- 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.)
- (Use
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Copyright 1996 Ken
Martinson/ChoreoGraphics. All rights
reserved
