Azusa Aztec Marching Band

Ross Davis, the first director of the Azusa High School Aztec Marching Band built a winning music and marching unit unequaled in it’s time, and possibly, never to be equaled. Azusa became the top high school marching band in southern California. In the period from 1958-1965, Azusa won Sweepstakes a total of seven times. The Aztec Marching Band is the only high school band to have ever won three consecutive Sweepstakes in the entire 50 year history of the National City Maytime Band Review. This occurred in 1963, 1964, and 1965. Under the direction of Ross Davis, the band achieved the highest overall score of 98.1 at the El Monte Christmas Parade in 1963.

In May of 1963, the Aztec Marching Band scored the highest overall score in the history of any and all band reviews including Chaffey, Hawthorne, Chino, Santa Monica, Long Beach and National City and this score has never been challenged. Not even Arcadia, Loara, Anaheim, Mt. Miguel, Glendora, Pasadena, nor any other high school band has ever accomplished as high and near-perfect score that Azusa did.

Playing ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’ the band achieved the following score –

• Marching: 200 out of a possible 200 points.
  A perfect score.
• Showmanship: 298 out of a possible 300 points
• Music: 497 out of a possible 500 points.
• Scoring 995 points out of a possible 1000
  with zero inspection errors and no infractions or penalties.
• 995 points divided by 10 equals 99.5 out
  of 100.

The Aztec Band performance of 1963 scoring 99.5 out of 100 possible points is probably the greatest single marching band performance ever achieved by any high school band.

Only our own Azusa Aztec Marching Band, at the Monrovia Roundup Days Parade in May of 1967 scored a higher all-time music score of 498 when we won the Sweepstakes and the Music Trophy, playing the ‘Father of Victory’ march. This also earned the 2nd highest score ever achieved by Azusa of 97.95!

Following Ross Davis as director was Peter Grasselli. Mr. Grasselli was from the eastern United States He led the band for just one year. His background was strong in the ‘show band’ type of performances and competitions. These take place in a stadium environment, much like a half-time show for a football game. Mr. Grasselli was somewhat ahead of his time with this style of competetion for southern California, as parades were the main type of competetion for California high school bands in the late 60’s. Today, show band competetions are much more commonplace in southern California.

Micheal Seeley followed Grasselli as the next director of the Aztec band. A former student teacher of Ross Davis, Seeley led the band to it’s second best season ever, which included 5 perfect marching scores over a 3 year period. In 1967, as mentioned above, the band achieved the 2nd highest score in the history of the Monrovia Days ‘Round-Up’ Parade with a score of 97.95, a perfect 200 in marching, and won the music trophy scoring 498 out of 500, the highest SCSBOA music score to that point in time.

– Special thanks go to David Smith for providing much of the above information.

1979 – 1987

The Aztec Marching Band from 1979 to 1987 saw some momentous events. We were never a very large band, 50-55 musicians (jr.hi bands at the time were very small and didn’t send us many freshman) but we were known for our excellent marching and showmanship scores as well as 450 to 460 (out of 500) music scores.

’79-’82 were transition years from the “Landis” band which had a great reputation. Starting in the fall of ’82 with Drum Major Kevin Massie our band started placing in every event we entered (one every weekend for 8 weeks). This was still the era of major Band reviews, Chino, Montclair, Arcadia, National City and the All-Western in Long Beach. The band placed no lower than third that year and for the first and only time as far as I know, placed first at Arcadia playing “Eagle Squadron”.

Over the next five years the band would place either first or sweepstakes in each of these events. We were also the only Azusa band to win the title of “Blue Ribbon Band” at the L.A. County Fair (banner picture). During these years the band took week-long tours to Sacramento, San Francisco and Arizona where we marched in the Tucson and Phoenix Rodeo parades. We purchased a 28′ band trailer from money raised from the field tournament we hosted. It was custom painted and pulled by a van painted the same way donated by Mr. Acosta of Acosta Nurseries. His son Adrian was Drum Major from ’85-’86 (see drum major list)

In 1987 my final competition with band took us to the Maytime Band Review. We were small that year and only 25 students were allowed to march through competition (those that had “passed-off” the march). Under Drum Major Chris Massie ’86-’87, Kevin’s brother, we won the high marching score, the high showmanship score and Sweepstakes – the first time since 1965, beating bands three and four times our size again playing “Eagle Squadron”

– Special thanks to Scott Taylor, Band Director September 1979 – June 1987 for the above information.

Azusa Aztec Marching Band Directors

Peter Grasselli
Fall 1965 – Spring 1966

Michael Seeley
Fall 1966 – Spriing 1969

Greg Samuels
Fall 1992 – Spring 1993

Al Clifft
Fall 1969 – Spring 1972

Tom Jackson
Fall 1972 – Spring 1975

Ted Burton
Fall 1987 – Spring 1992

Azusa Aztec Marching Band Drum Majors

Carlice Rhode
1968 – ?

David Durrell
1968 – 1969

Jon Koenig
1970 – ?

Kip Decker
Fall 1971 – 1972

Rick Rivera
Fall 1972 – 1973

Randy Alva
Fall 1973 – 1975

Kenny Alva
Fall 1977 – 1978

Steve Grinter
Fall 1978 – 1979

Kelly Eisenbise
Fall 1979 – 1980

Angel Caratachea
Fall 1980 – 1981

Sandy Senne
Fall 1981 – 1982

Kevin Massie
Fall 1982 – 1983

Brian Salsbery
Fall 1983 – 1984

Adrian Acosta
Fall 1985 – 1986

Chris Massie
Fall 1986 – 1987

Luis Lopez
Fall 1987 – 1990

Able Acosta
Fall 1990 – 1992

Eric Sorenson
Fall 1992 – 1993

Sandra Goda
Fall 1993 – 1994

Joshua J. Campbell
Fall 1994 – 1995

Monica Gueterez
Fall 1995 – 1996

Joseph Valenzuela
Fall 1996 – 1999

Regina Alba
Fall 1999 – 2002

Natalie Adams
Fall 2002 – 2003

Aram Hernandez
Fall 2003 – 2005

Pilar Elias
Fall 2005 – 2006

Auna Kristina Carlsson
Fall 2006 – 2007

James Martinez
Fall 2006 – 2007

Robert Augostine
Fall 2007 – 2008

News for the Azusa Aztec Marching Band

• Class of 1979 Shout Out! May 10, 2018

  TetonTrekker

  
  The class of 1979 yearbook senior pages have been reloaded! But some of the information from your class is missing. Please go to your class page to see it and help us fill in the blanks. Join the discussion on our message board at Delphi Forums (free membership required).      

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