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Photograph by Chad Pilster
Nothing to Fret Over: Tenor banjo master Charlie Tagawa has been musical director of the Peninsula Banjo Band since 1965.
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Making Music and Money for Charity
The Peninsula Banjo Band brings its 20-plus members and their fans together every week
By Kara Chalmers
On a recent Tuesday, about 20 members of the Peninsula Banjo Band, clad in red vests, white shirts and black pants, sat down at their music stands at the Straw Hat Pizza on the corner of Hamilton and Meridian in San Jose. As the band got rolling with such songs as "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "What a Wonderful World," audience members clapped, sang along and danced at their tables, their pizza and beer practically bouncing on the tables.
The crowd was made up of proud grandchildren, husbands and wives of players, banjo lovers and friends. There was Betty in the front row as always, a woman who dances so enthusiastically every week that she ends up soaked with perspiration. There was the group which "owns" the booth in the back, devoted fans who sell the band's two albums.
"We have a very active auxiliary of spouses and relatives, and also others who have just attached themselves to the band," says Floyd Oatman, 71, the band's president. "We have groupies. We get about 55 people a night, about all this place can hold, and half come almost every time."
Pat Patterson has followed the Peninsula Banjo Band since the 1970s.
He made friends with the band's musical director Charlie Tagawa, master of the tenor banjo, when Tagawa played at the Imperial Garden restaurant in Mountain View. "Charlie used to play 'Stars and Stripes' when he saw me come in," Patterson says.
Patterson, who now lives and works in Campbell, has been hooked ever since. He never misses the band's free practice and open jam session on Tuesdays at Straw Hat. A staunch fan, Patterson says the banjo music, his friends and the social atmosphere keep him coming back week after week.
"It's my one night out a week," he says.
Today, up to 50 banjoists are signed on as members of the volunteer Peninsula Banjo Band crew, and they range in age from their 30s to their 90s. Many are retired or semi-retired, according to Oatman.
The band is made up of women and men, plectrum and tenor banjoists, and wash tub bass players. Some play with sheet music and some without, and one has a curlicue mustache. But one thing they have in common is a love of banjo playing. The volunteers play solely for the enjoyment of their listeners, they do not get paid for performing, Oatman says.
Joan Goldstein, 49, a relatively new member, has been playing with the band for three years, after starting lessons with Tagawa six years ago.
"For some reason, we attract a really nice group of people," she says. "Maybe it's because we donate so much to charity, but you really can't find a nicer group."
Goldstein says what she enjoys most are the band's performances at convalescent homes.
"Even if it's just for one day, or one hour, I feel when we go and play, the people there really enjoy it and look forward to it," she says. "Their faces just light up."
The band was created in 1963 as the Cupertino Banjo Band, and was then made up of only seven members. It is fabled that for its first performance ever, the group could not figure out how to split the $25 payment seven ways, so bandmembers decided it was easier to just donate the funds to charity. One of the first beneficiaries was a relative of a band member, a young patient at Children's Hospital at Stanford.
"From there, it just kept on snowballing," Oatman says.
While the band does charge for most of its performances, all proceeds are donated to cancer research, primarily for children.
Since the 1970s, the Peninsula Banjo Band has donated more than $159,000 to places such as Packard Children's Hospital, the Ronald McDonald House and Hospice of the Valley.
The band also donates to places close to its heart, like the San Jose Rotary Foundation, in remembrance of a long time member and his wife. And the Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, since a member is still being treated there, according to Oatman.
Musical director Tagawa, whose son is also in the band, conducts, sings along and sometimes plays with the band. Tagawa, 63, started taking lessons in Japan when he was 21 and started directing the Peninsula Banjo Band in 1965, back when it was known as the Cupertino Banjo Band.
"When I started the banjo, nobody played," he says. "Banjo was a vanishing instrument. I believed I should preserve it. It's a beautiful sound."
The band has grown and now attracts members from all over the Peninsula--and even has honorary members from Kobe, Japan, who come to the Bay Area's annual Banjo Jubilee, now in its 27th year.
"The banjo is very happy music," says Tagawa.
Tagawa and the other band members are dedicated to preserving this type of music. The band is always looking for new members, and offers scholarships to people who want to study the banjo and the wash-tub bass. This year, one lucky student will get a free banjo--an instrument that was owned by a bandmember who recently passed away.
The band performs at 60 to 70 weddings, funerals, public festivals or private celebrations a year. The band performed at the Golden Gate Bridge's anniversary celebration in 1987, at the opening of Highway 85, and at second base before a baseball game at Candlestick Park (when it was Candlestick Park). The band also played at two separate fundraisers for both President Clinton and Vice President Gore. "It was hard to get them to go to those," says band president Oatman. "There are not that many Democrats in the band. They groused but then they went."
The Peninsula Banjo Band has an open jam session every Tuesday at 8-10 p.m., at Straw Hat Pizza on Hamilton and Meridian. The practice is free and the public is invited.
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Campbell, California
