Longtime area bandmaster earned spot in Hall of Fame,
Buddy Deese earns a spot in Bandmasters Hall of Fame
For anyone who attended the recent Four States Bandmasters Association Convention & Clinics, they likely saw a familiar scene in addition to hearing familiar sounds.
They would have seen Buddy Deese, a longtime local bandmaster who’s been at it nearly four decades, guiding young musicians and supporting the annual get-together of top local music students and their educators.
The affable Deese, who now works at Fouke High School after roughly two decades at Texas High School and starting out at Westlawn Middle School and Pleasant Grove Middle School before that, was presented with top honors Saturday about a week ago: induction into the Four States Bandmasters Association Hall of Fame.
For anyone who’s worked with Deese, the kudos should ring true. After all, this past convention was his 39th consecutive one. He’s put the time in at this convention.
“The first one I was a student at Henderson (State University) and played in a student group,” Deese recalled one recent afternoon. The next year, he was hired to work at Westlawn, and he recalls tooling around town to pick up tables and chairs to help set up the convention.
“Doing all the grunt work that you’ve got to do when you’re on the bottom of the totem pole kind of thing,” Deese remembers.
He worked three years at Pleasant Grove, his first high school job, then returned to Texas High School to run the band program there, so he rose up that ranking pretty quickly. He’s served as FSBA treasurer for years, and up until he left for Fouke he was active yearly in the nitty gritty work of organization the convention.
For years and years, he’s been a dedicated trooper at making it all happen at this convention, which sees students audition for jazz, concert and symphonic bands. A public concert is part of the three-day festival of band love. It’s a cause he believes in, encouraging parents to keep their children involved in band.
“It’s an awesome thing to do,” Deese said that past Saturday, according to the Gazette article.
Deese, who was named Arts Educator of the Year in 2012 by the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, was nominated by Gary Meggs, professor of jazz bands at the University of Arkansas-Monticello, himself a FSBA Hall of Fame inductee last year.
In his nomination, Meggs describes how Deese has groomed future musicians and teachers for many years. “He has given his life to the future of music and students for nearly 40 years,” Meggs wrote, also praising his ability to take a small program and turn it into “one of the finest small school bands” in the Natural State.
“Mr. Deese is the exact example of a band director most qualified and deserving of this award. As the director of bands at Texas High School for 21 years he managed to behind the scenes serve and honor the Four States Bandmasters Association and the Four States Convention by providing facilities, equipment and manpower. Mr. Deese has been a good and faithful servant to all of us in one way or another over his many years in music education,” Meggs wrote.
Staging the convention is a huge logistical job. At first, it was just a chance for band directors to get together as a reading band clinic. They’d work through charts and play together. Later, it was turned into a clinic that welcomes students, too, similar to all-region and all-state.
Participation by all schools is part of the aim at these annual January concerts, schools guaranteed at least one student in the band.
“They all wear their band uniforms, so it’s really kind of a cool thing when they do their concerts because you see all these different band uniforms. Usually you see all four states represented,” Deese said. They come from Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
For the students, the convention provides a chance to work with top clinicians and directors. Exhibitors participate, so they may get a chance to try out some new horns. They can test drive an instrument. “It’s a very social type thing,” Deese said. Band directors can “chew the fat” and chat.
After all this time working in this fun environment for the FSBA, how does Deese, who originally hails from North Little Rock, feel about the Hall of Fame recognition?
“Shocked,” Deese admits. Surprised to hear the news, he didn’t think it would happen now, considering he’s still so active in the work.
It’s work Deese truly loves. He’s also learned a thing or a million about what it takes to succeed as bandmaster.
What makes a good bandmaster? “Somebody with no give up in them,” he says. “There’s a lot of very talented musicians that don’t make good bandmasters because they give up on themselves and they go try and do something else. They don’t have the grit.”
That grit is necessary to get through all the things you deal with in the work: an administration, the campus, students, band parent groups, auxiliary groups (“it’s kind of like cheerleader moms”) and more. You have to keep your neck stiff enough in the work, he says. “It’s something you’ve got to really want to do,” he said.
It’s rewarding work to see students succeed. Deese particularly loves to see the students achieving at an individual level at conferences.
“I tell the kids from the first day I put the horn in their hand, ‘I’m going to show you things on this that I want you to be better than I am, so that when you’re my age you’ll still be doing this and be better than I am at it,’” Deese said.
Also rewarding is seeing students go on to be teachers or serve as band directors, or go on to be successful in other endeavors. “James Henry Russell was in my band,” he said, referring to the Texarkana College president.
Deese sees it as his job as to support students in everything they want to do in school, to “knock down walls” for them, whether it’s football, the drill team or whatever. “I don’t want anything to keep them from being in band,” he says.
Band teaches them life skills like dedication, patience, physical development and an ability to put the work in. For youngsters today who are used to instant gratification, they’re important things to learn.
“It don’t matter what instrument it is, it’s going to take work,” he said. It’s a performance skill, a performance art, just like dance or athletics, explains Deese, whose introduction to music was an uncle putting a guitar in his hands. He started learning Buck Owens and Johnny Cash tunes.
Deese’s parents bought him his first cornet to play. “And then when I was in 8th grade they bought me the same trumpet that I play on now,” he said. “It’ll be 46 years old next month, same instrument. It plays great still.”
If you stay with it, music will grow in your life, he discovered.
“The more I got into it, the more I found that I didn’t want to get out of it,” Deese said.
One of the rewarding perks of his time as a band director was directing both of his children in band at Texas High. His son played the trumpet and his daughter played the flute. “In fact, we still play together,” he said, referring to a recent church Christmas program.
And if you’ve sat in on sets by the Texarkana Jazz Orchestra at local venues like Fat Jack’s Oyster and Sports Bar or Pop’s Place, you’ve likely seen Deese sharing the sweet sounds of jazz with this big band group. He was one of the people instrumental in starting it.
As a band director and musician, he’s aware that the arts offer us a lot.
“I know that being sensitive to music or an art form opens you up, even from a spiritual standpoint it can, because there’s a lot of really neat stuff that you get to hear and do that you don’t necessarily do when you’re in a math book or an English book,” Deese said.
“I know that being sensitive to music or an art form opens you up, even from a spiritual standpoint it can, because there’s a lot of really neat stuff that you get to hear and do that you don’t necessarily do when you’re in a math book or an English book.” —Buddy Deese