Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • April 2014
2
TBA Bandmaster of the Year 2014
The youngest of four children,
Dan Gibbs was born January 26,
1937 to Robert and Daisy Gibbs
in Murchison, Texas. Dan’s mother
was the only good piano player in
their small town, so she was
invited to play piano at all
the church revivals. Due to
his mother’s influence, Dan’s
musical career started at age
six when he started singing
solos in church; and he has
done it ever since.
After attending elementary
school in Murchison through
the eighth grade, where
they had two grades in
each classroom with one
teacher, Dan transferred to
Brownsboro High School.
Some of the first friends he
met asked him to join the band,
and his band career began when
his mom and dad rented a Holton
trombone for six dollars a month.
The band director was a self-
taught Baptist preacher whose
“claim-to-fame” was his ability to
play the “musical saw”…the only
instrument he played. During
Dan’s second year in high school,
a new band director was hired…
he was a Country and Western
cello player. At mid-term his junior
year, the director left and they did
not have a director the rest of the
year. In 1953, Dan’s senior year,
Roger Winslow, a brand new band
director from Western State College
in Gunnison, Colorado, came to
Brownsboro. Until midterm his
senior year, Dan planned to be a
high school English teacher, but all
that changed through the influence
of Roger Winslow. When Dan saw
what an influence Mr. Winslow had
on these country kids, and what a
difference he made in their lives,
Dan decided to become a band
director.
After graduation
from
Brownsboro High School at age
seventeen, Dan married Shirley
Colley, his high school sweetheart.
He enrolled at Tyler Junior College
and Shirley got a secretarial job
to pay the bills. Other than being
able to sing pretty well, Dan’s
formal musical training was that
he knew the B-flat scale on his
trombone—not necessarily the
names of the notes, but he knew
the slide positions were 1-6-4-3-
1-4-2-1. Eddie “Pinky” Fowler,
band director at TJC, was another
great influence on Dan’s
musical life. After finishing
Tyler Junior College, Dan
transferred to North Texas
State College (now the
University of North Texas).
Shirley got a secretarial job
in Dallas and commuted
every day until Dan got his
master’s degree.
After graduating from
North Texas in three years
at age 20, Mr. Maurice
McAdow invited Dan to stay
on and get his master’s degree
and become the graduate
assistant band director. This
turned out to be the greatest thing
that ever happened to his career.
Through studying conducting and
working daily with Mr. McAdow,
Dan learned that there was a lot
more to making music than just
playing right notes and rhythms.
Mr. McAdow taught him that
music really comes from the “heart
and soul” and gave him a daily
example of all the attributes of a
real gentleman.
At age 21, married four years
with a master’s degree, Dan was
hired to be the junior high band
director in Monahans in 1958.
Dan Gibbs