Ending an era of bringing music to San Francisco Chinatown and much of the outside world, the Cathay Club will officially close its doors as one of the oldest existing clubs of Chinatown. William Lowe, Leo Mark, Bill Chin and Ray Lym represent the oldest surviving link from the charter members. The organization officially disbanded at its 2005 annual Banquet held at Tong Palace this month before almost 300 saddened members and friends of this once very active club.
Ray Lym, son of founder Thomas Lym, recalls his father telling him that in 1911 he watched a white group, the Columbia Park Band, march in a parade. He wondered then why there weren’t any Chinese marching bands. So he and 12 Chinese school friends, ages 9-16, approached the Six Companies, the umbrella group of Chinatown’s family associations, for financial help to start a band. They bought instruments, hired navy bandmaster Tom Kennedy, and the first Chinese band in America was born.
Anti-Asian prejudice was high in those days, and the new Cathay Club became musical goodwill ambassadors.
“I joined the band in 1933, playing with my dad and uncles Herbert, Francis and Leon Lym,” Ray Lym recalls, “and my best memory was playing in the Watsonville Fourth of July parade and staying overnight in a strange city away from our segregated Chinatown.
Eight years of performing in public led to a contract with the Orpheum Theatre circuit, and the boys traveled for five months throughout the U.S. to cities where people had never seen a “real Chinese.”
Dressed in drab gray American military style uniforms, they titillated American audiences when they played American music with Chinese instruments and Chinese music with western instruments. Eventually, the band ordered brightly colored uniforms from Hong Kong, designed in Chinese fashion, which brought them much attention.
Consciously playing up their ethnicity, the colorful members played at the RKO Golden Gate Theatre in 1922. Chester Look remembered April, 1928, when they participated in the grand opening of the new Los Angeles City Hall, recalling, “In our Chinese uniform, we played with patriotic fervor ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ to tumultuous applause. I will never forget.”
The Cathay Band also played at the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge and the World’s Fair on Treasure Island in 1939-40. After World War II, 70 veterans returned to the band, and dressed in their shimmering imperial yellow silk uniforms, they marched down Market Street in the city’s Portola Celebration in 1948 under the banner, “We served, now we belong!”
In the early years, the Cathay Band was associated with funerals. Ray Lym laughed, remembering, “Nearly every Sunday over a period of 59 years we were seen marching somberly down Dupont Gai (now Grant Avenue) leading a funeral procession. We all got 75 cents for each funeral with a larger amount going to help maintain our clubhouse in Chinatown.”
In 1962, following a parade celebrating the movie Flower Drum Song, local unions shut the band down by requiring all musicians to have union membership. On the other hand, exclusive unions protecting their own interest denied membership to Chinese.
“When the Cathay Dance Band was in its heyday in the 1940s-50s, we had over 300 members,” said Edmond Chong. “For the past decade, members have enjoyed mostly social activities such as hosting bowling and golf tournaments and trips to the Far East.”
President Ray Lee expresses regret at the Cathay Club’s passing, but knows that together they will continue to enjoy a camaraderie rich in history.