Fred Sanford

Fred Sanford was born in Laramie, Wyoming, on June 22, 1947. He died January 23, 2000. He started his musical career playing tenor drums ("timp toms") at The Troopers Drum And Bugle Corps of Casper, WY (1958-1968). Simultaneously, he was percussion instructor at Anaheim Kingsmen (1965-1967).

Fred Studied percussion at San Jose State University with Tony Cirone. Following his graduation from SJSU in 1970 with a Bachelor's Degree in Music Education (he also earned his Master's Degree in Music from there four years later), Sanford went to Bergenfield, New Jersey to teach high school music. There he met two more important people in his life: Don Angelica, who was serving as the Director of Music at Bergenfield, and Dennis DeLucia, who would be inducted into the Drum Corps International Hall of Fame the same evening as Sanford in 1991.

During his years in San Jose, Fred also began to instruct and write for another new drum corps-the Santa Clara Vanguard, with whom he would work for twelve seasons. During his tenure there, the Vanguard drum line won an unprecedented five national "high drum" titles (in 1973, 1974, 1975, 1978, and 1979). In a fitting tribute, the DCI "high drum" award is now called the "Fred Sanford Award for Best Percussion Performance".

For a brief time in the mid-1970s, Sanford also worked with the Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps and the Alberta All Girls Drum & Bugle Band. The '70s also saw Sanford begin his association with the Slingerland Drum Company, where he was instrumental in designing the TDR snare, Cut-a-way timp-toms and Tonal bass drums. He also began another important aspect of his career, teaching educational clinics on marching percussion around the country and eventually around the world.

During the early 1980s, Sanford joined the Ludwig Drum Company as a Product Development Manager and Staff Clinician. In addition to his drum and bugle corps experiences, he was the percussion coordinator for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and also worked with the McDonald's All-American High School Band at various national parades. Since 1985, he served as a marching percussion consultant for the Yamaha Corporation of America and was involved in teaching thousands of students over the years through Yamaha's Sounds of Summer educational programs. Yamaha also made a generous donation to start the endowment of the Fred Sanford Scholarship Fund.

Fred Sanford was also active in the Percussive Arts Society, serving on the PAS Marching Percussion Committee as well as being the "voice" of the Marching Percussion Festival for almost two decades-from the first Marching Forum held at PASIC '82 in Dallas to his final PASIC appearance in Orlando in 1998. As a tribute to his support of PAS, the Marching Percussion Committee unanimously nominated him for induction into the PAS Hall of Fame.