Why are Fort Mill marching bands so good? The answer goes back further than you think
Times were different when the George Fish School band played, but a familiar beat still courses through the people who heard it. Due almost entirely to one man.
Bobby Plair, 95, arrived at the segregation-era school in Fort Mill in 1953. He came from Great Falls, where he’d also started a band. George Fish had singing, stage, theater and dance productions, but no band. There was no storied history of band.
“This guy really made that band,” said Rudy Sanders, a 1963 George Fish graduate. “Because folks in the neighborhood, they couldn’t afford to go out and buy instruments.”
John Sanders graduated in 1964. At a recent panel discussion on George Fish, he recalled the black pants or skirts and white shirts or blouses that Plair asked parents to assemble because the Dolphins didn’t have uniforms. Even the eventual school colors, blue and gold, came from Plair’s band. Plair got the uniforms Fort Mill High School no longer needed when that school received new ones.
“Mr. Plair started a band at the school where students knew nothing about music,” John Sanders said. “And drummers started out playing sticks on two-by-four blocks, learning the cadence. He would get instruments and repair them.”
Former band members recall the Christmas parade performances, complete with kick lines along Main Street. The drum major pointed to the sky to ready the drummers, and the fancy footwork that accompanied the music. The classical pieces students sometimes begrudgingly learned for concert season.
All three high schools in Fort Mill will march for state titles, starting this weekend. Since Plair’s time at George Fish, Fort Mill school bands have grown into a juggernaut. The bands now are something he wouldn’t have recognized then, but also something built on lessons he tried to instill.
“I think the students enjoyed it,” Plair said. “They got something out of it. And I enjoyed it too. Because they were learning. A lot of them went on to college. So I was glad that I was over that for that length of time.”
Fort Mill band success
The school district inducted five former educators into its hall of fame this spring. Three, including Plair, were former band directors. John DeLoach was inducted for starting in 1972 what has become the most public, visible demonstration of music education — competitive marching band.
Fort Mill High School owns 24 state titles. Fort Mill marches in state competitions only every other year, opting the past decade for regional or national events in odd-numbered years. Nation Ford High School opened in 2007, and already has nine state championships. Catawba Ridge High School won its first title last fall, in only its second year competing. Two of five defending state champions this year, Nation Ford and Catawba Ridge, come from the Fort Mill district.
In almost 50 years, there hasn’t been any four-year span without at least one state title for a Fort Mill school. Fort Mill won six in a row in that span, and twice more won five consecutive titles. Nation Ford twice won three in a row.
From 1981 to 1999, Fort Mill won state titles in 16 of 18 years that held championships. From 2009 to 2021, Nation Ford won nine of a possible 12 titles.
Between them, the three schools won half a dozen events already this fall featuring bands from across the Carolinas and region. Catawba Ridge won a Bands of America regional event in North Carolina. Fort Mill placed fourth at a BOA regional in Delaware.
At George Fish, Plair never marched his band in competitions. Yet the marching band dynasty developed in Fort Mill parallels the integration of schools where bands came together.
“Fort Mill has come a long ways,” said 1959 George Fish graduate, valedictorian and all-state band performer Elizabeth Patterson White. “Just to hear things that have happened and how the schools have progressed in every way, it makes me feel good.”
The George Fish era ended in 1968 when the building on Steele Street transitioned to an integrated junior high school.
One man band
At any time, Plair had about 50 students in the George Fish band. But he knew students who never touched an instrument.
“I couldn’t just teach music,” Plair said. “I had to teach other classes.”
He taught math, history and later on, drivers education. All while, at various points in his career, scouring Charlotte or Rock Hill pawn shops for instruments he’d buy and fix himself.
“He did everything,” said son and performing musician Bobby Plair Jr. “He didn’t have any assistants. You can’t mention a band director now that doesn’t have an assistant, three or four assistants. We’ve got somebody to coach the percussion. They’ve got somebody to coach the woodwinds. Somebody to coach the brass. They bring all these people in.”
A scroll through band websites — something else Plair didn’t have — for all three Fort Mill high schools shows a combined 35 staff members. They range from directors to middle school instructors to specialty coordinators for each instrument type or visual element.
There are even more listed booster club officials. Volunteer positions include coordinators for mattress, Lowcountry boil and laundry detergent sales. There are photographers and stadium concession fundraiser teams. There’s a rising freshman and mentoring committee. There are plenty of fundraising options for upcoming trips to Ireland and Hawaii. Just days ago, Catawba Ridge announced a London trip.
Plair never took the George Fish band to Ireland, Hawaii or London.
“We didn’t do nothing like that,” he said. “I carried them to Greensboro one time. I wanted them to see the school there, (North Carolina A&T). We got a school bus to take us up to Greensboro.”
Plair had to raise money for that trip. Even the most basic band elements, like the music, were a challenge.
“You can buy arrangements for everything now,” Plair Jr. said. “Those guys back then, they didn’t have arrangements of popular tunes like they do now.”
Now there’s advanced computer software to navigate, for instance, that a concert B flat is a C for the trumpet.
“They knew all this in their head,” Plair Jr. said. “Where now you just hit the computer and it tells you what note that instrument is supposed to play.”
The band was a constant on Plair’s mind.
“There were many days I remember my father hearing a tune that was popular that would be good for the band to play, sitting out there in the grocery store that my family owns, in the evening, writing out the parts for the band,” Plair Jr. said. “Doing the arrangements himself from his head.”
Plair never put a band in a marching competition the way schools do now. Not until after his time at George Fish, in Chester, would he march bands for Friday night football games.
“We didn’t do that (at George Fish),” Plair said. “No, we didn’t do halftime shows.”
George Fish did field sports teams, and the band was there to support them.
“We did concerts,” Plair said. “We would have a time of the year when we would have band concerts. We marched in parades. We played for the football games and basketball games.”
Today, high school instructors welcome new freshmen who arrive with three years of rigorous, trained instruction at the middle school level. Plair got high school students new to the band.
“I didn’t have a younger class,” he said. “I had too many other things to do.”
Segregated and integrated schools
Plair left public education in 1984. His more than 30-year career spanned segregated and integrated schools. It included the difficult transition in between them.
“It was a challenge,” Plair said. “Students’ attitude during that time, it was hard teaching children. You had to be careful what you’re doing.”
Plair started teaching in Great Falls, then came to Fort Mill before stops at Clinton Junior College and Chester. His seven years in Fort Mill were entirely during the segregation era.
“I enjoyed working in Fort Mill,” Plair said. “The superintendent of the schools (A.O. Jones), he was a nice fella. I didn’t have any problem getting instruments for the children. If I needed something, a large instrument or something, he didn’t mind buying for the school.”
Plair said Jones tried to talk him into staying when it came time to go back to Rock Hill, to Clinton.
“It was a small school,” Plair said of George Fish, “and I had some nice students to work with. Not many problems because the superintendent liked what I was doing. So it was nice. I didn’t want to leave.”
While school integration provided a more equitable education experience, it brought growing pains. Plair Jr. said there’s often a spotlight on the student impact, but not always on what integration meant for teachers. Especially at schools like George Fish in Fort Mill, Emmett Scott in Rock Hill or Barr Street in Lancaster.
“They saw a lot of those teachers that were great teachers, not have jobs when the schools integrated,” Plair Jr. said.
Or, he said, the jobs came with lower titles.
“Black principals became assistant principals,” Plair Jr. said. “Black coaches became assistant coaches. They became assistant band directors, assistant librarians.”
Plair Jr. went to Emmett Scott High School for ninth grade the last year it was open, then to Rock Hill High School. He studied music at Winthrop University and for a time thought he might go into education too. With his father’s connections Plair Jr. saw several cases where qualified teachers from former Black schools took on assistant roles. He also saw it at home.
Plair was in Chester when integration came. He started working with sixth and seventh grade musicians.
“I had to work under the other band director,” Plair said. “He couldn’t do what I could do, but they put him over me.”
Plair recalls the state education department sending a woman to observe his class. He recalls a principal coming to observe, at one point mistaking what he heard.
“You can’t just start the band class without warming the instruments up,” Plair said. “The principal was listening to them warming the instruments up, and he thought they were playing a song. I had to explain to him what they were doing.”
Plair navigated the transition well. In Chester he was named Teacher of the Year in two consecutive years.
Band competition
Plair never taught for titles.
“I just enjoyed working with the children,” Plair said. “I would teach them marches. I was in the Marine Corps, so I would take them out and march them.”
His students did compete individually for spots in the all-state band.
“It gave us something else to look forward to,” said White, who auditioned for and made all-state. “It was something that made me feel good in the way of having accomplished something above and beyond.”
When students played and passed tests to make all-state, it meant accomplishment for the student but also validated the instruction.
“I had students make all-state, which I thought was good,” Plair said. “And my students were the top students.”
White went on to a long career in education in North Carolina and New Jersey. Rudy Sanders spent almost 32 combined years in active or national guard military service, and he still plays the straight metal clarinet. Both, he said, in no small part because of Plair.
”My posture today can be traced back to the posture that B.S. Plair, Mr. Plair, required in all of his students,” Rudy Sanders said.
As a founding organizer of the Fort Mill History Museum, Rudy Sanders is a foremost expert on town history. He knows what bands have become. In a way, a winning marching band show is similar to the larger change that people like Plair brought across decades.
“People today, they just see the end product,” Sanders said.
Judges will grade area bands in coming weekends, but scores will reflect the hot summers at band camp, the commitment on cold fall nights, the endless hours of practice. The professional, structured way bands run now doesn’t come easy.
”That’s an awesome task,” Rudy Sanders said. “We as lay people only look at the end product of the band performing and, hey, they’re good. We never get to, what did it take to get here?”
Plair said what makes bands great today always has, the ability to listen and focus well.
“You’ve got to be able to hear,” Plair said. “Got to have good ears. You’ve got to be somebody that can pay attention to everything that’s going on.”
Yet even the best instructor needs a willing student. The same way a school without any concept of a band once needed a leader.
“You’ve got to want to do it yourself,” Plair said. “That’s the main thing.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2022 at 9:07 AM.
