Only through a careful look at past history are we able to understand what we do and the reasons we do them. This is especially true when trying to understand mistakes we have made in music education. I will try to explain my thinking as one who was there and watched it happen. During the 1960s the school stage band movement began to blossom. Heavily influenced by professional big bands such as Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, Thad Jones, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Bill Watrous, Don Ellis and others, high school band directors began to collect illegal record copies of these bands and…