just find it amazing, fascinating that you’ve been so involved.
FC: It was just something I had always loved. My mother encouraged me in every way possible. I had a marvelous family. My husband was afraid not to go along with it.
ES: So he was always supportive then of you?
FC: Oh very, very.
ES: I guess there was a lot of babysitting and juggling of the kids while you were going off.
FC: And he was an independent.
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ES: That’s good.
FC: He got a duel degree in geology and petroleum engineering from Colorado School of Mines. He got the silver diploma when he graduated because he had over 200 hours. And just before I lost him, just two months before I lost him, he got to make his fiftieth anniversary at Mines and exchange it for a gold diploma.
ES: Wow.
FC: So he always worked independently. He had his own business and what have you. His brother was also a geologist.
ES: So that’s a nice luxury that y’all had: flexible scheduling to allow for this sort of thing. Now, I’m thinking of the scheduling aspects. It feels like I’m jumping around a lot.
FC: No, it’s all right.
ES: The club meetings, when you joined, about how long were they?
FC: One hour and a half at the most.
ES: Okay so they weren’t—structurally, were they about—how does a club meeting of today compare to when you first joined?
FC: There’s not a great deal of the difference except maybe we take longer to be refreshed or have lunch, you know, because they were not luncheon sessions, they were in people’s homes.
ES: Right, but there was always little refreshments and what not in people’s homes?
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FC: Oh yes, and then we went straight to business and straight to the performances.
ES: Okay, coming from an outsider. I grew up and my dad was a Lion so I went to Lions Club meetings a lot. So when I walked in it felt, you know, the protocol and the procedures of the meetings felt a lot like that, but at the same time if feels like an older tradition, an older meeting style. It felt like—I don’t want to say walking back in time, but it feels like—
FC: Well it is.
ES: It’s kind of a constant, you know, the years have changed, but the meetings have kind of stayed the same.
FC: That’s the reason anymore I’m a patron member because nine-thirty in the morning, sometimes my knees aren’t working at nine-thirty, so I don’t make as many Lubbock Music Club meetings.
ES: Well, and that chapel is really, really cold where they perform. Even if you can get your knees working, they might stiffen up once you get in there.
FC: And then two, if I want to use a ramp, I have to go around to the east parking lot and walk clear through the church. That is my church. In fact, my husband was the third elder emeritus, and there hasn’t been any since him. So we’ve only had three at this particular church.
ES: So were you instrumental in getting the meetings to that venue? To that present venue in the church?
FC: No, that was just done in the last two years, three years at the most.
ES: And some of the ladies had been saying that was because it was just logistically hard to get to other people’s houses and entertain so that’s why y’all have a venue there. Is that—?
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FC: We’ve gotten old. See, that’s it. The young folks didn’t mind walking, parking and walking half a block.
ES: Oh that’s true—parking. I was just also thinking of getting the house ready, moving the couches so you’ve got room around the piano and that sort of thing would be difficult as well.
FC: We’d take half or maybe almost the whole block on both sides.
ES: Well because there’s usually about fifty members typically from what I was reading, but usually a meeting would have about thirty people. Even if there was carpooling, that’s still a good fifteen to twenty cars. So can you remember some of the more interesting programs through the years? Were there any that really stand out in your mind? Really great performances or really interesting music or does it all blend together?
FC: It all kind of all—let’s just say blends together because I just—Ira Schantz and Madge and Rex that did the solos when I was a freshman at Tech and maybe a senior in high school. We would do the Seven Last Words. I always thought they were terrific and looked up to them very much. Ira was a Lubbock boy, but he taught for at least twenty years at TCU. He’s gone now. In fact, most of all my old buddies are.
ES: Well, I was talking to Carolyn Gunter, and I was like, “Well do you have some names of people I should talk to about the Lubbock Music Club?” And she said, “Well most of them died last year.” And I said, “Oh no, don’t tell me that, that’s awful.” That’s not what I wanted to hear.
FC: Well see, Carol was in Paducah and we had a music club in Paducah. I didn’t say that. I had forgotten, but I just did that club and she was concert pianist material when she was younger, just out of this world.
ES: She told me about her dad being a piano salesman out there, and her mom was really involved in club work back in those days and getting people involved.
25 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program
FC: And she lost both of them at the same time.
ES: Really? She did not tell me that, wow.
FC: Well, they both were quite, quite ill, and please don’t talk about this, but he shot her and then himself rather than face what was coming on.
ES: Well, that’s why she didn’t bring it up then.
FC: Yeah.
ES: Well at least they were together.
FC: And she had a sister and as far as I know, the sister may still be living, but it was anytime as state president, I needed somebody good on the state program. I would ask Carolyn to come.
ES: She’s still amazing because she’s still memorizing everything. She’s still playing.
FC: She makes a few hit and misses here, but no.
ES: It’s not perfect, but it’s still—
FC: Her husband was the agricultural district manager is the reason they moved to Lubbock. Billy was a nice, nice guy.
ES: You were telling a story at one of the meetings about meeting Carolyn back in the day. Can you tell that to the recorder so that I can hear that story again? Because I can’t remember what all you said that day. I was trying to write and—
26 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program
FC: I’m not sure I remember.
ES: Something about you heard her play and you were trying to get her at different venues.
FC: Yes, yes. When I visited the music club that she was a member of as the district president, I heard her play and I thought, This young lady is going somewhere. We’re pretty close to the same age. In fact, I might be just a couple of years older. I’m not sure, but I said, “She has to come to the district meeting.” She says, “No, I don’t do well in front of crowds.” I said, “Well you’re going to learn to.” And she did. She played fabulously. My next opportunity was when I was state president, and she played for at least two of my four conventions and maybe one of the board meetings, but she was always so gracious, and Billy said, “If you want her, I’ll get her there.” That was her husband. I just felt like she was sitting in a little town not getting recognition because she really was concert material and should have had a concert career.
ES: Well, it is one of the wonderful things about the clubs is that you get the opportunity to play and you can get wider exposure. You may not be playing Carnegie Hall like the Young Artists or something, but even just playing at the meetings, playing at the state convention; it still is an outlet. So that’s really nice. I’m trying to think, so tell me about what you do today with all the national—we’ll talk more now about the—because I know there’s a lot.
FC: Well, at the moment really, being in charge of the national office that does all the printed material, gets out everything, you might say, that we need with Jennifer. And the Ellis Committee; I’m a member of the finance committee; I’m a member of the competition and awards. I almost said that wrong and my friend from Fort Worth, Betty Hall, would have charged me a dollar. It used to be scholarships and awards, and they decided that didn’t sound good so they changed it to competition and awards and it took us many years to change. So every time someone would sign up in a national meeting say scholarships, “One dollar, please.” So we taught ourselves to stop saying it. Actually, that’s about all I’m really doing. Of course, I work with the Young Artists. I’m not as busy, but I don’t have the energy and what have you.
ES: And you still stay, I mean, it’s still a time commitment, it’s still quite a lot of stuff.
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FC: Oh very, very. With the retreat we just had, that was extremely interesting to me because Carolyn had invited four ladies that actually have no national experience. They are state, junior festival chairman out of Colorado. When we had the national meeting in Colorado, all day long Saturday, even while the seniors were meeting, they were having junior day and festivals and what have you. Steven and Naomi, my duo piano, Carnegie Hall participants, were part of the judges for a duo. What should I say? It was not a contest, but it was to introduce duo pianos to juniors.
ES: Okay, so kind of like an exhibition-type thing.
FC: Yes, it was the teacher was the second piano, but they did it so cleverly that I was extremely impressed. Now, I’ll answer your first question in a second, but it was from them, was never criticized. There’s always something good you can say to the student.
ES: Which is true, you can always find a positive in it all but—
FC: With everyone they heard, they would say, “Hey, that was wonderful. Now, there were a couple of notes here, but gosh, you got over it so quick. I know the next time you play it’ll be perfect.” You know, that was their whole attitude. Well, going back to the retreat and the junior people that we had, they wanted to turn the whole thing into a junior division deal by changing rules and regulations. That’s fine, there are a lot of rules and regulations that could be changed and possibly should be changed, but that to me did not help the federation. We have to work on the senior membership and get them—the newlyweds. If they loved music and did music in college, what happened to them after they got married and had their kids? Why won’t they come join the music clubs now? What can we do to interest them in what we’re doing?
ES: The one thing I can think of that has really been interesting to me is the word of mouth aspect, like it was really hard for me to find anyone that was a member because I didn’t know any of the members. I had Madge’s name on a report that said she donated the scrapbooks to the Southwest Collection, but it took a lot of internet searching for a couple of members that I could get an e- mail or a phone number.
FC: She doesn’t do e-mail very much.
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ES: Right, so I ended up getting in touch with I don’t even remember who, but it took a while and I just wonder if there’s been a generational disconnect—
FC: There has.
ES: —and so it’s hard for my generation, even if we are interested, to even know it’s available, even that outlet’s available.
FC: You are saying exactly what I was trying to say. We can’t concentrate on one group unless we assure that one group will make the next step. Now the awards and prizes and what have you are wonderful, but still, and it gives the young people exposure, but we still have to do things. This is the type of award that you get in the State of Texas for junior festivals for the state competition as well as monetary award.
ES: So you’ll just get a little plaque and it’ll just say “All-State Musician” or it’ll say whatever awards you’ve won, and it’ll have the Texas Federation seal on it.
FC: Seal on it. The president just before me started this, Laura Lance, from Gonzalez, Texas. So actually I gave the first of these out because she set up the mechanism, and then she still works with them all this time, and we’re down in San Marcos now, is where we hold them, and the presiding president is there and shakes their hands, and says, “You did wonderful.”, and gives them their plaque. They just beam, but we have to have the senior organization.
ES: It seems like, especially if you’re going to continue to have these junior competitions, you’ve got to have a senior level to run it, to be the muscle of the operation, to get everything organized and whatnot.
FC: And all we do in national is keep statistics on the federations. The states run their own.
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ES: I guess that was a question I had. Well, I had this inherent philosophical question. What’s the benefit of the club being federated? That was when I was coming in because I had read, “This club is federated.” I was like, “Why is that so important?” But I understand now, it’s a network.
FC: Right, but we’re losing our top—no, it’s an honor and everybody will fight over being president, but we’re losing our national chairman because all of the paperwork and the time consuming.
ES: You know, I just thought, Have a music club, help out the community. Why does it need to have all this extra stuff? You know, all the Texas and the national, but if you’re connected to this scholarship competition and whatnot, that’s immensely helpful. You get bigger prizes and more prestigious awards.
FC: Some of the states have had kids that were as young as eight, nine years old when their festival, then they have gotten a state prize and they’ve ended up being Young Artists.
ES: So it’s a nice little—it leads to other things; that’s good. I’ll go on the hierarchy—the district president just kind of oversees all of the clubs.
FC: Texas—how many have we had now? Eight, six or eight districts. We used to have twelve when I was president, so I have to remember, but I don’t think we have but six anymore.
ES: And so your job as district president is to obviously visit the club at least once a year.
FC: In your district, yeah.
ES: Is there anything else?
FC: And try to give them a pep talk.
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ES: Oh okay, so you’re kind of the, “Let’s keep going, let’s keep our focus on—”
FC: Like one of my—and I have copies, but one of the favorite speeches I would give is, “If you had not been a member of this organization, you would have missed the concert at the UN where we actually have an ambassador. And you would have missed such and such in concert.” But if you had not, you would have missed.
ES: So pointing out all the benefits of being involved in the club.
FC: Yeah, but if you can get an enthusiastic speech like that, it helps.
ES: And it keeps people going to meetings.
FC: But who your age has time to write a speech and go give it?
ES: Well, I will say I have been giving—I’ve has a couple of conference presentations the last couple weeks, so I’m still writing speeches and giving them out.
FC: But not just for fun.
ES: Right, right. So as district president, do you report to the Texas Federation?
FC: To the state.
ES: And give a report of club activities?
FC: Yeah and then that person, that’s the reason I got this out, I thought maybe you might like to have it. That’s the chairman’s report.
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ES: Oh, that would be great.
FC: National Chairman’s report so you can see what states have—I think that’s last years.
ES: Yeah, 2011, well so this year.
FC: This year—how each state reported or what they said to the national chairman that then reported to us at the national meeting.
ES: Okay, and so what kind of things would they report? Number of scholarships given out, or—?
FC: Chamber music, how many clubs had chamber ensembles, what were the size of the ensembles, how many times did they perform? You know things like that. It’s just a permanent record. And all those white notebooks, the big ones, are minutes of meetings since ’87. I’ve got the others out in the store house, starting in ’76.
ES: Oh wow. So the national meeting then is really just an attempt to compile all the data.
FC: And be sure that all the certificates are mailed and sent.
ES: So that kind of—I guess it’s just a lot of paperwork.
FC: Right.
ES: You were talking about not having a lot of national interest because it’s all about crunching numbers kind of and—
FC: It is, and we’re all getting too old to add.
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ES: Do you think there’s more that can be done on the state and national level to make it more appealing for others?
FC: If we could figure out some way to put them in the spotlight, even if it’s all only for two minutes, they might think, Well, next time I’ll get four minutes. And this wasn’t all that bad.
ES: Yeah, so just putting more of a spotlight on these.
FC: And I’m not sure how much you know about our summer music camps.
ES: Is that the one in the Ozarks?
FC: Yes and Brevard. I’ll tell you what happened at the retreat. My grandmother was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, so I call Mississippi home while a very dear friend was there—in fact, she is coordinator which is the manual. We went out to dinner, about six of us, and as we walked in, here is this big buck deer on the wall. A very fancy, fancy—I got the bill the other day, and I’m on American Express, restaurant. I looked up at her and I said, “Hey, I’ve got a dollar bill,” and looked at George Keck, he and Ouida were with us. I said, “And George, I’ll give you another five dollars if you’ll crawl up there and stab that horn with this dollar bill” because Beth McCauley is chairman of the Brevard Camp like Carolyn is for Opera in the Ozark. Their big thing has been bucks for Brevard. That’s their theme. We’ve done skits like Beth had fake one dollar bills because instead of Washington she had the deer head, you know, the buck head. So two years ago—well, two conventions ago—I stole the money they had. I left the central region and went into South Central and stole the money and ran out with it. One meeting ago I repented. I gave it back to them and cried. And now at the next meeting, I’m going to go in again and say, “Hahaha, I gave you counterfeit. “ I still have your money. You’ve got to raise more. So we do funny things like that, and actually, before we left the restaurant, George Keck had talked the maître d’ into taking mine and one other lady’s. We left and there were two dollar bills hanging on the antlers—Bucks for Brevard. So everybody has their own thing, and there’s one in California, another one, Opera in the Pacific. So that’s what we work toward, things to do like that.
ES: So you raise money to put on the camp itself to make sure it can be run and then students—?
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FC: Students that can come and stay and actually perform in the operas. Brevard is very similar to Opera in the Ozark except it’s more attune to instrumental orchestras. They do do operas, but it would be Pirates of Penzance.
ES: Right, right, it’d be operetta a little bit more.
FC: Right.
ES: Okay.
FC: Whereas Opera in the Ozark does grand opera,s and then maybe one night they feature the opera orchestra, you know. So each camp has its own thing.
ES: And so you just go to the camp that—
FC: So I guess that really got me more interested in that than anything else. As you see all these little plaques around, and I’ve got a cabinet full of glass ones. I finally said, “Carolyn, if you send me”—and I’ve tried this for five years, but this year it worked—“anymore of this, I’ll never come back to Opera in the Ozarks. Take that money you’re spending and put it somewhere else.” So I got a certificate this time, finally.
ES: Very nice.
FC: But no, we have fun doing what we’re doing. And sometimes when you’re well in your eighties as I am, that is truly something to look forward to, but I would love to be mentoring someone younger.
ES: So when you joined, you said you had a mentor. Was that typically what would happen? A younger member would join and you’d kind of have somebody watch over you?
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FC: More or less.
ES: Okay.
FC: I just happened to luck out because her husband and my husband were golf partners, and she had, as I say been in it awhile. She had been a past state president, and she was determined I was going to be a state president. She would always say, “I’ll furnish the car if you’ll drive it because I don’t like to drive and we can be roommates and it won’t cost as much.”
ES: Right and I don’t mind driving if I’ve got somebody sitting in the passenger seat because it’s just very boring.
FC: And we would talk all the way about a little of everything because she had been a district, national district president and had been on the board and all this good stuff. So she sort of helped me.
ES: So they just show you the ropes initially and make sure. That was something else that came up yesterday, you know, the fact that all I had to do to become a member these days is just mail in a check and I’m a member and that’s kind of why some people were taken aback. It’s like, Oh, she’s a member now, because back in those days you either had to do an audition, but didn’t you also have to be voted upon?
FC: Oh heck yes.
ES: And so you’d have—tell me about that process. You’d have to play a piece and then tell who you were and give your background and all of that?
FC: I was invited to a meeting to be a guest and also perform on the program which was my audition. I’ll never forget, I did “Pace, Pace” from La Forza Del Destino. I was a dramatic soprano, as you can tell from my speaking voice. I had a B flat, but not a C, and I had to reach for the B flat. They said, “Would you mind stepping into the next room?” And they voted whether I could get
35 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program in or not, and the gal ahead of me didn’t get in. She played the piano, and she didn’t make it, and I did.
ES: That was another question I was going to have. So some girls wouldn’t make it, wouldn’t get in.
FC: That’s right, you had to show that you had the ability to perform, and if you performed well, that normally meant you had the ability to help someone else with their music.
ES: Did you have to give like a formal introduction and say who you were or anything like that?
FC: No, my sponsor, which was Dion introduced me and told my education, teachers, and what have you.
ES: Yeah because that came up on—I just went blank on her name, Marsha Evans’ sister, but she was like, “We don’t even know your background. Where’d you get your degree? Do you even play an instrument?” “Yes, why yes I do.” I didn’t even think of that. I feel like I should have told y’all or I should have been up there and said, “Let me play for you real quick so you know I’m not totally inept.”
FC: But that’s the reason they gave up on it because it started getting harder and harder to actually get a performer, but we needed more than performers. We needed the ones that would fill out the papers and the ones that would be hostess and greeters and give speeches about the program, not speeches, but talk about what we were going to have on the program.
ES: Have a master of ceremonies, mistress of ceremonies, yes.
FC: So we learned the hard way that it had to be a mixture.
ES: What else has adapted over the years then other than the entrance, the memberships, you know, you don’t have to play?
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FC: The fact that we have more guests than we have members sometimes.
ES: Okay, and it seems like the ladies were saying yesterday that y’all used to be more strict about things, like you’d have fines if somebody showed up late.
FC: Oh yeah, well like my dollar.
ES: Right, so if you showed up late or if you didn’t show up at all.
FC: We were treated like students with the president being the headmaster.
ES: You had to be on your best behavior then.
FC: We were representing the National Federation of Music Clubs which we were very proud to do.
ES: Well, it seems like, too, the club work in the earlier years was that you were musical ambassadors to the community, so you had a certain air of music civility to uphold.
FC: If they needed a performer, we performed. As I said, First Christian Church was my church. However, I was raised a Baptist, and when I was going to Tech singing for funerals, Madge and I, both at fifty cents a funeral, we couldn’t make it. So we started doing church jobs, and I sang for six years at the Christian Scientist Church, but it made me memorize a solo every week which was wonderful. I could use the sheet music before the Mary Baker Eddy, but my Baptist minister told my mother I was going to the bad place. And she was a good Baptist at that time. Later my husband and I joined the First Christian Church, but we did all sorts of things like that.
ES: That was something I forgot to ask you. You were involved in club work, but you were still performing around town. You were still doing—
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FC: Yes, and besides, they paid five dollars a solo at the Christian Science Church at that time or it was ten dollars if you’d go to their confession on Wednesday night and sing, too.
ES: Wow, that’s good money.
FC: It was.
ES: I would have done it. You get to expand your repertoire and make some good money.
FC: It was a wonderful experience. Like I say, I was not affected because man, if I even stuck a pen in my finger I went to see a doctor, but the fact that I’ve never known nicer people in my life, and I was in high school doing this, and I had to memorize a solo for every Sunday morning as well as sing out of their hymnal and learn to take three steps back after I had finished the solo. One, two, three, and waited for the first reader to say something before I could sit down again.
ES: There were proper rules.
FC: Right, so actually I learned as well as becoming more proficient in what I was doing, disciplined, shall we say.
ES: Right, what other gigs, what other jobs did you have, musical jobs through the years, do you remember others?
FC: No, I actually never taught or earned anything from that. I was paid by the Episcopal Church by being the alto they could follow, and the choir they had four paid positions, and I was, as a dramatic soprano, could sing the alto.
ES: Well that’s what a lot of the Tech students do now. They’re the scholarship choir members.
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FC: I know we have some at First Christian, but that was really—I sang at every church whether I got paid or not if they asked me. I guess not anymore.
ES: I’m trying to think—well let me check my list to see if there were other things.
FC: But no, I was lucky. I didn’t have to really make a living doing it, the extra money helped, but it wasn’t life or death.
ES: Your husband supported you and then you could do—
FC: And my family supported me and my mom supported me.
ES: That’s great. So how many years were you out of college before you married?
FC: Oh, a long time.
ES: A long time.
FC: Six years, six and a half years.
ES: That gives me hope then, that’s good. And so in that time that you weren’t in school, you were living here though, right?
FC: I was living here, and I was working at Dunlap’s, but not for my mother. She made me work too darn hard. After a week I said, “I’ll work in any department doing anything.” That’s where I got what little business sense I had. I spent the summers filling in for the one who was on vacation. So I did everything from debit accounts, accounts receivable, credit manager, even to the old fashioned telephone where you plugged it in.
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ES: You were a switch board operator?
FC: Yes, whoever was on vacation in the office, I took their place.
ES: You were kind of like what we call today, a temp. You were a temporary worker, but within Dunlap’s.
FC: Mm-hmm.
ES: That would be fun, though. You’d never get bored because you’d always be at a different position doing something else.
FC: But when I first started, they put me in the junior department with my mother, and all she did was make me run up and down the steps to layaway or to alteration. And I said, “Huh-uh, I’ll work anywhere else.”
ES: I can’t imagine that. You don’t need that much of a workout. That’s great.
FC: But no, I guess what I really did in between time.
ES: And where was that Dunlap’s located? Was it downtown?
FC: Broadway and Texas before they built the new building which was the old, what, First Fidelity? Right across the street from the bank, Wells Fargo, it was First National.
ES: Okay, I know where you’re talking about then. Gosh, downtown’s changed so much. I mean, the tornado helped, but it’s also just changed so much over the years. I guess, kind of—well starting to wrap up a little bit, if this recording’s heard fifty years from now, which I hope that it has
40 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program some sort of lasting significance, but what do you think you hope people remember about the music clubs?
FC: How much fun they had and how many wonderful young musicians we were able to help.
ES: Okay, and—?
FC: And that we made a difference in the next generation.
ES: I don’t want to make you tear up. It seems to me there’s very much a helping of others, you know, helping the next generation, but just as much, there’s a really great fellowship aspect to it. You’ve met a lot of good people through it, you get to network and meet great musicians and make good friends.
FC: Well, it has been wonderful. This just don’t like to move. I was going to show you one other thing. I have it here twice, the book I gave you. See what she looked like. Here she is.
ES: Oh wow.
FC: And here she is there with—that’s Mary Prudie Brown, our other Texan who was a national president.
ES: Okay yeah.
FC: That’s Ward, Lucille Ward.
ES: Yeah, I think it’s really amazing, especially how she in her book is focusing on the legacy that started in the 1890s, this legacy of women helping others and helping their community. She did an amazing job of writing that book.
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FC: This was Rose Faye Thomas. These two started it, and I was a charter member.
ES: Oh okay. Let’s see. I guess the other thing that I’m curious about, hopefully this won’t get too touchy feely again, is do you think the trajectory clubs are going? The direction clubs are going, do you think it’s something that in fifty years there will still be still clubs around?
FC: I can only hope. There should be, as long as we have young people who, I guess, love to listen to music. When I make that statement, it’s not just classical music. As long as we have music—hip- hop, jazz, honkytonk—they’ll be some group that will be backing them, not necessarily groupies, but they all are, everybody needs a helping hand. That’s what I think the National Federation is.
ES: It’s just helping out American music.
FC: Yeah, we’re the helping hand. What did I do with—?
ES: Okay. Is there anything else you want me to—?
FC: Oh, this is a short synopsis of each president, it goes past Lucille.
ES: Okay great.
FC: You’ll see something, but we haven’t had the last two yet—they have not written. I don’t think we’ll ever get Elizabeth Perry’s. She got upset with us and she hadn’t been back since she was National President.
ES: It’s a four year term then?
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FC: Normally yes. You have to be reelected, but there’s only been one person they didn’t reelect, but that is just a quick synopsis about what each president has done, besides that would help with Lucille’s book.
ES: Yes definitely.
FC: And that’s what I use when I do the federation speeches.
ES: Okay, okay.
FC: But that goes through, I think, Barbara Irish or Ouida Keck, the last page.
ES: Actually, it goes through Elizabeth Parrish.
FC: Okay, well she didn’t say. All right, then we’re up to date except for the immediate past president, Lana.
ES: Well you have given me so much material. I can’t thank you enough for that.
FC: I have these full as well as the storehouse with four more and boxes which I have no idea. Somebody will throw them in the trash, but I can’t.
ES: Well if you ever want to donate them to the archive. I was talking to my boss, I was like, “I’ve got all these ladies and they’ve got this great paperwork and musical history.” And he’s like, “We don’t want sheet music.” I was like, “It’s not sheet music. It’s business notes and such, and it’s good stuff.” If you don’t want it thrown away, if you want it to have some sort of lasting—
FC: Sure, be most happy to.
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ES: That was something I was talking—
FC: They finally, I think, are telling us, at the University of Texas, that we’re about full. We were at the LBJ Library, and now they have moved us.
ES: Yeah, that LBJ Library looks like it’s—I was there last summer, and it was looking pretty full from what I could tell. It’s actually a problem that we’re having at our archive now. We’re running out of space.
FC: That’s why we hire—or didn’t hire, he’s doing it because he wants to—George Keck to work at national because he retired this year; he was music history, a doctor of music history.
ES: I knew his name sounded familiar. I’ve probably ran across his stuff through the years through what I’ve been studying.
FC: Ouida is also a doctor, but hers is in piano.
ES: Right, well this will be kind of the initial surge of research that will be done in a couple weeks, but I’ll still keep on—in the spring I’m hoping I can pick it back up with some of my interviews and interview other people, you know, start interviewing just musical ladies of the South Plains and what not.
FC: Sure, and we have a bunch in the music club.
ES: Right and it’s a good way for me to keep on attending the meetings to meet more people and to get more people because everybody’s got a great story to tell.
FC: Sue Lovett was one of our very prominent school music teachers.
44 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program
ES: Yeah, I’ve got lists of names of people who are like, “You need to talk to this person.”
FC: Of course, Doyle was around forever. In fact, he helped us with the children’s concerts.
ES: Really, okay I didn’t—
FC: But he’s no longer there.
ES: Right.
FC: And the whole policy changed when he went.
ES: Okay well anything else you want to add to the recording before I turn it off? Anything else you want to say about clubs?
FC: No.
ES: Let people a hundred years from now who are hearing your voice? I’m expanding it now, it’s not just fifty years, a hundred years from now.
FC: A hundred years from now. I’ll just hope that America will remain musical.
ES: Okay that’s good. That’s a good way to end it.
End of Recording
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