Local Musician Has Earned Her Stripes on ‘Stars’

The Sousa march and the bands that play it are in high demand on or near Independence Day.
Along with San Marino’s ensemble, Bradley plays with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Band as well as the Covina and Burbank community bands. On a typical, pre-COVID July 4, Bradley might perform a similar set list with at least those four troupes, which always include a rollicking version of “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” replete with audiences’ rhythmic clapping as accompaniment.
The cancellation or curtailment of just about every public celebration of Independence Day in 2020 broke a long performance streak for Bradley, and an accident at home in January put her participation in jeopardy this year as well. But she was out there adding to her career, which spans more than 60 years, on Sunday.
Bradley was raised in Compton and immediately jumped into music.
“I remember that my father had purchased a console radio/phonograph for our living room,” Bradley remembers. “My parents had a lot of 78 records to listen to and to increase my interest in listening purchased several Little Golden Records that had storybooks with the story and music to go with it. These records were very short, 3 1/2 minutes, and I listened to them for hours. School was fun. We had music every day and acted out the songs as we sang them, whether it was in the classroom or on the playground.”
Instrumental music began in the 4th grade and Bradley wanted to play the trombone.
“My mother thought my arms weren’t long enough, so I settled for flute,” she said. “Good choice. My parents bought me a student model flute and one of the music teachers taught private lessons where she was living, so I now had a flute teacher plus the piano I had been working for about five years before.”
Middle school brought with it daily band practice.
“Pure joy!” Bradley said. “You got to go to festivals and perform concerts for your friends and families and to play at Disneyland.”
She joined the marching band in high school.
“That is when you really make your friends for life,” she added. Bradley was invited to play in the Compton Community Symphony, “marched in a lot of parades,” performed in field shows and was named the outstanding wind musician for my graduating class in 1959.
“In the fall of 1959 I began attending USC as a piano major in the school of music and I was looking forward to join the marching band,” Bradley explained. “But that didn’t happen since it was all-male organization. Rats!”
Bradley was instead offered a spot in the symphonic winds orchestra and continued to play in the band and take lessons on flute and piano.
“After my four years at USC, I parted company with the university for 27 years of a full-time job as a wife and mother to four very loving and caring children” — Jennifer, David, Laura and John — “who have presented six grandsons to me.”
Bradley quipped that she also earned “my Mrs. degree in 1963, which ended in [her husband’s] death July 7, 2012, and a PHT degree in 1965 when my husband graduated from the USC School of Medicine. PHT stands for Putting Hubby Through or working to support my husband while he completed medical school.”
That husband was Dr. Bruce Bradley, an anesthesiologist.
The pandemic, of course, cut into her performance schedule but also brought other revelations about her favorite pastime.
“This past year and a half has been very long time to pass without hearing someone’s new composition performed live at a favorite venue,” she said. “Look in your closet at home and see if you stored that old band instrument in there thinking, ‘Someday I’ll play it again.’ Go out and support your local musical groups in your community.”
Sunday provided a little healing to the lost months.
“‘Stars and Stripes’ seems to be the closer of patriotic concerts and other summer events,” Bradley said. “I play it often and enjoy it very much. It’s a great song to which you can march around the room and clap in time.”
She also called it “the icing on the cake.”
Her appreciation for the tune reached a crescendo 11 years ago.
“I was with a group that visited the national cemetery in Washington, D.C., and placed a floral wreath on Sousa’s grave,” she said. “It was quite a moving event.”