For years I’ve contemplated writing a story about how drum corps provided the foundation for my career in the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own.” Recently, I compiled statistics from my colleagues in the other special bands in the Metropolitan Washington, D.C., area.

I was overwhelmed with the stories I received. This article will share some of those stories for those of you who might wonder what you could actually do with all that drum corps experience after you age-out.

It was May 1979 when I stared in admiration as my older cousin marched around playing double tenors in preparation for Memorial Day. The next week I marched in those parades proudly crashing the cymbals that I had to polish the night before.

I spent nine years literally growing up in a little corps from Massachusetts called the Satellites in Leicester. Our “tour fee” was just 50 cents a week, nothing in comparison to what those of you who march today are expected to pay. But since my family ran it, it was a year-round activity for us.

If we weren’t practicing, marching in parades or competing, we were selling candy bars, holding tag-day sales or helping out with weekly bingo by selling donuts and coffee.

Our house became a hotel during the summer. Organizing who showered when and how much milk was needed for breakfast was not always easy. In order to get a hot shower, I woke up first, which led to taking inventory of the milk and cereal.

I marched snare with the Nashua, NH, Spartans and was timpanist of the Boston Crusaders where I learned to embrace difficult tuning on the timpani.

However, my early years were what gave me a  

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While the creative staffs design the shows, it’s the performers who ultimately make Drum Corps International’s World Class corps the top marching musical units in the world. And thanks to recent market research efforts, DCI now has a better idea of just who are wearing the uniforms in its top corps.

Stephen Auditore, chair of its marketing advisory board, has been spearheading DCI’s market research efforts through his Dayton, OH-based marketing firm, Vaticinate. One of his studies analyzed online responses made last May by 1,116 of a possible 2,593 members (43 percent) from 21 of the 23 World Class corps (Mandarins and Pioneer did not participate). It found these trends among World Class members:

• They’re 19.47 years old, on average.
• 60 percent are in college.
• 59 percent anticipate studying music at college in some form (performance, education, business, etc.), with another eight percent planning to study other performance art forms.
• 79 percent are Caucasian.
• 73 percent carry GPAs of 3.1 or higher (on a 4.0 scale).
• 88 percent had prior high school marching band experience.
• 62 percent are in their first or second year in drum corps.
• They’re traveling nearly 800 miles (793) from home, on average, to perform with a corps.
• 49 percent are paying for the drum corps experience out of savings from work.
• They’re plugged into today's latest digital devices.

The new study is part of a broader effort this decade by the marketing advisory board -- which includes Auditore, DCI Marketing Quarterback Bob Jacobs, Executive Director Dan Acheson, Bluecoats Director David Glasgow and former Cavaliers Executive Director Jeff Fielder -- to provide research analysis of DCI’s three biggest markets: performers, fans and music educators. They’re using the research to refine their marketing approach and provide additional data on DCI’s impact to corporate sponsors.

“The root of why we choose the research that we do -- and have done - is because we spent a lot of time the past five years or so trying to improve the Drum Corps International marketing,” said Auditore, who became the first non-director elected to DCI’s Board of Directors in 1991, eventually serving two terms between 1991-1995 and 1998-2003.

“Up until the early 2000s, it [DCI’s marketing efforts] wasn’t very  

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He was one of those rare individuals who felt you should march drum corps every year, no matter what. Art Kurth had a drum and bugle corps career that spanned seven decades and he was planning to continue when the Eternal Drum Corps Hall of Fame called him on December 18, 2000 at the age of 63. He will always be remembered as one of the unequalled characters of the activity.

“Chicago Art”, as he was known, was totally dedicated to the idea of drum and bugle corps. He was a proponent of the art form and loved the concept and all that went into the activity. From working together on the field, to solving financial difficulties in a staff meeting, to the social aspect of it after rehearsal -- Art loved it all.

He was a kid off the streets of Chicago when he first joined the Ardennes Post 895 Belgium American Legion Post Drum and Bugle Corps in 1948. He was one of many kids who were taught how to play a horn in drum corps. But he never considered himself a musician. If you called him one, he would tell you, “I’m no musician, I’m a bugler!”

In an interview in 1998, he recalled how the Ardennes corps, which had been in existence for 40 years, changed its name in 1955. “We changed it to the Windy City Cadets just because we went out to the national competition and all the East Coast corps were Cadets,” said Art. “And we said, cool, that’s what you need to win, so we immediately changed the name.”
Did the corps win? “No, but we did take high horns at the Momence “Gladiola Festival” parade once,” Art joked.

The Cavaliers were starting to rise when Art joined them in the mid-’50s. The corps won championships in both 1957 and 1959. He was proud of his association and accomplishments with the Cavaliers. But he is best known for his interview as part of a 15-minute segment on “The Cavaliers, a 50-Year History”, regarding the corps’ fight against the St. Vincent’s Cadets in 1957 at Flamingo Park in Miami Beach. Here is an excerpt of some of the high points of this event, as only Art could tell it.

“The fight is going badly and we were all rolling around and punchin’ and thumpin’ and thuggin’, when this sea of red shirts come running across the field and it’s the Archer-Epler Musketeers, a senior corps. And I said, ‘Adults are coming to bring this thing to a reasonable conclusion’.

“Then the first guy hits me; they are kind of alumni of Vinnies  

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