My father Odie Payne, Jr., studio drummer for Chess Records, traveled, played, recorded and performed with more blues legends than any other percussionist of his time, including Buddy Guy. He’d take breaks [from traveling and performing], but rather than go on real breaks he would write his music. 

My father loved marches. This is one of his original pieces that he played for almost 30 years during the Bud Billiken Parade on the South Side of Chicago. He was a transcriptionist as well. He actually wrote those pieces note-for-note. He was an instrumentalist, so to speak; he played the trap drums, the tuba, piano, guitar, trombone, xylophone and he called himself playing the harmonica. He taught those instruments as well, on the South Side of Chicago. In fact, he taught many of those students coming out of the Englewood community. Taught them, literally, free of charge because they really couldn’t afford his normal fees. But, doing his community service he taught young men and women and many of them marched with him in the Bud Billiken parade.  

My father always had a love for marches, as evidenced by what he wrote. He wrote about three or four different marches, so Philip Sousa is not the only one who made marches, ok. My father was really into that. He loved military-type themes, he played with the Fifth United States Army Band. He played with the Chicago Post Office Band and he played with at least one or two other bands during his career. Most of that music was associated with marches and symphonic music, as well.  

I’m told that I play drums and the reason I’m told that is because my teaching came from the original man himself, Odie Payne, Jr. I started out performing in the Bud Billiken Parade when I was a Cub Scout and actually grew up from that and marched as a musician playing the bass drum in our marching bands for over 20 years. And then when my father became less able and other bands were dropping off the scene, we were carrying two bands, the OPJ Memorial Marching Bands. So, my father would lead the largest of the group, which was about 30 pieces, and I would lead the second of the group, which was between 15 and 20 pieces at a separate point in the parade. We did that for about three or four years, before we were at a point where he actually couldn’t march himself.  

-As told by Odie Payne, III of Chicago, Ill.