Main Streets Band History
The Short Version

By Bruce Reigel, Director

In the “Good Ole Days” there was a college student names Lionel “Bud” Schaffer. He was originally from up-state Pennsylvania now living in the big city getting his undergraduate degree and continuing thru medical school. Medical School is expensive, even back in the late 30’s. So “Bud” worked his way thru playing the clarinet and the alto sax in bands around Philadelphia. This was a time when Big Bands were everything. You could find live band music easily in almost any downtown area. Anyway, that pretty much sets things up for the 90’s.

As his wife once told me, Bud always wanted to have his own big band. Being someone that would not let a dream go, around the time of his retirement, he decided to start playing in public with various bands to get the feel for today’s audience. Things change and Bud wanted to get a feel for what he thought would be a positive direction to take this band. Would he use the older style arrangements or use the ore contemporary arrangements of the old songs. He chose the later since he found listeners and dancers were more interested in harder swing. There is still a generation who enjoys the music of the 40’s and of course, today’s popular music. You know, songs where you can understand the words! Good ole fashioned love songs.

So the early “90’s, Bud started Main Street Sound Big Band. The name came from the MSS club in Norristown where we used to rehearse until it was bought by another organization. Main Street was Bud’s variation on a theme. He put together a group of 16 players plus Pat Kerrigan, our female vocalist, and started rehearsing every Monday night to get us in shape and in-sinc. It worked. He started booking jobs in Parks all around the Norristown area as well as private parties such as the Rotary, Lions Clubs, etc. The band was busy playing about 40 to 60 gigs a year. It was a dream come true for Bud. His band and a comfortable number of gigs to keep everyone happy but not overly worked. Let’s face it, we’re not as young as we used to be and if some of the players who were not retired had to go to work every day.

When Bud passed away, the band was taken over by Sunny Sutera. He took the reins for a couple of years until his health told him to relax and let someone else do it. So the band elected me as director. Probably because I had some professional experience in the 60’s. I’ve never done anything like this before but it was a challenge and we worked it out and the band is doing really well. We have some newer and younger players who really blended into our group and make a positive contribution. Not to pound the chest too much, but everywhere we go, we are told how good we sound and people actually hire us for various events.

Today, nothing has changed. We are still a better-than-good band, playing the “good” music of today and yesterday. We play gigs for all sorts of venues: township and county parks, retirement homes, weddings, special dinners, reunions, large private parties, etc.