Journal of Band Research, Volume 42(1), Fall 2006, pp. 1-41.

Jill M. Sullivan, Ph.D. - Arizona State University

After one week of training by the male Marine Band members, they selected a likely leader, Charlotte Plummer. After three months of training the women’s band, the Marine Band mentors finalized their recommendation for Charlotte Plummer and went back to Washington, D.C. Captain Santelmann remembered, “Each month I would have one of the three men return to my office and report on how things were going, what they needed and what changes should be made. . . . It was three months of this. It was decided to give the band over to Charlotte Plummer as the Leader.”37

Plummer, from Eugene, Oregon, possessed a strong music background and was the obvious choice for director. She was a music education graduate from the University of Oregon and she had the distinct honor of being the principal clarinetist with the university band and orchestra as well as a soloist with the band. Her music career started at age five, when she began taking piano lessons from her mother. She started playing saxophone in third grade. During her teen years, she played clarinet and saxophone in the family dance band, and after college she played in an all-women’s dance band in California called “Babe Egan’s Hollywood Redheads.”38

Besides the variety of performance experience, Plummer, uniquely, had conducting experience. She remembered that her first conducting opportunity was in kindergarten, when her teacher asked her to lead a group of children playing rhythm instruments for a scheduled school performance. Plummer remembered, “They didn’t have a boy to do it, and I’d had piano. They dressed me in a sailor’s suit and we gave a performance in front of the parents.”39 Apparently, conducting was her destiny, as Plummer would make a career in instrumental music by conducting and teaching. She had held three different high school conducting positions prior to enlistment in the Marine Corps. She had been a part-time band director at University High School in Eugene, Oregon while still in college, following graduation, she served as an assistant conductor in La Grande, Oregon, until she was offered a position of lead band director at Commerce High School, a position she held until the fall 1943.40 While at Commerce High, she conducted the band as well as the boy’s glee club for one and a half school years, and then chose not to return because her band had diminished in size due to the loss of male members—the entire tuba section—to lucrative jobs in the local shipyards, work that had become available because so many men had been sent to war.41

Plummer commented during an interview about her appointment as the conductor of the MCWRB, “There weren’t many women at that time that had had any experience directing bands. So it was [that] I was in the right place at the right time.”42 Plummer led the women’s band for twenty-five months—November 1943 through December 1945—the entire period of its active duty.43

Sergeant Plummer proved to be an outstanding choice, not only for her musicianship, but for her even-keeled personality and her ability to build a strong sense of community among the band personnel. Her commitment to the band members was shown when she turned down several opportunities to attend officer training school primarily because she learned that if she were to become an officer, she would no longer be permitted to live with the enlisted band members.

Santelmann communicated to Plummer in a personal letter that the Marine Band was ready to give her and the women’s band its complete support:

I was . . . most pleased to hear the recommendation to appoint you as the bandmaster of this group and also pleased to know that after his contact with you Mr. Bodnar found the qualifications which I felt that you had. . . . As you have felt a close relationship to the three men I detailed to train you, so, I hope, you will place a certain reliance in our entire band for any help that we may be able to offer at any time in the future, and that you will feel that we are, in a sense, related, in that we have kindred interests and problems. Any problem that seems difficult to you do not hesitate to send along and we will do what we can to help you.44

Andrew Bodnar wrote about turning the baton over to Plummer. “When we acquired the talents of Charlotte Plummer, we knew we had no problems there because she was a thorough musician, a fine pianist, and knew music well. . . . She was definitely the potential leader. I handed the baton to her . . . the response was tremendous.”45

Another memorable event for the women’s band members occurred on 15 June 1945, when the United States Marine Band made their first appearance at Camp Lejeune and Master Sergeant Charlotte Plummer became the first woman to conduct the Marine Band in concert—a distinction she alone held for fifty-eight years.75 On the clear, warm evening, Sergeant Plummer conducted the male band in the “March of the Women Marines,” the official march of the MCWR, in front of an audience of over 5,000 Marines seated in an open field on pails from their squad rooms.76