I recently found these three membership cards for the Uptown String Band in a box of "stuff" we found on the third floor in Becky's studio while we were reorganizing everything. There were lots of old things in that box including these cards from the 1960's. These were membership cards from 1965, 1966 and 1967. I joined the band in late 1962 and stayed with the band until 1968. There's probably three more cards floating around somewhere in another box of "stuff". I would sometimes take the trolley down Germantown Avenue to Lehigh and then walk over a few blocks to the clubhouse. Each week we paid our dues and they were marked on the reverse side of these cards.
I had a lot of fun in that band as a teenager and a lot of the guys from the band were the friends that I went to a lot of rock concerts with in the late 60's.
However, there was another aspect to the mummer's experience that bothered me then and still does now. It was the racism and misogyny. Back then the entire Philadelphia Mummer's Association was white only and no women allowed to participate in the bands or other groups.
People in these bands were from all over the Philadelphia area and I was from Germantown. My experience with black people may have been a little different than most of the other mummers. I never understood not letting girls or women into the bands. What was that all about?
Of course now when I think about it the whole mummer's experience was based on early minstrel shows and vaudeville performances. It had been only recently during my times with the mummers that black face performances was no longer tolerated by the city. Sometimes I'm not proud about my time with the mummers band.
I would also run into similar racism but on a much larger scale during my time in the Navy when I was mostly serving with Southern and Midwestern white racist crackers but that's another story.
