Ruth Elies' dance band

For two cents plain

At 1130 AM on Oct. 24, 1927, a first class envelope (2 cents postage) was posted to SR News editor's mother, (then) Miss Ruth Elies. Sent from the Loyal Order of Moose, Madison Lodge No. 1451, it was to book Miss Elies' dance band for the night of Nov. 14th. Signed by the Chairman of Lodge Entertainment, Fred H. Rogers, it sealed the deal for Miss Elies, who at that time was only 13 years old. She was playing her saxophone then. Later she became a pianist and church organist, and played by ear. She's been gone since 2004, but in her final years she still played her Steinway grand. Her genes went into the musical proficiencies and gifts of her children and especially her grandchildren.

She graduated from Sun Prairie WI high school in 1931, where in her senior year she met a new history and band teacher fresh out of Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, Iowa. Leslie Dix. Romance was verbotin yet they had an intense clandestine love. The mutual love of music, the bands, the concerts they played "on the ether" - over radio out of the state network, the pieces they transcribed together like Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy's Indian Love Call - is all recalled at this time.