My experience in The Emerald Buccaneers Drum & Bugle Corps

While living in Florida in the 1960s, I began to learn how to play the trumpet. I was too young for band classes in school, so my dad purchased a trumpet at a pawn shop (which I still have – the trumpet, not the pawn shop) and signed me up for lessons with a private tutor. Or tooter, perhaps, as the guy was quite an expert in brass.

Additionally, through that contact I was introduced to the Emerald Buccaneers Drum and Bugle Corps in Jacksonville, Florida, which had been organized by either the VFW or the American Legion, and I became the youngest member they’d ever had. Up to that point, anyway.

I played a single-horizontal valve bugle, which was quite different from the trumpet I was learning to play. Unfortunately, due to my young age I was prohibited from playing in competition, so my experience with the corps was limited to rehearsals, field drill and marching drills.

The Emerald Buccaneers dissovled some time after that, and are now just a part of my history.