ADDRESS How the first DCI was won...The story of the 1972 Anaheim Kingsmen Keith Wilbur dual800s@hotmail.com I originally posted a version of this document in June of 2000 on RAMD. It has been cleaned up and rewritten for the Virtual Symposium. My thanks to Mike Duffy, Ralph Hardimon, Jodeen Popp, and others who have offered insight in order to accurately chronicle the events surrounding the Anaheim Kingsmen's quest for the first DCI title. Being a member of the Anaheim Kingsmen required a level of military precision and bearing that was far above other corps. Some of the simple things like no smoking in uniform, no eating in uniform, no profane language, and no jewelry. Males had box haircuts or shorter where the hair never touched the collar of the cadet style uniform. Dresses and sport coats were required when attending contests and events for all members when out of uniform. The Anaheim Kingsmen never appeared in the stadium after a performance in uniform except as a group. I remember in 1971 after we had completed our show in Wisconsin somewhere, the entire corp slowly filing into the end of the stadium single file and standing in front of our seats until the very last corp member was in place and then all 120 or so of us sitting down at once in unison. At that moment the crowd grew silent. Five minute drills that lasted for well over an hour because someone moved there eyes or looked around. Leg lift not high enough, feet not together at a 45 at a halt. So fanatical were the Anaheim Kingsmen that they actually practiced lining up the horn cases in a single straight row starting with sopranos and graduating up to the contras using a piece of string as a guide. The cases were always lined up in this manner whenever they could be seen by the public. I can vividly recall practice at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station when all corp members would remain silent every evening as the American flag was taken down at dusk during presentation of colors. Not one night, but every night. You could literally here a pin drop. Marching the parking lot at Anaheim Stadium every Sunday during the off season for the quest of perfection. Not just the rookies, but everyone. Those of you that saw the Anaheim Kingsmen in the early 70's recall that it seemed to take forever for the Anaheim Kingsmen to get on the field. It was slow and deliberate, all a part of that Kingsmen image. The Anaheim Kingsmen had an aura and mystique about them that made you want to be a part of it. You knew that you were the best the activity had to offer win or lose. The end result was a drum corp that all of you still talk about today. If you never saw them in their prime, you really do not understand. In addition, unlike today, nearly all the members of the corp were from the Los Angeles basin. The trend towards traveling corp members "imports" had not yet begun. The story of the winning of the 1972 DCI Championship actually begins at the end of the 1970 season. With that said, I will begin. Following the 1970 season, the Anaheim Kingsmen Corp Director and founder Don Porter held a meeting with the corp members to outline the strategy for the coming season. Under the tick system the Kingsmen did fairly well in execution, but were not able to garner enough points in the GE categories to really be a contender. To change that perception, for the 1971 season as Don Porter put it, "we are going to put a show together that will really please the crowd." As an example, the 1970 concert number "The yards went on forever" which was a real sleeper would be replaced with "Ritual Fire Dance" that would work the crowd to a frenzy. In addition, "yards" was a very exposed piece of music that was ripe for both phasing and intonation ticks. In addition he went on to say that since we were from Anaheim and Disneyland was one of our sponsors, we were going to play the Mickey Mouse Club March. Some of the corp members thought it was extreme but cool, and others rolled their eyes. In the winter of 1970 Mike Duffy was brought in to write the brass book for the upcoming 1971 season. Richard "Rocco" Oliverio, who had taught brass for the corp in prior years continued on for the 1971 season. Don Hertel wrote the drill, and Donnie Porter Jr. I believe did most of the percussion. The percussion line was bursting with talented members like Ralph Hardimon, Tom Float, Terry Walker, and Mike Ellerby, to name a few. They all contributed to an awesome drum book complete with the snares tossing sticks in mid air to each other during the drum solo. The budget for the tour was in the neighborhood of $30,000 which is minuscule by today's standards. Each corp member contributed $200 and the rest was raised through bake sales, and gigs. And we did a lot of gigs. We opened shopping malls, Angel Baseball games, Ram Football Games, Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm parades. This became a point of friction between Rocco and Don Porter, Rocco thinking it was a waste of time and a distraction. He viewed the Kingsmen as a field unit, and the Kingsmen did not have time for such things. Don Porter insisted they were required in order to remain fiscally sound. The Kingsmen were also very heavily involved in the parade and standstill circuit in Southern California. One of the cool things the color guard did at parades was to have all the flags in a single company front and turn corners along the parade route on the center pivot. Thirty or so girls in one front would turn 90 degrees in about sixteen counts. The front was straight as an arrow, and it would absolutely blow the crowd away, and to be honest, it blew the brass and percussion members away too because it seemed they never screwed it up. During the spring parade season somewhere which I cannot remember, the horn line pulled up too close to the guard so they could not navigate a corner. Rocco was standing to the side of the horn line screaming at us until a member of the law enforcement community came over and detained him thinking he was an intoxicated bystander. To describe it he had mid shoulder length black hair, dressed like he came from a commune, and reeked of patchouli oil. Some of the parents referred to him as Jesus Christ, and others called him Charles Manson. With the military bearing and professionalism that was instilled in us, you can be sure that none of the corp members broke ranks to claim him as ours, and we marched on down the street leaving him standing there. Within a day or so every corp member and staff member was issued a blue Kingsmen ID card in order to prevent any future confusion. Don Porter I am sure believed that the instructional staff should be representative of the corp as a whole, which required all male members to have short hair cuts, and look professional. In 1971 the Kingsmen did two tours. On the first tour we spent a few days near Racine Wisconsin, and many of the corp members came down with the flu. It spread very fast and before anyone realized there was a problem, about a fourth of the corp was sick. The housing we had was not large enough for a quarantine area which contributed to the problem. Later on the first tour we were housed in what I believe was Harlem at a building that was condemned. We arrived at night and there was no where else for us to go. After much discussion and contemplating sleeping on the buses, we were allowed to stay for one night only. As the corp director, Don Porter was held personally accountable for both of these incidents. The Kingsmen did very well on the first 1971 tour defeating every other major corp in competition at least once. The second tour was short, and consisted of only two shows, the Mid America Open in Overland Park, Kansas, and the VFW Nationals at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The Kingsmen won the Mid-America Open over the Santa Clara Vanguard by over a point, and we traveled on to Dallas, Texas for the VFW National Championship feeling as though we were a shoo-in for the National title. As a side note, the VFW Nationals was the National Championship prior to DCI. In Dallas we stayed at a Military Installation that I believe was Navy or Air Force. The females were housed in Quonset huts without Air Conditioning, and the males slept on the floor of a huge aircraft hangar in the open exposed to the elements and the bugs. The temperature during the five day period was well over 100 degrees in the daytime and did not seem to cool off much at night. The practice area was a field that was hilly, and had grass 18 to 24 inches tall. We could not practice inside the aircraft hangar because the echo was so bad. On top of it all, our solo soprano Milton Buice was stung on the lip by a bee the night before finals and could not blow a note. The following night the Kingsmen placed fifth and were creamed by a wide margin. It would be later said that everyone was on autopilot, we were physically exhausted, and there was nothing left to give. Being in the heat night and day for a week took a toll on all of us. To say that everyone was devastated would be putting it lightly. The following weekend was the American Legion Nationals in Houston. I awoke the morning after VFW to the guard marching up and down the street out front chanting "Houston Houston Houston." Don Porter attempted to calm everyone down, and relayed that the budget did not include an extra week in Houston. Most of us really wanted to go, but it would have been a hollow victory because almost all the other corps went home and decided to pass on the Houston show. Don Wells who was a step father to one of the corp members came forward in front of the corp and offered to loan the corp the two or three thousand dollars for the Houston trip. Don Porter declined and we went back to Anaheim and called it a season. At this point Don Porter had turned the Instructors and a good number of the corp members against him. A review of 1971 brought the conclusion that by rearranging the opener, and color presentation, along with a new drill, we would have a tough show to beat. In addition, with the national title now being the newly formed DCI show, the rules were relaxed slightly which everyone believed would work to our favor given the style of our show. After the debacle in Dallas, nearly everyone who did not age out returned for the 1972 season. In 1972 we had very few rookies and all of us were hungry for the DCI title. We were not going to let history repeat itself at any cost. During the off season the friction increased between the instructors and Don Porter. One night in the spring of 1972 after practice, Rocco had a gathering at the Oakwood Apartments in Anaheim where he lived. Several of the female guard members at the party were apparently consuming alcohol. Some were as young as 15. All hell broke loose and Don Porter stepped up the pressure to have Rocco removed from the staff. Several weeks later it came to a head when Don Porter aligned the majority of the parents behind him and made his move to fire Rocco. A meeting of the parents was held midweek, and Rocco was asked to resign. Rocco refused and in frustration Don Porter laid out an ultimatum...He goes or I go. After founding the corp in 1958, carefully cultivating that Kingsmen image, and guiding the Kingsmen through the tumultuous split with the Velvet Knights, Don Porter quit that night, and officially resigned as the corp director the following day. I am sure there was a whole lot else going on behind the scenes that the corp members were never aware of. Chaos ensued with many of the parents pulling their kids out of the corp, and the corp members really just wanting to tour. Don Wells stepped in and appointed himself and Don Linscott as the interim corp directors. He assured everyone that the tour could still be done, and that he could put the corp back together and make peace with all parties. Don Wells, who was in the car leasing business offered a new powder blue Lincoln Continental Towncar to the corp to use as an advance car for the tour. This would allow someone to go ahead of the corp and check out practice sites and housing. This would eliminate the problems of the past season with substandard housing and practice locations. As usual the Kingsmen traveled to San Jose's Spartan Stadium for the Pacific Procession. The Santa Clara Vanguard took the show 83.35 to the Kingsmen's 78.65. The following weekend was the Kingsmen's "Festival of Music" show at La Palma Stadium in Anaheim. With all the turmoil we still had not completed the drill and were clobbered by the La Crosse Blue Stars 85.40 to 83.5. These were both huge margins under the tick system. Self doubt set in and many members wanted to quit. Some did. The instructional staff held a chat session the day after the Kingsmen Invitational at which all of us that were left took a long hard look at each other, and drew the same conclusion. We were a contender for the DCI title, and all we really had do was get out of Southern California, get on tour, and bust our asses because we had a lot of catching up to do. For all of us who toured the 71 season, we had come too far to let the quest for the DCI Championship slip between our fingers. A few days later with exactly 23 days until DCI finals, we packed up and left for Boston a few days early, along with several standbys to fill in the holes, if for nothing else to get out of town so we could focus. The 1972 Kingsmen tour started on the East Coast in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, into Ohio and the Midwest, and culminated in Whitewater, Wisconsin at the DCI finals. Unlike 1971 and some prior years, it was all done in one tour, with no break. We left Anaheim, the buses rolled day and night, and we made Boston in four days. When we arrived in Boston, we had nearly a week to practice before the CYO Nationals. During that time we practiced all day long and quit way past ten every night. Away from the politics of home, and the ability to finish the show, and do some cleaning, we walked away winning the CYO Nationals. We stunned the crowd and ourselves by defeating the hometown favorite 27th Lancers who were the eastern powerhouse at the time by a comfortable margin 83.40 to the 27th Lancers 80.30. Something else happened that night in Boston, it rained. The win at CYO was a tremendous moral boost for us. We had several other shows in the New York, New Jersey area winning all of them by at least a point. The Kingsmen opted to bow out of the World Open and Danny Thomas Invitational in order to focus on rebuilding the exit and cleaning the drill. The new exit drill was the third one of the season. One of the things added was the now famous rifle wedge. We stayed several days in Garfield, New Jersey. I must say that in all my experiences in drum corp, nowhere were we treated better than Garfield. We stayed at Garfield High School. The neighbors across the street allowed us to use their lawns for sectional practices, and provided refreshments. One of the town proprietors treated the corp to Pizza at his restaurant, and to thank all the citizens and the Garfield Cadets, we gave a free show the night before our departure at Garfield High School. The crowd on their feet would not stop yelling, applauding, and screaming, so we went back to the starting line and did the show a second time for them. Even then we were mobbed by well wishers and of all things autograph seekers. We traveled on to Marion Ohio and won the US Open handily over the 27th Lancers by over three points. In Lima, Ohio we scored a 90.15 the highest score ever recorded up to that point under the tick system. After the Marion show we replaced the out of concert drill with a new one. This was due to the number of ticks, and also to increase the effect, because the drill took too long to build. We went on to stay in Columbus and Waterton, Wisconsin the week of DCI Finals. We had a great housing setup with a practice field nearby at a school with no residential neighborhoods for miles. This allowed us to practice without complaints from neighbors. We even practiced our drill in the dark late into the evening with car headlights illuminating the field. All along the tour we always believed we could win the DCI title. Practice days were 12 to 15 hours long and we often practiced following shows till late in the evening. Rocco would yell something to us when we were at the point of exhaustion like "You can bet Santa Clara is not standing around right now." Even though we grew tired of his compulsive and relentless quest for perfection we pressed on. I can recall numerous times thinking to myself "it is clean," and then we would break down eight or so counts of the brass book and work on it for two or three hours in the morning practice just to remove one or two ticks. It was incredible the difference it made. In the end it truly was clean. By the time we arrived in Wisconsin we were a well oiled machine and confident we could pull it off. Don Porter once said that "each and everyone of you need to have the endurance to do a one hour show, unfortunately you only have ten minutes to entertain the crowd". From a conditioning standpoint he was right. It is pretty amazing even now thinking about how far we had come in such a short period of time. Our prelim time at DCI was in the middle of the afternoon in the blazing heat. Prelims were never a strong suit for the Kingsmen. We placed behind Santa Clara and the Blue Stars whom we had not seen on tour since the drubbing we took in California. After we did our prelim show we checked into a motel (a first), and went back and practiced that evening till around two in the morning on the areas the judges hit us on. The idea behind the motel, which was Rocco's idea, was to avoid a reoccurrence of what happened in Dallas the previous year. The day of finals we had a light practice in the afternoon, and then got ready for the show. I can still vividly remember our typical slow and deliberate entrance into the stadium and the setup on the starting line. When the gun went off we just clicked. Everything went right for us, you could just feel it. All the areas of the show that we had fought problems with all season just seemed to flow. We received four standing ovations and the crowd was still on their feet screaming long after we left the stadium. Afterwards everyone felt that it was by far our best show and most were surprised how well we did. A few years ago I ran into Dave Luciani of the Santa Clara Vanguard who shared with me that the night of DCI finals after Gayle Royer had watched the Kingsmen, he reported back to the Vanguard and said, "all of you need to be your absolute best tonight, because Anaheim just did the show of their lives." At retreat we took our position on the field and they began announcing the scores. It seems at about the 10th place point it began to rain. As the announcer worked his way down to 9th, 8th, all the other corps began to runoff the field as the rain became a torrential downpour. With the intense discipline that had been beat into us, the Kingsmen stood firm until we were told to run for the buses by Jim Good, the Drum Major. As I was running I remember hearing 4th, 3rd, and by the time they got to second, I was too far away to hear who won. I remember thinking that we seemed to always prevail when it rained. I learned the results of the first DCI while sitting on the bus soaking wet from the rainstorm. Corp members from the other corps were coming by the bus congratulating us. After the rain stopped I got off the bus to take a look around and try to grasp what had just transpired. All of us tried to maintain a sense of composure. A lot of us I think were in a state of shock. Several of the veterans who marched in 1971 openly cried. I believe there is a lesson here for all....with drive, guts, and raw determination, and despite all odds, any goal is attainable. I learned more about myself that year than any other year in my life. The drive and determination that I discovered within my inner self are still of tremendous value to me today. All of us have lessons that we learned from drum corp and I certainly learned my share. Following the 1972 season the Anaheim Kingsmen lost a ton of people. Many were age outs, and many decided to move on with their lives. I was among them deciding to retire from drum corp, an activity that I was first exposed to at the age of six, and an activity that had totally consumed me for much of my teenage life. I also had two sisters, a brother, and a step sister who marched with the Anaheim Kingsmen from 1969 to 1974. At the close of the 1972 season there was one other significant change...without the gigs for income, and staying in a motel the night before finals, and everything else that had changed since Don Porter left, for the first time in the history of the Anaheim Kingsmen, they were no longer financially stable. As a footnote to the story, no corp has ever been on the verge of folding, "ala" the 1972 Anaheim Kingsmen, and come back to win a DCI Championship.