Jimmy Hobbs, Director of the band program at Cornerstone Christian Academy (CCA) in Rainsville, is currently completing his 51st year since receiving his music degree. “I got my Bachelor’s Degree in 1968, and started teaching in 1968,” Hobbs began. “My first teaching jobs were in south Alabama. I taught first at Geneva County High School in Hartford, Alabama and then at T.R. Miller High School in Brewton, Alabama. But since we were originally from north Alabama, we wanted to get closer to home and closer to our parents as they were growing older. So I took a job at Fort Payne High School, where I stayed for two years. After that, I got out of teaching for about six years and worked in sales: band uniforms, equipment, and etc.”
In 1978 Hobbs went back into teaching when he took the band director’s position at Plainview High School, where he would spend the better part of 30 years. “I taught at Plainview until I retired in 2005,” he continued. “I was there for 27 years, and then spent five years enjoying retirement. I really had no intention of going back to work, but Angie Smith, (then Principal at Cornerstone) approached me in Walmart one night and asked me about starting a band at Cornerstone. She said they didn’t have a band, and they really wanted to start one. She asked me to at least agree to come by and talk to them about it. Then in May, she called me and asked about it again. So I came to the school and talked with them for about an hour, and we started it the next school year. That was in 2010 – 2011.”
Cornerstone students were indeed ready for a band. The faculty, students and parents, were excited and the band grew quickly. “We started in a little 20’ x 20’ building behind the school and spent the first two years there. Then they built on to the school, and the band was given the bottom part of the new building. We’ve grown to about 60 in the band now,” Hobbs said.
With the addition of the band at CCA, the students who participate in band now have the opportunity to attend the annual state band competitions (MPA). “We’ve been to the MPA for the past five years, and we’ve won all superior ratings all five years. The band is doing really, really well here,” Hobbs commented. “This year (in September) we were asked to play for the American Christian Education Association’s annual conference, which was held in Oxford, Alabama.”
Additionally, CCA’s band hosts concerts annually on or near Veteran’s Day, a Christmas concert for the public and again for the student body, a spring concert, and they perform at CCA’s graduation ceremony each year.
CCA has beginner band for 6th grade students, they move up to intermediate band in 7th grade, and on up to advanced band in 8th grade. Advanced band students are the ones who participate in concert performances and competitions, but beginner and intermediate bands are able to participate in the spring concert.
“I also have a steel drum band, which is very rare in the state of Alabama,” Hobbs concluded. “There’s one at Jacksonville State, one at the University of North Alabama, I think Auburn might have one, I’m not sure about the University of Alabama, but there’s only two or three high schools; we’re one of the few. The steel drum band has to meet after school, but it’s getting continually harder to schedule band activities after school, due to so many other activities.”
Nature itself tells us that 51 years since he first began teaching band, is a long time, and there will come a time when Jimmy Hobbs stands before a group of students with a baton in his hand for the last time, but as he stated, “I’m still in fairly good shape, and I don’t currently have plans to retire in the immediate future.”
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