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In winter. Jenkins bands play in schools, churches, halls throughout the South and West. In summer they head North. This year 65 of the 125 bandsters were chosen, divided into Bands No. 1 and No. 2. Last week Band No. 1, with 21-year-old Freddy Bennett as leader, played in Providence, R. I., moved on to Hartford, Conn. Under the guidance of William Blake, who has been with the Orphanage for 38 years, Band No. 2 had been at Saratoga, N. Y. where the horseracing season opened early this month (TIME, Aug. 12). Day & night at the race track, at baseball games and on the spa's Broadway the hard-working youngsters played spirituals, sweet ballads and hot arrangements of tunes like Dinah and Sweet Sue on their rusty cornets, trombones, French horns, drums. Bystanders were especially taken with Band No. 2's impish 12-year-old leader who juggled his baton, shimmied vigorously.
Rich old Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins, in his institution's Northern headquarters in New York's Harlem, scrutinized detailed weekly reports of his bands' doings. Collections in Saratoga, even with five youngsters passing hats and wheedling coins from bystanders, were good only when someone with a kind heart produced a windfall. Last week Daniel Jenkins sent Band No. 2 back to Charleston, where Band No. 1 would rejoin it, playing its way southward by way of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond and Durham. Daniel Jenkins also is soon returning South. "I ain't got long to stay here," he cackles. "But I'll carry on till Jesus calls me home."