Does anybody have a picture of the old Packers Band.....

Cheesehog

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....not the marching bands. I believe they used to be called The Lumberjack Band? Gravedigger asked this question on the old N/C Forum.(Whatever happened to Gravedigger). They would play the "fight song" and polka's and other tunes. The last time I saw them was a County Stadium. That is one tradition I wish the Packers would have kept instead of this piped in NFL Licensced Music that they play at every stadium. Dum..Dum....Da Dum..Dum..Dum. GO PACK GO!
 

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For many years it indeed was the Green Bay Limberjack band, then they were moderized & were renamed the Green Bay Packer Band, with new uniforms and the Band discontinued the lumber jacK type Red/Black shirts , Pants and caps uniforms. Finally the Band was discontinued quite a few years ago, as the Packer fans got younger, they complained the music was too old fashioned. It was decided to have recorded music; and at times, College or High School marching bands performed at half times at Lambeau Field. The University oF Wisconsin Marching Band makes appearences at Lambeau Field periodically. They are Packer fans favorites!!!especially their fifth quarter performances. A recorded version of the Packer fight song is played very sparely at Packer games. I heard it played once at MNF Packer - Tenn. Titan game last year.
 

wpr

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I enjoyed listening to them too.
You don't want to have them playing no stop thruout the game but a bit here ant there really adds a nice flavor.

The Cubs used to have 4-5 banjo players in old time band uniforms say from the 20's stroll thru the park and play barbershop quartet music in between some of the innings. other times they had the organ play. And then some other innings was the piped in music. It really added a bit of a different flavor to the ball park experience.
 

wpr

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Here's a story about the original group:

A Game to Remember
Bears vs. Packers Nov. 27, 1921

In the first meeting of a rivalry that has continued for 80 years, the Decatur Staleys - as the Bears were then known - score a 20-0 victory before 7,000 people at Wrigley Field. An estimated 300 fans, accompanied by the Lumberjack Band, leave Green Bay at midnight on a special excursion train and arrive in Chicago early Sunday morning to support their team. Dressed in corduroy pants, lumberjack shirts and mackinaws, hunting caps and high boots, the group parades through downtown streets and several hotel lobbies in the Loop before being stopped by police for not having a parade permit. At halftime, the band plays "On Wisconsin" to the delight of the Wrigley Field fans. "Never in my experience have I witnessed a better display of spirit," Ed Smith, dean of Chicago sportswriters, is quoted as saying. "I take my hats off to Green Bay. It was splendid." The game features the rivalry's first fight when Tarzan Taylor throws a punch at the Packers' Cub Buck.
 
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Cheesehog

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The Bears would also take the train to Green Bay and stay at the Hotel downtown. The locals would drive around honking their horns all night to keep the players awake to diminish their play the next day. Halas even claimed the hotel staff would serve them meals that would make them sick. Jeez and they wonder how this came to be a rivalry.

Of course they could not get away that kind of stuff nowadays, but the stories were great!
 

wpr

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Here's a thought. If no one comes up with a pitcure for you, if you google or yahoo a search for either green bay lumber jack band or green bay packers band you will come up with a couple of obits on some of the original band members. The obits list the members suriving family members. Maybe you could drop one of them a note and see if they oculd make you a copy of a picture or two.
you could ask the packers p r dept for something.
finally lee rummel has to know where to get something like that. i htink he has a link on the packer web site.
edited note:
I see the lee rummel is the head pr guy @ the packers.
 

wpr

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i like this one better. both of these stories are by cliff christl. this one back in 1997 before Super Bowl XXXI in N.O. http://www.jsonline.com/PACKER/arc/13097/fans121.html

I edited this story to the part about the band only.


Packers fans have been a devoted and frenzied lot since the dawn of the National Football League.

"To me, there is no other story in sports like this," said Lee Remmel, the Packers' director of public relations and foremost historian. "Little Green Bay surviving against all these megalopolises, these population giants; in large measure, it's due to the support of the fans. This support has been going on for 50, 60 years, even before that."

The support has been vocal, unbridled, financial, raucous, moral, you name it.

Long before the jet age, thousands of Packers fans would ride the train with the team to games in Chicago and Milwaukee. Back in the days when pro football franchises were owned by men of modest means who depended solely on gate receipts to survive, the fans in Wisconsin kept the Packers afloat by buying thousands of dollars of non-profit stock. When the Packers were winning championships in the 1920s and '30s and even when they were playing losing football in the late '40s and '50s, the fans showed their appreciation by staging mammoth pep rallies and welcome-home celebrations before and after games.

The Packers fans of old derived just as much enjoyment from their team as the fans of today. They never had the opportunity to patrol Bourbon Street the week before a Super Bowl but they may have had more wholesome, less commercialized and more spontaneous fun. They, too, knew how to have a rip-roaring time.

The first city they took by storm was Chicago in 1921, the first year of the National Football League and the first time the Packers ever played there. On consecutive Sundays, the Packers played the Chicago Cardinals and the Chicago Staleys, who became the hated Bears the next season.

Even then, Green Bay was the smallest city in the NFL, with a population of 31,017, and its home field was essentially a vacant lot that accommodated only a few thousand fans. But several hundred people from Green Bay, as well as a 22-piece Lumberjack Band, took a midnight train to Chicago on the eve of the Cardinals game to cheer for their fledgling team. The band members were dressed in attire that anybody who has ever watched a game in Lambeau Field could relate to today. They wore corduroy pants, lumberjack shirts, mackinaws and high boots.

"The gang hit Chicago with a bang early in the morning of that 1921 Cardinal game," noted a story in the game program the day that Lambeau Field was dedicated. "They practically took over The Loop, invading every hotel lobby they could find and generally making good-natured nuisances of themselves."

The fans and the band members had so much fun, in fact, they organized another trip the next weekend for the game against the Staleys.

This time, however, they ran into a few problems as they were singing "On Wisconsin" and "How Dry I Am," blowing their horns and marching through the streets of Chicago.

"The band ran afoul of the law because they did not have a parade permit," George Calhoun, longtime sportswriter with the Green Bay Press-Gazette and co-founder of the Packers, wrote years later. "However, Nick Ryan, then the Brown County sheriff, who happened to be along, pulled some strings and the 'Jacks' finally got out to the hotel where the team was staying."

The band also was stopped at the gate at Wrigley Field, where the Staleys played, by Frank Halas, brother of the team's founder, George Halas.

"What the devil is going on here?" Frank Halas asked Calhoun.

"I told him it was the Packer Lumberjack Band," Calhoun later wrote. "He was dumbfounded for a minute and then mournfully said, 'Holy cow, there can't be anybody left in Green Bay.' "

From that day, through the 1950s, the train rides to Chicago became an annual pilgrimage. The railroads converted freight cars and later baggage cars into huge bar cars. And the trips were sponsored by local taverns.
 

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A LUMBERJACK!

(piano vamp)

Leaping from tree to tree! As they float down the mighty rivers of
British Columbia! With my best girl by my side!
The Larch!
The Pine!
The Giant Redwood tree!
The Sequoia!
The Little Whopping Rule Tree!
We'd sing! Sing! Sing!


Oh, I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay,
I sleep all night and I work all day.

CHORUS: He's a lumberjack, and he's okay,
He sleeps all night and he works all day.

I cut down trees, I eat my lunch,
I go to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays I go shoppin'
And have buttered scones for tea.

Mounties: He cuts down trees, he eats his lunch,
He goes to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays 'e goes shoppin'
And has buttered scones for tea.

CHORUS

I cut down trees, I skip and jump,
I like to press wild flowers.
I put on women's clothing,
And hang around in bars.

Mounties: He cuts down trees, he skips and jumps,
He likes to press wild flowers.
He puts on women's clothing
And hangs around.... In bars???????

CHORUS

I chop down trees, I wear high heels,
Suspendies and a bra.
I wish I'd been a girlie
Just like my dear papa.

Mounties: He cuts down trees, he wears high heels
Suspendies?? and a .... a Bra????
(spoken, raggedly) What's this? Wants to be a *girlie*? Oh, My!
And I thought you were so rugged! Poofter!

CHORUS

All: He's a lumberjack, and he's okaaaaaaayyy..... (BONG)

Sound Cue: The Liberty Bell March, by John Phillip Sousa.
-or-
===============================================================================

Dear Sir,
I wish to complain on the stronglyest possible terms about the previous
entry in this file about the lumberjack who wears womens' clothes. Some of
my best friends are lumberjacks, and only a FEW of them are transvestites.

Yours faithfully,
Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong, Mrs.
 

JBlood

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Cheesehog

I looked all over the net for a picture when Gravedigger was looking for one also. The only thing I can find is this pic from the Journal-Sentinal from the City Stadium dedication in 1957. The 28 piece Lumberjack band is on the field at halftime along with some "majorettes". The Packer Fan(atic) Handbook, by Daniel Edelstein, has a pic of the '36 Lumberjack Band, but I haven't seen it. The book is published by Badger Press.

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wpr

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Loveyour signature JB. Every yr they try and tweak the game and it keeps moving away from the game we knew and loved when we were young.
 

JBlood

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Thanks WPR. I'm afaid I'm getting more and more curmudgeonly as I age. Ring loved sport for the characters and the game, now its all just another method of accumulating capital.
 

wpr

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The charactors who played where more interesting too back in the day.
Gotta love the idea that Papa Halas tried to move the spot of the ball forward after he was tackled. (Legal in the 20s) We use to do that when we were kids. (Never succeeded myself.) And once when Jim Thorpe saw him doing it, he jumped on his back and told him, "If you are going to move the ball I am going to ride you like a horse." Today they would both be penalized. Halas, who started the whole thing 5 yards for delay of the game and Thrope 15 yards for unsportsman like conduct. Back then they worked it out themselves. Halas never tried that again on the teams Thorpe played for. Your namesake was quite a charactor too.
Today we have Sharpie pens and pretend moonings and the like.
 

JBlood

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Yeah, Johnny Blood was quite the guy. I ran into a fellow not long ago who played for him at St. John's when Blood coached there. Lots of stories about parties on trains, etc. Apparently he was a genius, too. Graduated from high school at age 14, had a photographic memory so he would read his textbooks before classes started and then sell the books at a profit. He told Gagliardi not to come to St. John's because the Friars couldn't afford to pay him a reasonable salary. Gags is still coaching there today.
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wpr

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we outta start a thread just telling old stories about these guys :D
 

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The Bears would also take the train to Green Bay and stay at the Hotel downtown. The locals would drive around honking their horns all night to keep the players awake to diminish their play the next day. Halas even claimed the hotel staff would serve them meals that would make them sick. Jeez and they wonder how this came to be a rivalry.

Of course they could not get away that kind of stuff nowadays, but the stories were great!



These tactics seem tame when you compare them to Lawrence Taylor sending hookers to the opposing players rooms the night before the game. My, how things have changed.
 

JBlood

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O.K., WPR. After the Pack whips the Lions, we'll start one to fill in time before next week. Maybe all old stories should relate to the next opponent?? Geez, you could fill the internet with Bears stories. That's the best thing about the Bears--great comedy!!
 

wpr

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JBlood said:
Yeah, Johnny Blood was quite the guy. I ran into a fellow not long ago who played for him at St. John's when Blood coached there. Lots of stories about parties on trains, etc. Apparently he was a genius, too. Graduated from high school at age 14, had a photographic memory so he would read his textbooks before classes started and then sell the books at a profit. He told Gagliardi not to come to St. John's because the Friars couldn't afford to pay him a reasonable salary. Gags is still coaching there today.
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CaliforniaCheez

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Does anyone know the name of the song the band played for kick offs?

You older folks will remember the one that would play when the Polish Prince would kick off and run to the sidelines because Abe Gibron would send 2 players after him.

Google, Kazaa, and Limewire all strike out.
 
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Cheesehog

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Thats funny CaliforniaCheez. Yeah Abe Gibron. It was during a Pre-season game at that too! I guess that why divisional teams don't play each other during them. Gibron tried "take out" one of the few bright spots the Packers had in them horrible years. And it wasn't just once. Poor Chester would kick off and the play was on the other side of the feild and his 2 goons would chase him right off the feild. I guess thats why gibron ended as a def. coordinator with the "Dreamsicle" Bucaneers.
P.S. Another great ex-Bears coach just lost his first 2 games as a college coach. Heres a clue: He looks like an old **** star from the 70's. http://images.nfl.com/photos/img7524956.jpg
 

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