Winters Brass Band

The band's favorite tunes were ones any bandsman of 1900 knew. The Anvil Chorus comes from Verdi's opera Il trovatore, which premiered in Rome in 1853. Stars and Stripes Forever was John Philip Sousa's march of 1896, and Poet and Peasant is the famous overture to a comedy Franz von Suppé set to music for a Vienna stage in 1846. The Handbook of Texas adds that the Winters band, organized in 1901 by Charles Tipton Grant, toured widely in West Texas for years.

What the plaque says

Winters Brass Band Focus of social life during Winters' early years, the band played throughout the area for box suppers, old settlers reunions, and political campaigns. Charles Grant organized the group in 1901 (seven years after the town was incorporated) and conducted when it played for the coming of Winters' first railroad in 1909. Grant served as bandmaster for fifteen years. Sunday afternoon concerts were presented in the bandstand (then located in Tinkle Park), and members traveled in a bandwagon drawn by four white horses to play in small towns nearby. Favorite tunes were "The Anvil Chorus", "Stars and Stripes Forever," and "Poet and Peasant." New uniforms, blue with gold stripes, cost $14 in 1905. After 1920, the retired members helped the city school organize a band by lending some of their instruments to the students. About 200 brass bands once flourished in Texas, and music was a cultural activity in the state's first colony in the 1820s. Many towns had started to build bandstands by 1850, using them for political rallies, church socials, fund-raising drives, as well as concerts. Once the largest brass band west of Fort Worth, the Winters group and others like it contributed much to the cultural growth of Texas. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 0.6 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 16 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.
• Fort Chadbourne — 17 mi
  An 1852 infantry post and Butterfield stage station on a Coke County ranch, its fallen stone buildings rebuilt since 1999 by the descendant of the family that has ranched the land since 1877.
• Abilene State Park — 19 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• Winters FFA Chapter — steps away
• Winters — 0.5 mi
• Winters Lodge No. 743, A.F. & A.M. — 0.6 mi
• Chick Inn Diner — 1.7 mi