PHILADELPHIA’S MUMMERS’ PARADE
Everyone loves a parade, particularly if it has a band in it. For the better part of a century municipal festival parades have been a tradition in some of the large cities of our country from New York to California.
But one of the most fantastic is the Mummers’ Parade in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on New Years Day. It is said to have originated in the early 1800’s, when it was led by Eph Horn, the famous minstrel. However, the only records available tell of the first, an individual organization with three musicians—two fiddlers and one artist on the triangle. The first formal parade was held January 1, 1901, after the Council had decided to make it a city function.
Now the colorful parade is miles long and is made up of three units—fancy, comic and string bands. King Momus, god of ridicule, is the leader of the parade. The Police, Firemen and PTC Bands at the beginning of the line start the procession rolling. But the swinging groups all march down Broad Street to the tinkling music of the string bands.
Some years there are as many as fifty string bands, spaced a block apart. In them from fifty to one hundred musicians play guitars, banjos, violins, saxophones, accordions, percussion instruments, and cymbals. Their theme song, Oh Dem Golden Slippers, is in keeping with the gold painted rubbers which the gay marchers always wear.
Their fancy costumes “as splendiferous as a parade of peacocks” cost thousands of dollars. In most clubs or units, the captain wears the showiest costume with a flowing satin or velvet cape a block long and requiring sixty or more page boys to support it. One headdress contained 300 plumes while another stood ten feet high and had 700 plumes with lights blinking on and off among them.
Philadelphia and the surrounding country is proud of its parades, and in fair weather more than a million people jam both sides of Broad Street to see Quakertown’s traditional pilgrimage.
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