More on the Melody Maids

A few days ago, I posted a story about a couple of musical groups who appeared at the Linkou Club Annex in Taipei, along with some photographs provided by Les Duffin.  One of those groups was called The Melody Maids, but Les couldn't remember where they were from.

After posting that piece, I dug around a bit and finally located information about the group in the Handbook of Texas Online, a website maintained by the Texas Historical Society.  Here is another photo from Les, and a profile of the group:

In 1942 Eloise Milam was asked to help arrange entertainment for a bond rally at the Jefferson Theater in Beaumont. As a private music teacher, she had a group of voice students, whom she presented as a choral group, all dressed in white. Since the newspaper insisted on having a name for the group, they decided to call themselves the Melody Maids. They became a self sustaining, nonprofit organization consisting of teen age girls and were a great hit.

They began to travel from coast to coast singing for organizations, but mostly they performed at military bases and military hospitals. The group made four tours of Europe, several to England, three to the Far East, seven to the far North, four to the Caribbean, five to Mexico, seven to Hawaii, and four to Bermuda, Iceland, and the Azores. The girls financed some of the tours themselves by holding bake sales, style shows and other fund-raisers. After 1956 all of the Melody Maid tours were financed by the Entertainment Branch of the Department of Defense. Of all the performers who traveled with the Entertainment Branch, the Melody Maids were requested the most. They sang for the troops at military bases and hospitals from 1942 to 1972.

The Melody Maids and Eloise Milam wore identical costumes. Their routines called for a variety of costume changes, depending on their location and the content of the show. The group had a book of rules for conduct and etiquette. This book, the Melody Maid "Bible," taught them how to act when presented to royalty and the correct way to present themselves at formal affairs. Milam always said she taught the girls morals, manners, and music, in that order. To help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901, Milam wrote a musical production, Song Saga of Spindletop. The work contained twelve original songs written by Milam to salute the oil industry of Beaumont. The first performance was on the anniversary (January 10, 1951) of the Lucas Gusher and was lauded by Gulf Oil Company. The Melody Maids appeared on the television show "We, the People" in 1952 to perform the musical.

Many of the Melody Maids kept in touch and established a tax exempt Melody Maid Foundation, which sponsored a $10,000 scholarship fund at Lamar University. There were around 1,500 Melody Maids through the years. The group received many awards over the years. The Eloise Milam–Melody Maid Rose Room at the Julie Rogers Theater in Beaumont opened in 1990. Scrapbooks, souvenirs, photographs, and other memorabilia are housed there. The room is open to the public by request. In 2000 the Melody Maids performed Song Saga of Spindletop at their annual reunion as a tribute to Eloise Milam.

Linkou Annex Stage Shows

Back in the sixties and seventies there were lots of entertainers who played the overseas military club circuit.  Most every club had its own house band of course, but these acts were in addition to that.  Some played the circuit full-time, going from base to base.  Others were groups -- college glee clubs for example -- who appeared at a few clubs and then returned home.

Les Duffin sent me some photographs of two of these groups who appeared at the Linkou Club Annex, near the HSA compound.  He recalls that the first group was called The Melody Maids but he doesn't recall where they were from.

The second group was from Kansas State University and called themselves The K-State Singers.

 

 

Roma Hotel

I just came across this item on eBay.  It's a luggage tag from the old Roma Hotel that was located on the northeast corner at the intersection of Min Zu East Road and Chung Shan North Road.

I've written about the old Roma Hotel before, which had a small restaurant located near the front entrance.  The hotel was on the corner just south of the HSA East Compound where the exchange, commissary, theater and numerous other buildings were located.  The US Taiwan Defense Command was at the far northern end of that compound.

Here's an image of that building today on Google Maps Street View.  You're facing north from in front of the Caves bookstore and the old Roma Hotel building is across the intersection to your right.  Just beyond it was the HSA East Compound.  To your right from this vantage point was the Linkou Club Annex and Linkou Hotel.

Recent View of the USTDC Neighborhood

One of the photos that Kent sent to me after his last Taipei trip was this one. You're looking toward the west on Min Zu East Road, and at the end of the block is Zhong Shan North Road where you would turn right to the HSA East and West Compounds.

You can see the yellow sign on the corner of the intersection that was the Caves Bookstore where you could buy very inexpensive copies of books, tapes and records. They were, of course, pirated copies in those days, not the originals. It seems to me the rule was that you could take one copy of each title with you when you returned to the States without a problem but you couldn't take, say, several copies of the same novel.

Just back this direction on the left side of the street is where the Linkou Club Annex was located when I was there, and just a little further back this way was the Linkou Hotel, a small hotel where I stayed for a few days when I first arrived at USTDC.

It's hard to tell if either of the original structures that housed the Linkou Club and Hotel are still there because of the facades, but the old Caves bookstore building is the same. There are several photos elsewhere in this blog of that building, some from back in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as more recent ones.

Just click on the photo to see it in much higher resolution.

Linkou Annex Menu

I received a note from Ted Walker, who was an ETR2 in J-6 at TDC from April 1968 to July 1969. He talked about how much he enjoyed his tour and how he's still in touch with several swabbies from back in the day. He also enjoyed working with the Army techs and communicating via TTY with the folks on Grass Mountain.

He mentioned that HSA had a rugby squad and several guys from TDC, including Ted, played for the team. Are those bumper stickers right when they say it takes leather balls to play rugby? Just wondering.

Anyway, he sent along some scans of a few pages from the Linkou Club food menu. Sorta makes your mouth water, doesn't it? Of course I'm talking about the prices. The food was pretty good too!