Weeds Imperial Orchestra: The First Integrated Dance Band in New England:The History of Leroy Satchell

The First Integrated Dance Band in New England:
The History of LeRoy Satchell and
Weeds Imperial Orchestra

If you do a quick Google search for Integrated Jazz Bands in the United States you are bound to call up a few websites and a bit of information on the late, great, Benny Goodman. To Benny, the quality of your music didn’t come from the color of your skin but the talent that lay beneath. The thing is, this was not a characteristic that was unique to Mr. Goodman. It’s fairly common knowledge that Benny Goodman put together his first “orchestra” in 1934 and that it was integrated. But pre-dating Benny Goodman were folks like the New Orleans band leader George Vital “Papa Jack” Laine and, in Vermont, band leader Sterling Weed. In a time of racial segregation, in the “whitest state in the nation” and only 60-so years after the American Civil War, Sterling Weed and the men of his “Imperial Orchestra” were already at work breaking down racial barriers and entertaining Vermont, New York, New Hampshire and southern Quebec with some of the best live music around with a band as diverse as any you’d find in the big city of New York.

Growing up white in Central Vermont and then moving to central Connecticut in my teens was a big eye opener for me. I was suddenly surrounded by people of color who I had only known to have been marginally represented in the TV shows and movies that I watched. This was definitely not a case of “I don’t see color”. No, I definitely saw it… in fact it was ALL that I saw. It was so foreign to me and, at first, a little scary. Very shortly into my time in CT it became less scary for sure and my friend group became quite diverse, a circle of color and culture, and I learned a lot. What I learned the most was that we were all kids, we all wanted the same things, and our tastes for music and crass comedy knew no boundaries.

And then I moved back to Central Vermont my junior year of high school and I was struck by how homogenous everything seemed… how white-washed. During my younger years here my parents would take me out and about around the state and on the rare occasion that I would see a person of color I would assume that they must just be visiting here from New York or, equally as ignorant, I would assume that they must have been adopted into a white family much as had happened when my aunt and uncle first adopted a baby from Central America and then from New York City. Vermont was, and still is, the whitest place I’ve ever lived and if you’ve read our history books there’s really no reason to believe otherwise.

According to those history books the first towns of Vermont were built on the backs of enterprising white men who organized the building of railroads, cut down trees, and carved out towns in valleys and hamlets spread throughout the Green Mountains. They ran banks and were members of their city, town, and state government and their images appear in old etchings and photos in black and white in dusty old books housed in libraries and antiquarian book stores. At historical reenactments there are folks dressed like them telling their stories and showing what life was like for these citizens of Vermont, citizens who were white.

Can you blame a kid for thinking, then, that his state was always like this? That people of color had no place, no history here? The wakeup call for me came on a Saturday in September as I strolled through an outdoor exhibit put on by the St. Albans Historical Museum. As I was checking out the new displays of old pictures outlining the history of the railroad, women’s suffrage and Killkare State Park (which, oddly enough, was referred to as “Kamp Kill Kare” back in the 20s...) I took a walk past a new exhibit advertising the Sterling Weed room in the museum. I saw something which took me aback and again, upended all my pre-conceived notions.

Weeds Imperial Orchestra ca. 1936

For those who do not know the story of Sterling Weed and his Imperial Orchestra one need only do a quick Google search. This day and age, however, if you only type in Sterling Weed’s name you will get many ads for dispensaries located in Sterling, Colorado. My suggestion would be to type in “Weed’s Imperial Orchestra” in order to narrow down your search results to something more relevant.

Sterling Weed was a bandleader, based out of St. Albans, Vermont, and was the nation's oldest known active bandleader when he died at the age of 104 in 2005. Under his baton, Weed's Imperial Orchestra played dates from the late 1920s all the way up to the summer of 2005 and his band was legendary. Comprised of young men from Franklin County he played shows all up and down the East Coast, into New York and Canada back when it wasn’t so hard to cross back and forth over the international border. And when swing music fell victim to “cowboy music”, Sterling became a music educator teaching in at least five different schools in the area including both Bellows Free Academies.

Sterling started his musical life by playing piano but quickly learned the piccolo and flute as well. Playing in a local dance band he then switched to the alto saxophone, which became the instrument that he was most associated with. He is still loved and remembered by anyone with whom he had contact. His students are still in the area and abroad and those who may not currently be engaged with making music still remember their music making under his baton fondly.

Again, all this information is easily found online and yet, on that Saturday in September, I saw something that astonished me and challenged what I knew and believed. There, pinned to a display in aged sepia tone, was a photo of Weed’s Imperial Orchestra from 1936 and in that sea of black suits, ancient instruments, and white faces was the face of one lone musician who was clearly of African American descent. Weed’s Imperial Orchestra was an integrated band.