A distant relative spoke of the O'Hare family coming to visit when she was a child. Her most frequent visitor was W. C. O'Hare's younger sister Mary Ellen O'Hare (Mrs. Samuel Shively) Koones and her family, people she described as always laughing and joking. W. C. O'Hare anecdotes found elsewhere on this site, such as his accounts of playing cymbals in Williamsport and of meeting Victor Herbert at Manhattan Beach, attest to his own sense of fun and story-telling skill.
The following prank involving a young trap drummer further illustrates that fun-loving spirit:
The following prank involving a young trap drummer further illustrates that fun-loving spirit:
When Wm. C. Brown, the well-known and talented young drummer of New York, was introduced to Wm. Christopher O'Hare several years ago, in the Witmark Building, the conversation naturally began with a discussion of the latter's compositions, especially his Cotton Pickers, Levee Revels, and Plantation Pastimes, and also of the many excellent orchestral and band arrangements for which he is noted. These, by the way, form a most important feature of M. Witmark & Sons' instrumental catalogue. This mutually interesting subject disposed of, Mr. Brown proceeded to inquire why there were not more drum solos available, in which the 'trap drummer,' that nimble and versatile member of the orchestra, could have a chance to display his fullest and most brilliant powers.
Now Brown, be it known, was a most enthusiastic votary of the legitimate or regimental school of drumming, as well as that of the 'trap' variety of the art, and kept perpetually discoursing on 'rudimentary drumming,' until at last the other boys in the band nicknamed him 'Rudimentary Bill.'
Some little while after the conversation, O'Hare and Bandmaster C. P. Eller entered into a friendly conspiracy to give Brown a chance to distinguish himself on short notice as well as unexpectedly. Thus it came about that one evening, at an informal concert, Brown found on his stand a drum solo bearing the significant and startling title of Rudimentary Bill. O'Hare had composed and arranged for him a drum solo with band accompaniment that was an acid test of his ability both as a drummer and a man of superior nerve!
The quick survey he gave of the part before beginning to play would have taken the heart out of many an older and more experienced musician, but Brown, though surprised, was as gritty as they make them. The solo was easy enough at the start, but soon developed into a display of regimental drumming of the most brilliant quality, from the 'mammadaddy,' or 'paradiddle' of 'rudimentary' drumming, to the extreme limit of the art, where a splendid 'drum cadenza' burst forth like a gorgeous display of fireworks. But Brown's ordeal was not yet over, for after a thirty-two bar rest for the drum, during which the band 'filled in' with a symphonic interlude, a 'trap drumming' exhibition confronted the soloist. First came the familiar barnyard imitations. The Shanghai rooster and his affinity had a brief but animated operatic duet, after which the cuckoo, whippoorwill, canary and bullfrog sang in such quick alternations that their efforts seemed to be almost simultaneous, a la the quartet from Rigoletto.
Faster and faster grew the tempo, and thicker and thicker stood the beads of perspiration upon Brown's forehead. It would have been an 'Irish trick' for O'Hare to have set such a task for a less capable drummer, but Brown was 'right there' every time; he drummed on this, he drummed on that. Now on the head of his drum, now on the rim, now on the shell, now on the rounds of his chair, his music stand, the heel of his boot, the floor, and even on the bald head of a friendly tuba player who sat near by. He had James Whitcomb Riley's 'Little Man in the Tin-Shop'* literally beaten out of business! Finally, after a further avalanche of Chinese gong, locomotive whistle, wood devil, horsehoofs and all the other paraphernalia of the modern trap drummer's kit, in reckless, madcap, pandemoniac tempo di gallop, the band came to one of those abrupt climactic stops, and the panting, but still game, soloist encountered at the end of his part, this neatly printed direction:
"Get up from your chair, face the people, and shout, 'I am Rudimentary Bill!' If you've got the nerve)."
Brown's eyes stood out like knobs on a bureau drawer; he had not expected this. The eyes of everyone in the house, especially of Bandmaster Eller, were riveted on him, and O'Hare was beginning to have doubts as to whether he had not gone too far. But brave Brown only hesitated long enough to think up the most effective way of delivering his speech, and then, assuming a pose like that of the Statue of Liberty, and holding both drumsticks aloft in his right hand while the calcium man in the gallery turned the spot light full on him, he yelled, 'I am Rudimentary Bill!' Then going O'Hare one better, he added, 'And I'm no dead beat, if I am a drummer!'
The applause and laughter, from both musicians and audience was of course almost deafening, and Bill Brown--'Rudimentary Bill' was unanimously voted the hero of the evening. --Metronome, 1909
To this day, a fun-loving spirit characterizes get-togethers of the numerous O'Hare family descendants living on the East Coast where one is likely to find them gathered around the piano singing Irish songs, belting out lyrics to karaoke accompaniment, or dancing in a conga line.
*Appearing in The Century (April 1890) and illustrated by E. W. Kemble, James Whitcomb Riley's "The Little Man in the Tinshop" tells the story of a young boy taken to the theater for the first time by his uncle. Introduced to a theater orchestra, the boy is captivated by the drummer just as his uncle had been as a child. One stanza comes closest to the moments when Rudimentary Bill met and surpassed William Christopher O'Hare's challenge:
Raking a drum like a rattle of hail,
Clinking a cymbal or castanet;
Chirping a twitter or sending a wail
Through a piccolo that thrills me yet;
Reeling ripples of riotous bells,
And tipsy tinkles of triangles--
Wrangled and tangled in skeins of sound
Till it seemed that my very soul spun round,
As I leaned, in breathless joy, toward my
Radiant uncle who snapped his eye
And said, with the courtliest wave of his hand,
'Why, that little master of all the band
Is the Little Man in the Tinshop!