The Great Western Band of St. Paul, formed in 1860, was one of the earliest and most popular brass bands in Minnesota through the late nineteenth century. This group of amateur musicians helped to bring a measure of sophistication to early St. Paul as it played for a variety of civic and private events. The band was busy during the 1870s and 1880s, but toward the end of the century, it faded from view. A new version formed in 1977, and over the next ten years, St. Paul residents enjoyed some of the same band music that the city’s early residents had enjoyed a century earlier.