In the Florida corps' fourth year of existence, Suncoast Sound finished in sixth place at the 1983 Drum Corps International World Championship Finals in Miami.
Popularizing its contemporary-but-accessible musical style as "Sun Jazz," the corps turned a lot of heads during its first of seven-consecutive years as a finalist corps.
“We have an identity as far as we are concerned of a jazz program with a military background,” corps director Donald Fisher said. “Our uniform is in a military style, but our style of music is jazz and we try to blend those together.”
According to Fisher, show designers — who included future DCI Hall of Fame member Robert W. Smith serving as program coordinator and brass arranger — went into the season focused on making the show first and foremost about the music.
“We try to build our program around the music because that happens to currently be our strong suit, especially our horn line the way they’ve been playing,” Fisher said. “We then build the percussion and with that finish the whole show. We make the drill fit around the music so that it can be effective.”
With music in mind, Bob Mintzer's "Time Out," popularized by the Buddy Rich Big Band, kicked off the production with a continuous series of quick jazz melodic runs that instantly made fans sit up and take notice. For their first time in the Finals, the corps was not content to just back into the big show. They were serving notice that they intended to be regarded as a major player within the drum corps community.
Don Menza's smooth jazz "Spanish Gypsy" featured the color guard performers under individual transparent white scrims, a kind of ghostly effect audiences would see copied in later years by a number of other corps.
Al DiMeola's "Casino" served as the percussion feature, with the color guard and brass sections marching at a fast pace during an unwinding spiral form.
Robert W. Smith's hard-driving jazz rendition of "Aquarius" from the musical "Hair" featured part of the guard section with police clubs and other guard members holding protest signs, reflecting the origins of the piece as a protest against the Vietnam War. The piece would be further explored the following year in the show that introduced a prop Vietnam Memorial Wall to the field. Also introduced was the peace signs the corps members made with their hands, something else that would be brought back as a feature in 1984.
The heart and soul of the program came at the end, when the corps presented "The Greatest Love of All" by Michael Maser and Linda Creed. The work had achieved limited commercial success with the version sung by George Benson for the 1977 film "The Greatest," a biographical look at the life of Muhammad Ali. In December of the following year, Whitney Houston would record the song for a release 15 months later. It became one of her biggest hits and instantly launched her as a superstar.
A most memorable feature of this closer was the entire color guard signing the lyrics with their hands. The ebb and flow of the arrangement milked the emotions of the fans with a roller coaster ride of volume and tempos, capturing many moods within the same work. The final brass statement was one of the loudest moments heard on the field that year.
However, Smith had one final trick up his sleeve, taking the entire finale out-of-key with one huge chord, and then providing an additional modulation with another chord that made all forget what key the piece was really in. It was perhaps the first of a series of intriguing small surprises in his arrangements for which he became well known.
1983 Overview
Michael Boo was a member of the Cavaliers from 1975-1977. He wrote about the drum corps activity for more than 35 years while serving as a staff writer for various Drum Corps International projects. During his lifetime Boo wrote for numerous other publications including an honors-winning book on the history of figure skating. He also was an accomplished composer. Boo passed away in 2020 and was inducted into the DCI Hall of Fame posthumously in 2021.