The Emblem Club March, and Bend Park beside it

A band programme names the composer-arranger and puts the club in a suite with the hotel and the company that owned the emblem.

Then the programme, eleven numbers. Four carry Guptil's name: “1. March, ‘Pilot Butte Inn' — Guptil… 3. Waltz, ‘Only a Dream' — Guptil… 8. ‘Emblem Club March' — Guptil… 11. ‘Bend Park March' — Guptil.” The others are by C. J. Springer, W. C. Van Cleve and J. W. Day.

This archive has carried “The Emblem Club March, by Guptill” as an open lead since a December 1913 concert programme, with no first name and no second sighting. Here is the second sighting, two and a half years later, and a name: O. M. Guptil, as the paper spells it.

The company it keeps is the find. Guptil's three marches are named for the Pilot Butte Inn, the Emblem Club and Bend Park — the town's hotel, its booster club, and the Bend Park Company, which is the concern that published the emblem in July 1912 over the words “The above brand is copyrighted. The Bend Park company, to whom it belongs.” A local bandsman wrote a march for the company that owned the emblem and a march for the club named after it, and both were played on one Friday evening in June 1916.

The lead-in also corrects how the credit should be read. The pieces were “written by members of the local band, and arranged by O. M. Guptil”. On that wording Guptil is the arranger of the programme and not necessarily the composer of the Emblem Club March, and this archive should stop calling him its author until a score says so.