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10/03/2018 08:30 AMC’mon, admit you may have imagined it: leading the parade, marching as the drum major with hat and baton at the head of, well, 76 trombones. Frenchy Cordeau doesn’t have to imagine. He is a drum major, albeit leading fifes and drums, not trombones.
Frenchy is the drum major of the Chester Fife & Drum Corps which just celebrated its 150th anniversary with a muster on Sept. 22.
“It was great, but I’m glad they are not going to do another one for 50 years,” French admits.
For Frenchy, the muster was truly a landmark weekend, and not only because of the success of the event. It was also a fond farewell. This month, Frenchy is retiring, not only as drum major, but also as business manager of the corps, a job that, while out of the spotlight, requires far greater attention to detail.
“You know when it’s time to move on; I’m 68 now,” he says.
Still, it is not complete retirement. Frenchy will continue in some circumstances.
“I will do stand-still concerts, just not any more marching,” he says.
Actually, Frenchy is getting pretty good at retiring. This is his third major retirement. He retired after 22 years in the Navy, much of that time spent as a radioman senior chief in the submarine service. He joined the Navy right out of high school at the age of 17. While in the service he earned first an associate’s degree, then a bachelor’s in occupational education and a master’s degree in adult education. After leaving the Navy, Frenchy worked at Electric Boat in Groton, much of the time writing basic courseware training manuals for submarines. After 23 years, he retired again.
When he was born near Sherbrooke, Quebec, Frenchy started life another name: Maurice. Frenchy grew up speaking both French and English, since his mother was American. He says today his reading comprehension of French is good—he reads Facebook posts from a cousin who writes in French—but that he can no longer speak the language fluently.
When he was 11, Frenchy’s family moved to Chicopee, Massachusetts. In those days, as Frenchy recalls, the town as “half French-Canadian and half Polish. There were a lot of names that ended in -ski or -eau.”
It was in Chicopee, at a local armory, that Frenchy first heard the music that has been a part of his life ever since. As a teenager, he played in drum and bugle groups. In high school, he played a variety of instruments, among them snare and bass drum, tympani in a marching band, and even string bass in the high school jazz band. He learned the instruments largely on his own, “watching and practicing,” he says.
Frenchy, on bass or snare drum, has played in a number of local fife and drum corps, among them the Sailing Masters of 1812 headquartered in Essex, as well as fife and drum corps in Westbrook, Moodus, and most recently Chester.
New England, he says, has by far the greatest number of fife and drum corps though the groups exist throughout the United States and even in unlikely places like Yokosuka, Japan. According to Frenchy, Switzerland, where the Chester Fife & Drum Corps has visited and played, has a number of groups.
Frenchy and his wife June were members of the Chester Fife and Drum, though they were playing in Moodus in the early 1990s when they heard the Chester group had problems. According to Frenchy, membership had dwindled to six or seven people and there was a possibility the corps, the oldest continuous fife and drum company in Connecticut, would have to dissolve.
Frenchy and June decided to come back to the group and help build it back up. Now Frenchy says there are some 40 members, though some of them are far flung. One member is on active duty with the Army stationed in the Midwest; others live in Rhode Island and Vermont.
“It’s about getting people to practice every week,” Frenchy says.
Unlike some other corps that have junior divisions, Frenchy says the Chester Fife and Drum takes members “from 8 to 88.” Currently there is a nine-year-old drummer who has just joined. Frenchy emphasizes that the Chester corps welcomes family groups. Certainly, his own family illustrates that. June is the fife sergeant and the corps’ treasurer; in fact, they first met because both were in fife and drum corps.
“She’s been doing it all her life,” he says.
And their daughter Megan, is the bass corporal.
Frenchy says when the Chester Fife and Drum Corps performs at something like the upcoming Chester Halloween Parade as they do every year, he usually gets two or three queries about joining. The group meets on Thursday nights from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Chester Elementary School. Still, he points out that the corps faces all kinds of competition when it comes to attracting young members.
“They have iPods, iPads; they just don’t seem to have the time,” he says.
Potential members don’t need to know how to play either the fife or drum to join. The corps gives lessons in both; June Cordeau is the fife instructor and Frenchy has taught drumming. The repertoire includes as many as 80 songs, but Frenchy says that there is a basic dozen or so that the corps usually concentrates on.
Before being made a part of the fife or drum line, players audition before the group. Though audition has a forbidding sound, Frenchy says sometimes people don’t even realize they are auditioning when they are playing at an informal jam session.
Frenchy says he is not going to miss marching at the head of the corps.
“When my wife is marching and everybody is sweating in hot uniforms, I am going to be watching in shorts and a T-shirt with a cold beer,’ he says.
He adds there is some relief from the heat in the uniforms the members wear. There are three versions depending on the temperature
As for June continuing in the corps, Frenchy show that he knows what makes a good marriage as well as what makes a good drum major.
“When June retires, that’s her decision,” he says. “I’m not going to tell her anything.”
To find out about joining the Chester Fife and Drum Corps, email chester1868@gmail.com.