Sterling Weed, 104, Oldest Bandleader
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Sterling Dorwin Weed, the nation’s oldest known active bandleader, whose Weed’s Imperial Orchestra played dates from the early 1930s to this summer, has died. He was 104.
His stepdaughter, Judy Derby, said Weed died Sunday at his home in St. Albans, Vt.
His friend and caretaker, Meredith Gillilan, 77, was at his side.
Weed studied piano as a youth, but said in an Associated Press interview in 2001 that his public career began in 1912, when he was 11.
The stories of Weed’s travels around northern Vermont and southern Quebec – where much of the region’s nightclub business was focused during Prohibition in the United States – were legion.
There was the time he forgot to remove the hooked rugs he used to keep his car’s engine warm while it sat in the parking lot during jobs on winter nights. The car caught fire as he drove home; he and his men put it out with snow.
Weed’s Imperial Orchestra played at inaugural balls for three governors. His band was playing the night in 1943 on the Lake Champlain cruise boat Ticonderoga when Edward and Ione Keenan of Essex Junction had their first date, and it played at their 50th wedding anniversary in 1994.
