1977 Oakland Crusaders Percussion

[sarnia sam]

Looks like him! Thanks!

I thought we went through this once before, over the same picture even. The guy in the black jacket is Sean Watt. Darryl marched tenors in 79. He's not in this pic.

Regards,

John

Edited April 25, 2007 by sarnia sam

[byline]

I thought we went through this once before, over the same picture even. The guy in the black jacket is Sean Watt. Darryl marched tenors in 79. He's not in this pick.

Further proof that my memory is not improving with age. Sorry about that, John and Keith!

Edited April 25, 2007 by byline

[oaklandcrusader]

Ok.. Here's what I know about them. A friend at the time, John Flores (Rodriquez) came down along with Earl Brown from the Commodores to march '75 Kingsmen. When we folded that year, he and many of the imports, along with Float and Patti Williams went up to Freelancers. From there, Float, Patti and Rod all went up to Etobicoke for the 76 and 77 seasons. Rod and I talked fairly often and he liked it up there. The guys were a bunch of inner city kids who had all grown up together and pretty much did drum corps 24/7 as a way to get away from their mostly bad situations. It was really Float's first line. He taught Kingsmen 75 but we never went on tour, and at Freelancers he was just more or less a helping hand to Paul Silva. Up there he had a chance to really do everything he ever wanted to do with a bunch of kids that had talent and desire, but no one to focus it until Tom got there.

I watched the prelims show at Boulder that afternoon and talked to John after they came off the field. They had beaten everyone all year long and it wasn't a surprise to anyone that they won drums, the thing they were all hoping for was that the hornline would do a good enough job to get them into finals, but in their hearts they already knew it wasn't going to happen. When they came off the field no one was happy, no one was smiling, they already knew they probably wouldn't make finals despite having the best drumline in the country. A lot of the guys aged out that year or just decided they wanted to go someplace else. Earl had stayed with Freelancers and talked Rod into marching the 78 season with him back home, and they ended up being a very good line in both the 77 and 78 years too

Earl is actually part of the Kingsmen alumni snareline with me, and he actually still lives about 8 miles away from Rod in Stockton. They talk all the time and he has tried to get him to march the Kingsmen Alumni corps but the time and distance commitments are hard to arrange. I hope to see him this summer, and I'm sure I will at nationals if nothing else. They are still one of the cleanest lines I've ever seen, and a great example of what hard work and commitment can do, and why Float is who he is.

[oaklandcrusader]

I don't know where you got your information but we were not a bunch of inner city kids who were in bad situations...we were typical everyday middle class kids...we were just not musically trained in the classic sense...we learned to play basically on our own and from our instuctors like most people who marched from that era...as for being unfocused until Tom Float got there -- that's not true either...the line wasn't too shabby in '74 and '75...Float certainly helped take us to the next level for sure in '76 and '77.

[Northern Thunder]

People may not remember that the Oakland Crusaders (and De La Salle Oaklands portion prior to the merger with Etobicoke) had fabulous percussion in '74, '75 and '76. In '74 De La Salle was 2nd in GE percussion at DCI prelims. In '75 they were #1 in GE percussion at DCI prelims. In '76 they were 3rd in total percussion at finals. They were very good for quite some time prior to '77.