25-Year-Old Big Band Keeps Turning Out Tunes From the ‘40s

The big band organized 25 years ago by Bruce Rhinehart of Garden Grove decided to adopt the name Society for the Preservation of Big Bands. The band did such a good job that it’s having a tough time getting playing dates these days.

“We used to work 75 to 80 jobs a year,” Rhinehart said, “and now we’re down to about 50 parties a year,” the result, he feels, of about 10 big bands that formed in the county in recent years. “We used to be just about the only big band here.”

But Rhinehart and his tuxedo-clad 15-piece band, all union members, believe that the $1,400 fee for a four-hour performance ($2,000 in Los Angeles County) may be partly responsible for the reduction in playing dates.

Another problem, Rhinehart said, is the lack of ballrooms, except in hotels, to hold large dance parties. “The old ballrooms are now bowling alleys and warehouses,” he said.

Besides that, the 20 partner-members who make up the band, originally formed by members of the Garden Grove Rotary Club, have an internal struggle.

“Half of the band feels that we should change our format and play some contemporary arrangements,” Rhinehart said. “I guess I’m too hard-headed to appreciate today’s music compared to Dorsey, Goodman, Shaw, Basie and Ellington.”

But he added: “I guess if we changed we’d work more. Organizations with a younger membership who can afford us might give us more playing dates. Well, we’ll see.”

Rhinehart, an optometrist by profession who plays alto sax in the band, talked about standing ovations during some of the group’s engagements while playing arrangements from such big league bands as Goodman and Ellington.

“I’m convinced there never was good music after the late 1940s,” Rhinehart said. “But the big band sound we play still lives on.”

A 30-handicap golfer is not a very good golfer. Robert Purzycki, 36, of Cypress, is a 30-handicap golfer.

So all duffers rejoiced when Purzycki, a golfer for six years, shot a hole-in-one using an eight iron on the 135-yard par three at Los Alamitos Golf Course.

“It was thrilling,” he said.

Remember the senior prom, when you danced close and could smell the perfume of your dance partner and the good life was just beginning?

Well that evening is going to be repeated for 300 senior citizens who sign up for the Senior Prom on May 2 at Griswold’s Hotel in Fullerton, and Pat Trotter, director of the Fullerton Senior Multi Service Center, says: “If a senior only attends one event a year, this should be the one.”

Trotter also plans to solve the major problem that plagues senior dance parties: the lack of male dance partners. “If we need to,” she said, “we’ll ask Sunrise Rotary Club members to be dance partners.” The club is co-sponsoring the dance.

She also said senior single men who attend “can expect to dance their socks off.” The night’s event includes dancing, photographs, decorated ballroom, a barbershop quartet during intermission and an after-prom breakfast.

The theme, quite properly, is “Reflections.”

Erlewin Gilbert, 62, of Buena Park, a retired Army veteran, works the entire year making sure every veteran buried in the Loma Vista Memorial Park in Fullerton has a flag and cross on his grave site for Memorial Day.

“That’s the only reason our group exists,” said Gilbert, of the American Veterans Memorial Assn., which is responsible for posting 2,000 flags and placing 2,000 crosses as well as presenting a program for the observance. “Besides American flags, we will also post two or three Confederate flags to recognize servicemen killed while fighting for the South. We’ll also have a few Canadian flags for those servicemen buried here.”

Besides the smaller flags, volunteers will post large American flags, given to the survivors of servicemen killed in action, on flagstaffs surrounding the cemetery for the day.

“It takes a volunteer group almost eight hours to complete the job,” Gilbert said. “Most of the volunteers are retired people who want to do something to remember those who gave their lives.”

Acknowledgments--Kay Perardi, of Anaheim and Jacqueline Schaar and Jean Barrington, both of Garden Grove, were awarded Thanks Badges from the Girl Scout Council of Orange County, the highest honor given for volunteer service.