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2007 Albert Lea
Festival of Bands Presents
GRAND MARSHALL - Mr.
Don Sorenson
About Mr. Sorenson
FORMER
ALHS BASS DRUM PLAYER TO SERVE AS FESTIVAL OF BANDS GRAND MARSHAL
By
Geri McShane, assistant editor - Albert Lea Tribune
Saturday, May 12, 2007 3:52 PM CDT
Don Sorenson points to the photo of the little boy all decked out for
Col. Albert Lea Days in the 1940s.
"That's me, about 3 or 4, all dressed up for the parade," Sorenson
said. "After this, I broke loose, headed for the center of the street
and got in front of the parade. A lot of film was shot of me that day."
From that moment, Sorenson was hooked on parades. He'd go on to join
marching bands in junior and senior high school and college. And come
Father's Day, he'll be back to lead the Albert Lea Festival of Bands
parade as its grand marshal.
"My dad (Irv) was a drummer in Cap Emmons' band," Sorenson said. "So
when I showed up in seventh grade, Cap said, 'You're a drummer.'"
Sorenson said he was glad to be put in the percussion section. He
played in his first homecoming parade 56 years ago.
"We wore hand-me-down uniforms and we practiced in Morin Park," he
recalled, adding once, all the horn players stepped over the slide, but
because he couldn't see over his bass drum, he tripped over it.
"That taught me never to trust the guy ahead of me," he said.
Sorenson and his dad were watching the Tournament of Roses Parade and
saw a rotating bass drum.
"He asked me, 'Could you play that?' and I said, 'If you can build it,
I can play it."
Irv Sorenson worked at Universal Milking Machines, and the engineers
there designed a rotating drum carrier, complete with ball bearings.
"Nobody had seen anything like it in this part of the country,"
Sorenson said. He used the device through his high school career,
graduating from Albert Lea High School in 1956.
He enrolled at the University of Minnesota and set out to play in the
band there. "The director told me he'd never auditioned a bass drum
player before," Sorenson said. "So I strapped on the drum and showed
him how it worked."
He played with the University of Minnesota Marching Band for two years,
then joined the Army Reserve and played in the band at Fort Snelling.
While on active duty, he played in a band in South Carolina.
In the summer of 1958, Sorenson talked Cap Emmons into letting him
"borrow" the marching band to go to the North Iowa Band Festival in
Mason City for the homecoming of Meredith Willson as the featured band.
The Albert Lea band gave a 15-minute half-time show and played with
some 10,000 bandsmen in a finale. At 72 members, Albert Lea had the
biggest band there.
"But it was no small event," Sorenson said. "We were asking high school
kids to do a university-level show. Cap was a good task-master."
After his time in the Army, Sorenson wanted to major in film
production, so he transferred to the University of California at Los
Angeles. He once again took his drum carrier with him.
While the UCLA band never went to the Rose Bowl, volunteers were sought
from UCLA and other schools to play in the Rose Bowl Honors Band.
Sorenson volunteered. "I carried the drum 6 1/2 miles in the Tournament
of Roses Parade on Jan. 1, 1959," he said, "all for a ticket to the
game."
The Ludwig Drum Company looked at Sorenson's carrier and began
producing a commercial model. It was more lightweight than Sorenson's
model since it was made of aluminum instead of cast iron.
"But nobody knew how to play it, so it was discontinued over time," he
said.
After graduating from UCLA, Sorenson worked on his doctorate in
Wisconsin and played with the University of Wisconsin Marching Band. "I
was too tired to carry the bass drum, so I tried cymbals," he said.
Twenty years later, he played with the University of Minnesota Alumni
Band for the last time.
Sorenson did earn his Ph.D. in counseling from the University of
Minnesota and produced training films for counselors. Then he got into
books, and he and his brother, Earl, started a publishing company,
Educational Media Corporation.
Sorenson and his wife, Arlene, live in New Brighton and have three
grown sons and four grandchildren.
He said he was surprised when asked to be the Festival of Bands grand
marshal.
"But I thought it sounded like a lot of fun," he added.
(Contact Geri McShane at
lifestyles@albertleatribune.com or 379-3436.)
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