The Bands History

When It All Started

The present band would be totally unrecognisable to the players and officials when the Hayle Band was reformed; this was in the autumn of 1973.

Harry Rutter, who was a member of the old Hayle Band and had been a councilor for many years, in the course of his duties came across the instruments of the old band.

This gave him the idea to try and start the band once again. He found out that in the town, and the secondary school, there were people who had or who were still playing brass instruments. He went around the town and contacted various people to ask if they would be willing to reform a band.

The first so-called practice was held at The Laurels, which was the home of another councilor, Mr Leslie Capper. Out of some 20 who had turned up only 3 could play and seeing that there was only 3 instruments that could be used, it was somewhat fortunate. The instruments were from the original band. Every time they were played the connections on the slides kept leaking, so the instruments had to be soldered again to make them playable.

Mr Alan Richards was the first musical director, and in the first year we managed to attract players from different areas of the band world.

Mr Teddy Irish was appointed as secretary and with his enthusiasm and drive the band started to improve. Captain Tim Richards was the next musical director. A person with a vast amount of musical knowledge, and he put it to good use with the coaching of the players to attain a good standard in music and the understanding of what brass banding was all about.

After some time the Catholic Church kindly let us use their hall for rehearsals, and we slowly progressed. With more players coming in to join until eventually with the correct tutoring we were able to have a junior band to complement the senior players. This all took place under firstly Mr Alan Toy and later with Mr Chris Harris. Here we remained until moving to our present band room in St. John's Street.

Our present musical director is Derek Johnston, who comes from a great musical background, he has a brought a new musical influence to the band in many ways.

His record of achievement with the band speaks for itself, while he is a strong believer in the past and the bands great history, he is a strong driving force, pushing the band forward in to the future, not sitting in the past as many bands do, the band are now known as one of the best entertaining brass bands in Cornwall today, and over the past few years have broken into the top two hundred bands in the world, Derek will tell you that this is down to sheer hard work and determination by the players with great support from supporters friends, and in particular the players family’s.

Written by Derek Johnston