Aug 27, 2005 By Glenn Tunney 8 min read

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of columns.”Mr. Montagna drove past my house down in the project,” Sammy Bill remembered. “I was practicing my trumpet one Sunday, and he came by and heard me playing.” Julius Montagna’s decision to take a Sunday afternoon drive changed Sam Bill’s life. Mr. Montagna, the Redstone High School band director until the early 1960s, was also former Brownsville Area High School band director Sammy Bill’s first music instructor, teaching him to play the trumpet in the early 1940s. Sam went on to graduate from Redstone High School, attend Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, and earn a bachelor of arts degree from California State Teachers College, all the while faithfully practicing his trumpet in hopes of becoming “another Harry James.” Little did he suspect that he would follow in the footsteps of a different musician.

As Julius Montagna drove through Republic that Sunday afternoon, he was trying to think of someone who could help him with the music program in the Redstone Township schools. His answer came to him unexpectedly, wafting on the summer breeze in the tones of Sammy’s sweet-sounding trumpet.

“He thought of me because he heard me practicing,” Sam said, “so after that, I always told my kids, ‘It pays to practice!'”

“What did Mr. Montagna have in mind for you?” I asked.

“He asked me if I wanted to teach beginning music students three days a week in the Redstone schools, and I agreed to go around to all of the grade schools to help him out. The following year, I became his full-time assistant.”

With Julius Montagna directing the high school band and Sam Bill serving as his assistant and teaching in the elementary schools, Redstone Township School District had a talented tandem instructing its students in music. Sam Bill became a full-time district employee in 1953, and the following year John Batovsky, a third-grader at Rowes Run grade school, began taking clarinet lessons in school. His instructor was Sam Bill.

“In September 1954, Mr. Bill was teaching instrumental music in the Redstone Township grade schools,” recalled John, who now lives in Chester, Va. “On Thursday afternoons, he came to Rowes Run grade school.

“That summer, before school started, I told my parents that I wanted to play music, so my dad got out his old clarinet and taught me how to play two polkas. Back in the 1920s, Dad had been taught to play the clarinet, violin and harmonica by Mr. Montagna, who had gone around to the grade schools teaching instrumental music just as Mr. Bill was doing in the 1950s.

When I reported to Mr. Bill’s music class as a third grader, I couldn’t read a note of music, but I could play Helena Polka and Barbara Polka (also called Barushka Polka) on the clarinet. I remember playing them for Mr. Bill, and he got a clarinet and joined me in a duet. I was touched.

“Nine years later in 1963 when I was a senior, Mr. Bill took over as director of the Redstone High School band for Mr. Montagna, who was having health problems. Mr. Bill brought in a couple of sheets of Italian folk music. He told me they were songs that he and his dad would play together, and he invited me to play a duet with him.

“I felt truly honored. Maybe he was thinking of that time nine years before, when we played the polkas together. That was the kind of teacher he was. He knew how to inspire his students. We were blessed to have both Mr. Montagna and Mr. Bill as music instructors and band directors at Redstone. They were the teachers that had the biggest impact on me.”

During Sam’s first decade of employment within the school district, he assisted Mr. Montagna with the high school band while taking on other duties within the schools.

Mr. Montagna knew how to please the heavily ethnic communities that made up the school district.

“The high school band under Mr. Montagna played a lot of polkas and Italian songs,” John recalled. “In the halftime shows, we played tunes like ‘O Sole Mio,’ ‘Arrivederci Roma,’ and some polkas, because that was the kind of music that was appreciated.”

For Julius Montagna, “work” was not a four-letter word.

“Mr. Montagna was a great music teacher,” said John, “and somewhat of a perfectionist. To him, you were never as good musically as you could be or thought you were. He was all about intonation, technique, phrasing and articulation. He inspired his students to practice and to be the best we could be.

“The tradition of being judged the best band in Pittsburgh’s St. Patrick’s Day parade nearly every year was started in the 1950s by Mr. Montagna, and it was a tradition that Mr. Bill continued at Redstone and later at Brownsville Area. We competed in that parade against a lot of affluent suburban Pittsburgh schools. Although very few of our students took private music lessons and most of us weren’t nearly as privileged, every year under the excellent tutelage of Mr. Montagna and Mr. Bill, we proved to be as good as any of them and better than most.”

Even though Mr. Montagna was a disciplinarian, there was a pesky longstanding tradition within the band that he was unable to eradicate.

“In my underclassmen years at the high school,” Batovsky explained, “the upperclassmen practiced ‘band initiation.’ It usually consisted of being beaten with a belt by most of the senior and junior boys in the band, plus whatever belittlement they could dream up to make you feel like a freshman. It started in August, and it usually lasted throughout football season.

“On our first day at band practice, all of us freshmen had to have a ‘race’ by pushing a penny with our nose along the sidewalk for the enjoyment of the upperclassmen. The following day, all the freshman boys came to band drills with big scabs on our noses. Mr. Montagna questioned us for a long time about it, but no one fessed up as to why we all had a scab on our noses.

“So he said we were to sit in the classroom across the hall from the band room by ourselves and talk it over amongst ourselves. We all talked about what happened, not knowing that he had gone into the principal’s office and turned on the intercom so that he could hear what we were saying. After about an hour, the upperclassmen came in and apologized, saying it wouldn’t happen again. Sorry to say, the practice didn’t stop.

“Because of the initiation, a lot of very good junior high bandsmen didn’t go out for the band in high school. We all knew of students who did very well in junior high band but gave up music entirely after eighth grade. When Mr. Bill took over the band, being younger than Mr. Montagna, he was better able to see what was happening. The initiation stopped that year because he let us know how he felt about it, and I give Mr. Bill credit for being instrumental in stopping it.”

In the fall of 1963, Sam Bill succeeded Julius Montagna as band director. Although Italian blood coursed through the veins of both men, their disciplinary and musical styles were very different, and that made 1963 an interesting transitional year for the band.

“I remember the first year I taught in Mr. Montagna’s place,” Sam Bill told me. “When I started as band director after having been the assistant for so many years, the kids knew me, but I wasn’t a Mr. Montagna.

“After three or four weeks of band practice that fall, I noticed kids gathering, three here, three there, all talking. So I said to one of my good kids, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘They miss Mr. Montagna. You’re not like him. You don’t do things like he did.’ I guess that always happens when you get a new band director.

“Well, Mr. Montagna’s band used to win the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Pittsburgh as far back as when I was in the band. So do you know when the kids finally accepted me as their band director? It wasn’t until March of that school year, when we won first place in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, playing Sammy Bill music and using Sammy Bill arrangements. Then everything was OK, but it took about a year.”

The “Sammy Bill style” of music played by the Redstone band was popular with the audiences at football games and parades. Then in 1966, the unthinkable happened. Two rival neighboring school districts, Redstone and John A. Brashear, which for so many years had been bitter adversaries on the athletic field, merged.

When Brownsville Area High School opened its doors in the fall of 1966, the potential for dissension within the merged student body was high. Next week, Sammy Bill describes what happened when his Redstone musicians and their John A. Brashear counterparts combined to form the new Golden Falcon Marching Band.

Glenn Tunney may be contacted at 724-785-3201 or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, PA 15442. Comments about these weekly articles may be sent to Editor Mark O’Keefe, 8-18 E. Church St., Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com. All past articles are on the Web at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/