The "Lancaster, Pennsylvania's Music From The Past: Part II - The Marimba Queens!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Searching YouTube for a copy of "A Study in Brown" which was a marimba-based musical group from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s.  Now...I realize that many of you probably have no idea what a marimba might be, or might not even have been alive during the dates I just listed, so, I need to give you some background information.  

Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens. 

The marimba is a percussion instrument consisting of a set of wooden bars that are struck with yarn or rubber mallets to produce musical tones.  Resonators or pipes suspended underneath each bar amplifies their sound.  The bars are arranged much like the keys of a piano.  This instrument is a type of idiophone, or vibrating instrument, but with a more resonant and lower-pitched sound than a xylophone.  A person who plays a marimba is known as a marimbas or a marimba player.  A group in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known as Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens, was a marimba-based musical group that played from about 1938 to 1955.  "A Study in Brown" was a two-minute black and white film made in the early 1940s that was shown in movie houses as a bonus before the main feature.  Reg and his Queens toured the country by starting and ending their tour with an appearance at Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  Their tour included making the rounds of the major dance halls as they traveled by bus.  The main attraction was a "hep-cat" bass player, Frank DiNunzio, from Hershey who played his stand-up slap bass almost until his death in February of 2005.  

In the video that follows you can see the other musicians in the group who were: marimba player Fern Marie, Reg's wife;   next to the her was the maraca player, Grace Bailey; on the back marimba is Joyce Shaw; on the upper octave, Ruth Hauser; on the middle octave was Janet Yonde;  Madee Greer is on the upper and Polly Weiser on the lower.  "A Study in Brown" is known as a "Soundie" and when making Sounds, the artist, or in this case artists, first record an acceptable copy of the audio, then various camera takes are made using different camera angles and closeups as the performers lip-synched the lyrics and acted as though playing the instruments.  The results were edited to create the appearance of several cameras doing the filming, when in most cases one camera was used.  "A Study in Brown" was showed at many Army Camps.  Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens played their last engagement at the Bedford Springs Hotel in Bedford, Pennsylvania in 1962.  I hope you enjoy the video, or at least understand what a marimba may be.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.