In 2005 the Elder High School Glee Club took the stage in Seton High School’s auditorium for their annual “Series at Eight” Christmas performance. It was a packed house, full of parents, grandparents, girlfriends and patrons of Elder and Seton High Schools. These people paid to see the young men of the Elder Glee Club and the Seton Chorus sing Christmas tunes, but what happened while the Elder Glee Club began their second song was very unusual: the fire alarms went off.
Dave Allen, Elder’s Glee Club Director, kept playing the tune “Do You Hear What I Hear?”, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. Assistant Director Jim Driehaus stopped directing the chorus of 100 plus young men—some of whom had already stopped singing—startled by the alarms and nervousness that was taking place in the audience behind him. He then looked at Allen, who paused, realized what was going on, and finally stopped playing.
The saying, ‘The show must go on,’ was temporarily suspended. “We were all singing,” Allen remembered. “We had to quit and leave and start over again. Everyone had to go outside.”
Nick Chaney, then a junior in the Glee Club recalled the event as well. He said, “Dave Allen tried to continue the concert when the fire alarm was going off during that concert. Most teachers would probably start telling students to begin filing out, but Mr. Allen wanted the show to go on.”
While Dave Allen couldn’t recall exact details of the ‘fire alarm incident,’ he did make a general point about live performances. “There are times when everything falls apart and you can’t do a thing about it,” he said. “You just have to stand there and sort of say, ‘Go on. It’s live. You can’t change it. Keep going. Don’t stop.’ And that can be a really embarrassing and annoying moment because things can suddenly fall apart and they will.”
Nothing surprises the 72-year-old Allen, a Youngstown, Ohio native. While he’s been involved in music since his youth (his father was a professional concert percussionist) his passion for teaching music began during his college years.
“When you go away to school you go for one purpose then after a while other avenues open up,” he said. “That’s just kind of what happened to me. I originally went there to be a concert pianist. I always loved it. After a while I started finding my way into other areas which I enjoyed far more.”
He graduated in 1961 from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, which, at the time, was not affiliated with the University of Cincinnati (CCM affiliated with UC in 1962). “And at the time, when they first started, they had absolutely no buildings over at UC,” he said. “The music school was just scattered about in all kinds of apartments and anywhere they could find around that area to house the school.”
“So for a while, for a couple of years, the school was in limbo, it was everywhere.”
While in school, Allen played at local Catholic churches, to earn some extra money. These jobs allowed him to meet many priests in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati—connections that paid off in the early 60s, when he found his way to St. William parish, on Cincinnati’s West Side, in Price Hill.
“There were several priests I knew at the time who were actually at the Conservatory who kind of pushed me in that direction,” Allen said, rubbing his chin. “I was at Holy Name at that time and I didn’t know if I wanted to leave Holy Name, and [the priests] said, ‘Oh yes you do.’ At that time, St. William Parish in Price Hill was the parish in the city, in ’61.”
Zac Ober, now 21 years old, went through St. William (and graduated with yours truly) and remembered Dave Allen’s tutelage through grade school and high school. “He was a musical mentor for me from my first days in St. William’s Student Choir in 4th grade,” he said. “I can still remember him having us lay down on the music room floor and practice controlled breathing.”
It’s one of Dave Allen’s favorite singing drills; “Lie down on the floor,” he’d urge us. Each member of the Children’s Choir would lay down on the music room floor with a book on our midsection, practicing the breathing Dave Allen told us would make us into better singers.
And although Allen has been a mainstay at the parish located at the corner of West Eight Street and Sunset Avenue, he has really made his name and legacy as director and teacher of the Elder Glee Club. But that doesn’t change the fact that Dave Allen might be the busiest man on the West Side of town. On top of his job as Glee Club Director and running the Children’s and Adult Choirs at St. William, Allen is the conductor of the Cincinnati Metropolitan Orchestra (CMO).
So, does he ever feel he’s too busy? “No. No,” he told me. “Sometimes you get a bit overwhelmed with things but you just have to dig in and do it and forget it. Keep after it.”
At this time of the year, busy is about the only thing Dave Allen is. The young men of the Elder Glee Club keep him on his toes too.
They say the only thing that changes at Elder High School are the first names of the kids. Elder has a student population of 1,000 young men, and graduates nearly 250 students a year, so, forgive Allen if the details on his early days at Elder are a little fuzzy. He’s seen so many kids pass through the halls, he might mistakenly call you by your older brother’s name if you saw him today.
And it’s true. If I could count the number of times he called me Tony (and vice versa), I’m sure I’d need a calculator.
So, when did he begin at Elder? Good question. “What year did I start here,” he asked assistant director Jordan Schad, while leaning back in his chair in the vocal office of the Schaeper Center at Elder.
“1969,” she replied from across the room, without having to think about it.
“And the Glee Club outfits haven’t changed much since then either,” she added a few seconds later.
Since Dave Allen has been around Elder for 40 years, he’s seen his fair share of students. And, naturally, with the pass of time, he’s noticed some visible changes with his students. “Through the late ’60s and early ’70s, kids were nuts. Absolutely nuts,” he said. “It was a much different time as far as working goes. They were still cooperative but it was just a different time. As time goes on people change, students change, society changes attitudes change, that’s what greatly affects the classrooms.”
If it sounds like Dave Allen is preaching and teaching it’s because he knows no other way. When I asked him if he could have ever done anything else with his life, he thought about it, and replied, “Probably not. I was involved in all kinds of different things, from professional performances to whatever, and this seems to be what I enjoy and have enjoyed most in my life.”
And the lives he’s touched have reflected that enjoyment as well. “He truly cares about his students and believes the best in them at all times. No matter how bad you screw it up DA was still there and telling you that you can get it next time,” said Mike McGowan, who graduated in 2007 from Elder. “Even on the heels of your worst performance and you look at your buddies knowing you butchered the song, you look down at DA and he's smiling and giving you a thumbs up.”
“He always pushed us to do the best we could, and you could tell that when we sounded good, he was thoroughly enjoying it,” said Zac Ober. “Anyone who knows Mr. Allen will know what smile I mean when I talk about his giant smile during performances.”
“Dave Allen is a great guy,” Nick Chaney said. “The dedication he shows to the Glee Club, its members and the community in general is amazing. Without him, I can honestly say at least half of my memories at Elder would be either non-existent or far less memorable.”
Sitting on his bench behind the piano in the music room of the Schaeper Center, Allen’s hands move effortlessly across the keys of the electric piano, playing the song “Gift of Love,” before the Glee Club’s daily prayer to start class. He has music in front of him, but he doesn’t even look at it—he doesn’t need to.
This year the Glee Club consists of 96 students, sophomores through seniors. Allen also teaches the Freshman Chorus, a group of 190 students in three separate classes. Elder’s principal Tom Otten, a 1964 Elder graduate, said Allen’s impact on the school is so big it’s “ginormous.”
“Dave is an icon. He is The Music Man,” Otten added. “The energy, creativeness, and persistent effort to help the students realize their God-given talents and to share those with others is remarkable.”
After the prayer, Allen stands up and addresses the class, making sure each separate group of students (from the deepest voices in the choir, the basses, to the highest voices, the tenor section) knows the importance of singing vowel sounds. “Don’t just sing notes,” he urges. “Sing music.”
The Glee Club is well into rehearsing Christmas music midway through the month of November, and they are one busy group come Christmas time. Smaller ensembles travel to nursing homes, private Christmas parties and even local grade schools, spreading the Christmas cheer through song. “Watching the faces of some nursing home patients when we’d sing Christmas carols for them proved everything Dave Allen told us was true. Music can really change the way people feel,” Chaney said.
Chaney also described the time the Glee Club sang at his grandfather’s funeral. “I had sung at many funerals in my time with the Glee Club, but I never really thought much about it until they sang at my grandfather’s,” he said. “The beautiful music was an amazing part of what I felt was a sort of tribute to my grandpa and his memory.”
“Without the Elder Glee Club, that tribute would have been far less memorable. Music can do so, so much. Dave Allen taught me that.”
When Dave Allen is called on to play at weddings and funerals, he jumps at the opportunity. But, he admits that it is more difficult to play funerals of friends. “If it’s someone I don’t know as well and I’m just playing for them it’s not as difficult a moment,” he said. “Same thing for weddings; If it’s somebody’s wedding I’m really close to it’s a far bigger thing for me.”
Dave Allen and the Elder Glee Club make trips out of the country every other year. I was fortunate enough to go to Italy in 2005 and across Europe in 2007 with the Elder Glee Club. Trips like these every other year have provided Dave Allen with some really great memories.
But it can also be rather concerning. Allen is basically in charge of each student that travels with the Glee Club, and he’s in charge of picking music for the group to sing in front of foreign audiences. “It’s always a worry,” he said. “We try to research and talk [to tour guides/planners] as much as you can to see what [foreign audiences] want to hear.”
At one performance in Italy, the priest at the church we sang at asked to hear “Battle Hymn of the Republic” twice. Earlier in the day, the boat that the Glee Club had gotten on in Venice was one person short. One student’s father had missed the boat, and waved to the group as the boat passed by.
“We almost left a parent on a boat dock in Venice,” Allen said, remembering the moment with a slight smile. “We had to take the boat and go back and get him.”
While Dave Allen and all the members of the Glee Club enjoy the trips, one of the very best times of the year for each group Allen works with is Christmas. I could go on and on about my favorite Christmas memories and traditions, and most of them have some connection to Dave Allen, either at St. William or through Glee Club.
“Christmas time is one of the more exuberant times of the year because everyone is in such a holiday spirit,” Allen said. “The Christmas music and the Christmas season makes a difference, but all the seasons are good.”
I talked with two of my friends one day in March of 2008. We were three freshman in college, all at different schools, but we all shared the experiences of Glee Club together. One of them said, “You know what? I kind of miss Glee Club. That time in the middle of the day was so much fun, it was a good break.”
The other responded, “Yeah, I turned on Christmas music and said, ‘Wait, something is different this year. I don’t hate [Christmas music] as much this year.’ Probably because I hadn’t been singing it for months before it was on the radio.”
Not that we hated singing Christmas music, but it did get kind of tiring after singing it day after day after day. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas music, but I know how wearing it was to sing the same songs over and over and over again.
When the Glee Club finished practicing a rendition of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” Allen reminds the students of their performance that evening on Fountain Square. “Bring your Santa Hats, and remember to look good,” he tells them, before dismissing the students to grab their bookbags before the change of classes.
He has a glimmer in his eye, and he’s brimming with the excitement of the season and with the satisfaction that the 90 plus young men in front of him are starting to sound like pros.
Dave Allen’s teaching style occasionally incorporates old sayings, such as “You look dull as dishwater,” to get his point across. The kids may laugh, but in the end, they’ll realize what he’s trying to teach them is absolutely true.
“His love for music made it that much easier for everyone around him to be caught up in the music just like he was. I can honestly say Mr. Allen helped shape my own love of music,” Zac Ober said.
“That’s the joy of teaching,” he said, with a smile. “That’s the essence of teaching. To see the success of students is the whole thing in a ball of wax.”
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Thanks to all the people who made this story possible, especially the man who inspired the story Dave Allen. These stories are just a small part of the impact he has had on each member of the Glee Club he’s taught.
Another big thank you goes out to Mike McGowan, Zac Ober and Nick Chaney, all three guys that graduated with me from Elder (and Zac from St. William as well) and we all went through Glee Club together. Their comments helped paint a great picture of Dave Allen.
Also a thank you to Elder’s principal Tom Otten who was able to give me some comments on Dave Allen for the story. Any time you can sneak “ginormous” into an article, it’s a good day!
It was fun to sit back and watch Glee Club classes again. I hope you’ve enjoyed the story.
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