He must combine different melodies and rhythms to make the varied pattern needed for times such as the swooping of The Famous Ringling 100 Clowns into the show. But the music, like a colorful backdrop, sets off these boisterous buffoons as they bustle, blunder, or rush hither and thither in baffled confusion. For the clowns’ entrance, the band plays High Riding and for a clown “walk around” they play The Anvil Chorus.
Evans spends about eight weeks preparing the circus score, and of course that is subject to change during the thirty-two-week season. The bandsmen must be drilled on the new material and rehearsed on the routine so that they are ready when the circus opens at Madison Square Garden in New York each April.
The veteran bandmaster and his men present a splendid picture in their blue uniforms with red-striped trousers. His musicians come from various backgrounds—some even from symphony orchestras. Theirs is a difficult routine as they average seven hours of playing a day. They must be constantly alert and have the ability to adjust instantly to any possible change in rhythm.
The band has a repertoire of memorized selections to play at a moment’s notice in time of need. Sometimes death flies along with the circus actors’ thrilling performances. Gay marches are used to cover up accidents. When Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever suddenly breaks into any other music, it means just one thing—“All Out!” The circus people call it The Disaster March.
Evans had to use this march in 1944 at Hartford, Connecticut, during the worst fire in circus history. He was one of the first to see the flames racing along the top and he immediately swung into the Sousa march, leading loud with his cornet. Hearing the strains roll forth like a call to arms, the bull man in the back yard shouted, “Tails!” and forty elephants hooked up trunks and tails and swung out of the lot into the street. Trainers rounded up wild animals—not one remained loose. Troupers mobilized to direct the crowd out.
Evans and his band literally split the rafters repeating the stirring march until the kettle drums caught fire. Only when the main pole began to sway did he give the order, “Jump!” and the men cleared the stand. In this heroic action Evans’s band had again proven that circus bandsmen must be alert men of iron nerves and perfect control.
Merle Evans, self-made musician, has enjoyed an illustrious career. Besides his circus work, he has directed bands in the Middle West, on the coasts and in Europe—in programs that have included Bach, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. He has taught the art of cornet playing in universities of Texas. He has made recordings for Columbia, and an album entitled Circus was cut in the late thirties.
During the winter seasons of 1921, 1922 and 1923, Evans went to London to direct the International Circus band at Olympia. Members of bands of Welsh, Scotch, Irish and the Coldstream Guards made up the group that he led. They played at St. James or at Buckingham Castle in the morning and at Olympia in the afternoon and evening. Merle said, “I believe I am the only bandleader that ever went to Europe alone.”
Recently during the winter seasons, Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus has taken its feature acts from Sarasota, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, for five weeks of performances, at the Sports Palace, there Evans, taking his double drummer and organ, used fourteen Cuban musicians for his band. He said, “I had men from the Havana Symphony and from the Police, the Navy, the Army and the Municipal Bands. They surely did a fine job, too!”
Besides playing concerts for state fairs and other Florida groups, during the winter, Merle finds time in February to play three weeks for School Assembly Service in different parts of the country. At the different high schools he rehearses the bands in playing circus music in the morning. Then that is given as an assembly program.