Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-04-27
THE BANDMAsTER OF LAS VEGAS
By S. Omar Barker

By S. Omar Barker
In Baptist Young People, Chicago, Ill.
Bob Casper has cut the hair and
shaved the jowls of a fair share of the
male population of Las Vegas, N. NJ,
for 20 years. But If you ask a Las
Vegan who he is, the answer would
never be barber, but rather the band
director, for Bob, as he is known to
everyone, has been director of Las
Vegas bands for a quarter of a CEN
fury and still substitutes the waving
baton for waving shears two or three
evenings a week and on Sunday af-
ternoons. Yet it is not merely that
he has directed bands that makes him
remarkable, but rather that, during
these years practically every eornetist,
~trombonist, drummer, or tooter of any
kind in Vegas owe much or most of
his band training to the tutelage of
Robert Casper. While scores of boys
and girls nave learned to play in his
Juvenile bands, he practically never
has tutored for pay. An average of
perhaps eighty band or orchestra re-
hearsals a year, except during his
lIipS Odu3 " AAShb 0AO0h 30 SCoAo
is Mr.. Casper's record. Las Vegas can
hardly remember when he did not
have some juvenile musicians under
training.
Why does he do it?
"Vell,' he says, that's what I\like
music. And the kids are crazy to
learn. You'd be surprised the way
they pick it up-'Poet and Peasant
William Tell Overture-all that
classical stuff. They play it right off
after a while better than the big fell
lows"
Bob is not, however, just a small
town musician. He is a brilliant cor
netist and played with some of the
big directors and musicians in his
earlier days, among them John A.
Hand, of Chicago. He is a native of
Basic, Switzerland, and studied music
under German and Italian masters.
His excellent training is not forgotten
in his choice of music. His present
junior band, made up of youngsters
from eight to eighteen years of age,
both boys and girls, plays the big
classical overtures with remarkable
effect, and all of them like selections
from Ell Trovatore," Lucia di Lam
mermoor," ETC., much better than they
do Everybody Step" or any other jazz.
This last summer his junior band
won the first prize-money in a con-
test open to all, held by the Las Vegas
Cowboys Reunion Association at their
annual rodeo, thus UNFOLDING the di-
r~ector's reputation as a winner OF
prizes for band music. About twenty
one years ago his little Las Vegas
band of twenty-one pieces won first
place among some thirty bands at the
Mountain and Plain Festival in Dem
yer, Colo, and he is the holder of
numerous medals both for individual
playing and for directing.
Naturally the question arises as to
why a man with such talent and capa-
bility should spend his life in a barber
shop, giving only spare time to music.
| have often quizzed him about this.
"You see, l like it too well to work
at it." he says. "You know what l
mean. | could go with some of the
big fellows and make good money"
He showed me letters from all over
the country that indicated the truth
of his statement. But music is the
one big pleasure I got and l don't
want to spoil it by playing all the time.
Maybe you like, for instance, to go
fishing. Veil, how would you like to
do it all the time for a living? See?
You wouldn't like it. Now when |
get through here at the shop | go to
my room-I've lived in that same
room for more than twenty years
and l practice exercises or maybe
a solo or maybe new music, and l
enjoy it. If 1 played all the time it
might get to be work. l love music
too much to be a musician"
Along with this feeling l have dis
covered is the keen delight he takes
in introducing youngsters into the
fascinating realm of band music, to-
gether with a deepest affection for the
little Western town where he has
lived so long with only occasional va
cation trips, sometimes here in the
United States and sometimes in
Europe.
AS would be expected in a bachelor
musician of his type, Mr.. Casper has
his eccentricities. One of these is
the unique method of combing his
scanty hair up into a knot on top of
what would otherwise be a bald head.
In the band room he is a stickler for
professional bearing and attention to
business. Nobody is allowed so much
as to cross his legs while playing,
even though only at a practice. Abb
solute attention must be given the
director at all times, and if a young
ster inadvertently or purposely lets
one foot out of his instrument when
he should be quiet, he is in for a bit
90 x,or1y ooro+io advioa oOnpprninG the