Southeast marching band alum holds vivid memories of 1971 Super Bowl

Southeast Missouri State University's marching band, known at the time as the Golden Eagles, played the halftime show at Super Bowl V in January 1971.

As a tenor saxophonist in the band, Beverly Kasten played the Super Bowl halftime show, too.

Sort of.

The pregame show went off as the band had anticipated, but near the end, the clip that attached to Kasten's saxophone that held her sheet music broke.

"I had to memorize all my music, because my lyre broke," she recalled.

Beverly Kasten's edition of the Sagamore yearbook shows when she performed at the Super Bowl in 1971 with Southeast Missouri State University's Golden Eagles marching band.Laura Simon

Forty-five years later, she still remembers how nervous she was, trying to commit her music to memory during the first half of the Super Bowl before having to go out and play before millions of viewers across the nation.

But being a resourceful freshman, Kasten learned her music in time to take the field. Then her saxophone broke.

"A pad fell out of the instrument," she said. "So I could play one note. ... Probably a C sharp or something."

So she high-stepped her way out onto football's grandest stage and faked it. She marched in formation and C-sharped whenever one came up, praying nobody would notice.

"I played that one note the whole halftime show," she said with a laugh, standing in the downtown antique store she now runs.

She said the whole experience is colored by a certain surrealism. Now, it would be near-unthinkable for a small Missouri college's marching band to play the stage normally reserved for Beyonce, Prince and their ilk.

"Even at [Super Bowl] V, we knew it was special, being televised like it was," she said.

It was Kasten's first time in Florida. Two planes were chartered out of Cape Girardeau's airport to get the Golden Eagles to Miami. She remembers getting on the plane during a typical Missouri winter and finding warm Florida sunshine at the other end of the flight.

She and a few bandmates took advantage of the trip. They took a bus, explored and saw "Love Story" in a theatre, which wasn't playing in Cape Girardeau.

"To be running around downtown Miami with your buddies was awesome," she said. "We had assigned roommates, we had curfews, and we had bed checks."

But she said the Golden Eagles also had a deep professionalism.

Even 45 years later, she's nostalgic for the Golden Eagles' heyday.

"Marching style used to be a lot different back then," she said. "You had to point your toes."

Kasten still is quick to demonstrate the toe pointing and high-stepping and even starts sashaying to illustrate proper turning technique.

"Lots of the college students would go to the football games to see the band," she said.

Her daughter, Jennifer Hoskins, followed in her choreographed footsteps and joined the Jackson marching band in high school. She even played the saxophone Kasten played in Miami. Now, her grandson Blake Kasten plays it in Jackson's marching band.

Kasten bought the tenor sax used from Shivelbines Music shop in the fall of 1970 for about $350 and would play it for the duration of her four years as a Golden Eagle.

It now is greening and worn, but it's seen more than any of the other saxophones in Blake's band. He said it still plays great.

tgraef@semissourian.com

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