‘The beat goes on’: Lessons from this Rock Hill music icon echo throughout the region
The story begins with Frontis Brooks, the first band director at segregation-era Emmett Scott High School in Rock Hill.
Brooks started a jazz band. A sixth-grader who Brooks taught would go on to start his own bands, entertaining and instructing countless music fans across the region for more than half a century.
The sixth-grader was Bobby Plair.
First, he learned to play.
“I started on the clarinet,” said the now 95-year-old Plair.
Plair also plays saxophone, something he picked up as a Marine while guarding prisoners in Japan toward the end of World War II.
But what has followed has been a career in music few could match. One that brought music to schools that hadn’t had it, and sound-tracked hit artists known around the world.
Plair still lives in his native Rock Hill.
His jazz saxophone and Sunday morning clarinet performances have been staples in the region. Plair lives close to his children. Where former students from Fort Mill or Chester sometimes stop by to wish him well.
“I thank God for the things that happened,” Plair said. “I thank God for everything that I did coming up.”
Lionel Richie, Patti LaBelle, The Drifters
As a high school band director in York and Chester counties -- for much of his 30-plus-year career in segregated all-Black schools -- Plair’s bands never traveled much.
Plair did.
That started as a high school sophomore, when a man forming a band to raise money for a school on Saluda Street in Rock Hill approached Plair.
“I played my clarinet all over New York,” Plair said.
The band, first B.S. Plair Combo and later known simply as Plair, dates back more than six decades and still performs.
Bobby Plair Jr. started on trumpet with his dad at age 10. Brother Victor, on trombone, began at 9.
The band performed across the region, opening for artists like The Commodores with Lionel Richie, The Ellington Orchestra and Kool and the Gang.
Plair performed with fellow Rock Hill native Jimmy Ellis, famed singer of “Disco Inferno.” Plair played in the house band at the Hi Fi Supper Club, a Charlotte hot spot for musicians in the 1950s through 1970s.
“Major acts didn’t tour with a band then,” Plair Jr. said. “They would have a musical director, and they’d pick a band up in the town. So people like Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles came through. He was the band. The Drifters. Just about everybody that had a record on the charts, would come through.”
Plair never drifted too far from schools.
Long after his retirement, Plair’s band was on an approved artist roster that allowed grant money to help bring the artists to schools across South Carolina for performances.
Public school music teacher
Rudy Sanders graduated from George Fish School -- another segregation-era school -- in 1963, but when he got there he had a problem.
“I had no musical knowledge,” Sanders said. “In fact, I didn’t even have rhythm. A Black kid that didn’t have rhythm, I couldn’t even keep the beat.”
Plair sat Sanders down where their feet touched, and tapped the beat so Sanders could feel it. Plair set up a metronome. As with countless other students, Plair did what he needed to make music happen. Often, as at George Fish in Fort Mill, as the only band instructor.
“It’s hard for you to get around to each one of those instruments during class time,” Plair said. “So I would have to spend some time after school, individually, with the students.”
To this day Sanders takes his clarinet over in March to play for Plair on the former teacher’s birthday. Sanders initially didn’t know how acclaimed a musician his teacher was. Sanders caddied at a golf club where Plair’s band played.
Sanders learned the school superintendent in Fort Mill, A.O. Jones, would book Plair for social events across town. Even at spots where Black people often weren’t allowed or were discouraged to go without invitation. Other times, Sanders heard his parents talk about the show they’d just seen after a trip to Charlotte.
“He was admired by every teacher there,” Sanders said. “But Mr. Plair never tooted his horn when it came to his performance on stage. When he was in that classroom, he was an instructor.”
Plair taught high school band in Great Falls, Fort Mill and Chester. He also spent time at Clinton Junior College in Rock Hill. Plair would start students on a flutophone, similar to a recorder. A month or so in they would transition to other instruments.
“The principle is the same thing with the other instruments,” Plair said. “That’s something that’s easy to play so you start them with that. If they can learn that, they can learn other instruments.”
Plair almost couldn’t bring his talents back home to South Carolina. He finished college at North Carolina A&T, and was certified in that state. He had to go back three summers to get certified for South Carolina, and was paid only on probationary status until he was finished.
“This is the truth,” Plair said. “But you see I couldn’t see making me go back to school for that many years to get certified. That meant that I didn’t get my salary right until I got certified in South Carolina.”
Plair’s career ended well after school integration. The hours were long, but Plair committed to them.
“I knew I wasn’t getting paid nothing like I should’ve been getting paid, doing the things that I was doing,” Plair said. “I had to work after school. I couldn’t do what I was doing and do a good job, just in the school. I had to stay after school.”
George Fish alum Elizabeth Patterson White, a 1959 graduate who was both valedictorian and an all-state band performer, learned from that commitment. White went on to her own long career in education, as both teacher and administrator across two states.
“I learned a lot of how to play the clarinet from Mr. Plair,” White said. “Whatever he tried to tell me to do, I did it. He was an excellent teacher.”
Plair started the band at George Fish, as he had at Great Falls. The newness of the program, White said, was in its own way inspiring.
“Band had not been heard of there,” she said. “Being in that band might have helped me aspire to some things that I hadn’t done.”
Medal winner
Music is the common thread for Plair, but it isn’t his only contribution. Freedom Walkway downtown honors him for pioneering military service.
Plair graduated from Friendship High School in Rock Hill, in 1945. Four years earlier an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt led to recruitment and enlistment of Black military members. Plair was drafted and sent to Montford Point, a segregated part of Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He was honorably discharged from the Marines in 1946, two years prior to full military desegregation.
In 2011, President Barack Obama signed a law to award Montford Point Marines the Congressional Gold Medal. Plair received his medal in 2013. Plair was trained as an anti-aircraft gunner and was assigned to Saipan, Japan toward the end of World War II. In time off there, Plair borrowed a Marine issue saxophone and taught himself to play it.
After military service Plair went to North Carolina A&T, where he earned extra spending money as part of B.S. Plair Combo. That band earned its founder another medal. When Winthrop University began its Medal of Honor program for the arts in 2003, Plair was an inaugural recipient.
Music is family business
If music and education are pillars for Plair, one only need look at his own family to find his success. Plair Jr. on trumpet and brother Victor Plair on percussion, guitar or trombone still perform. Sister Sarah Chisolm took to piano.
Earlier this month Plair Jr. produced the Blues & Jazz Festival that spanned Rock Hill, Fort Mill and Clover. More than a dozen acts at as many sites performed in the 18th annual event, including Plair at The Gathering Space on East Main Street in Rock Hill. The band has been a regular during the festival’s run, even organizing and performing a virtual event two years ago during COVID-19.
Retired Arts Council of York County director Debra Heintz said Plair Jr. has helped book entertainment in Rock Hill since Heintz arrived in 1992.
“Once the restaurants came into town, we wanted to do something inside the restaurants to bring business downtown,” Heintz said. “Bobby and I worked together to start the Blues and Jazz Festival, with me raising the money and him booking the entertainment. He was perfect for that job because he has been in the music industry since he was about five years old — both performing with his family and then later in the band Plair.”
Lori Robishaw leads the arts council now.
“As a newcomer to Rock Hill this past year, I have learned about a number of local cultural treasures,” Robishaw said.
Plair Jr., as an artist and producer, qualifies.
“I have also learned a bit about his father and his distinguished career as a teacher, musician and band director,” Robishaw said. “Clearly this father-son duo’s contributions to York County’s cultural scene are considerable.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2022 at 9:06 AM with the headline "‘The beat goes on’: Lessons from this Rock Hill music icon echo throughout the region."
