Band music is one of those early 20th Century pleasures that are a little hard to figure out a century later.

Early 20th Century audiences loved marching band music. It was the golden age of John Phillips Sousa and Edwin Franko Goldman. Audiences thrilled to marches performed by musicians in military or quasi-military uniforms with brass buttons, epaulets, braiding, and strange hats with crests, badges, feathers, and all manner of impractical stuff sticking off of them.

Band fans liked to watch marching and drilling and all of that. They adored a processional.

Indianola gave audiences what they wanted. Concerts and maneuvers by bands like Gilland's Hussars ("the most elaborately uniformed band in the world"), The British Guards ("costumed in the scarlet and gold of the British military"), Vitale's Famous Orchestral Band, Ciricillo's Italian Boys' Band, and Sennet's Female Military Band were a daily feature of Indianola's first decade.

Many of these bands had gimmicks to distinguish them from the scores of other bands. There were Italian bands, Hungarian bands, Russian bands, female bands, youth bands, bands with the youngest conductor, and so forth.

Indianola's band shell from the 1908 promotional booklet, Indianola: the elite amusement resort of Ohio

One of the more unusual and popular bands to play in Indianola's bandshell was Wheelock's United States Indian Band which visited in the summer of 1910. The band consisted entirely of Native Americans from various tribes. Instead of the usual military regalia, the band members wore their native dress. Instead of marching and drilling, the band members performed traditional dances.

By the Twenties, concert and marching bands were falling from popular favor and were replaced in the public's affection by dance bands, which mostly performed on stage in the dance pavilion