From Various Web Pages:

eskimo.com/

Helen May Butler may well be referred to as America's foremost lady bandmaster. She began her all-female concert band in 1898 and it toured successfully for over 20 years. Butler was called the "female Sousa" because of the great quality of her band, her conducting style, the marches she wrote, and her ability to present crowd pleasing concerts. It was common for the band to draw crowds of up to 20,000 people.

Butler was the friend of many famous people including Teddy Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, William Jennings Bryant, Diamond Jim Brady and John Philip Sousa. At on time, Mr. Sousa invited her to conduct his great band. Since he rarely allowed other men to lead his band, it is quite remarkable that Helen May Butler was invited to conduct the Sousa Band.

In her later years, Helen May Butler ran a boarding house and became involved in politics. In 1936 she ran for a seat in the United States Senate in the state of Kentucky.

Helen May Butler and her Ladies' Military Band: Gender and Image
J. Michele Edwards, Macalester College

Using hundreds of primary documents from the Smithsonian Institution and numerous other collections, I have explored the activities of Helen May Butler (1867-1957) and her Ladies' Military Band with special attention to issues of gender. Butler's Ladies' Military Band was highly successful and especially active from 1899 until 1911, with many parallels to Sousa's band. Under the direction of Butler, one of the first women band leaders in the U.S., the band played hundreds of concerts across the country (theaters, parks, Chautauqua circuit, fairs) and performed at such visible events as the Pan-American Exposition (Buffalo, 1901), the Women's Exhibition at Madison Square Garden (1902), and the St. Louis World's Fair (1904). Among her compositions is Cosmopolitan America, the official campaign march for the Republican Convention in 1904.

The paper with accompanying slides of archival photographs will summarize the activities of Butler and her Ladies' Military Band; analyze the significance of this women's band within the context of turn-of-the-century musical and cultural life in the U.S.; and examine the impact of gender on audience reception and journalists' evaluations as well as the image Butler and the band projected through publicity materials and photographs. Butler's persona reinforced America's patriotic mood and conformed to expectations about women's propriety; however, the very existence of her ensemble defied the masculine character of the band world. Marketing as well as musicianship contributed to Butler's success, as the band connected with audiences through the representation of shared values, especially gender ideology and national identity.

(b near Keene, NH 17 May 1867; d Covington, KY 16 June 1957)

The daughter of Lucius Abbott and Esther Butler, she became known as "A Woman of Many Distinctions." Butler was a multi-talented lady. In addition to being a virtuoso cornetist and bandleader (often called the Female Sousa), she ran for U. S. Senate in 1936. A multi-talented young lady, she studied both the violin (with Bernard Listerman, concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) and cornet. In 1891, she formed and conducted the Talma Ladies Orchestra. In 1898, she began conducting the core group of players who were later to become the twenty-five to thirty-five member U. S. Talma Ladies Military Band, also known as Helen May Butler’s Ladies Band. Dressed in sharp military-like uniforms, the band played at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in 1901. The band played at Madison Square Gardens for the Women’s Exposition of 1902, and in the same year, performed at the South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition. In 1903, the band played sometimes twice a day, touring the East Coast and the South for a total of thirteen months. C. G. CONN instruments were played on and endorsed by Helen and many of her soloists. As a result, C. G. CONN gave all of the members of the band CONN instruments at their performance at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Her band performed the same music as Sousa and all of the other bands led by outstanding male bandmasters, all of the pieces being contemporary band classics of the time. The band also performed music by Butler. Published in 1904 by Ingram, and arranged by Richter, her Cosmopolitan America March became so popular that it became the official march of the National Republican Party during Theodore Roosevelt’s Presidential Campaign of 1904.

During the summer concerts in Willow Grove, her band shared the stage with Conway, Creatore, Clarke, and Sousa (a personal friend of and inspiration to Butler). After the band broke up in c1912, she settled in the Cincinnati area, and remained the rest of her life in Covington, Kentucky. She ran unsuccessfully for public office (mentioned above) and was a member of the Eastern Star, the Auxiliary of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the White Shrine of Jerusalem, and the August Willich Relief Corps. She was a member of the Mt. Auburn Methodist Church in Cincinnati, raised two children and continued to teach and play solos on her cornet (Hazen and Hazen 1987, 186-9). She is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, and her uniforms and other memorabilia was given to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. Information for the above entry comes from The Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music (Rehrig 1991, 119) and The Music Men (Hazen and Hazen 1957; 32, 36, 186-189).