Oct 2, 2025
Music for the People
On the left is my grandfather, George Marriner Maull, for whom I was named. I never knew him. Pictured here at his desk at the Torresdale Water Filtration Plant and Pumping Station in northeast Philadelphia, he died of pneumonia at age 52 in 1926—twenty-one years before I was born. He never attended school. He received no formal education whatsoever. He was born into a family in Lewes, Delaware whose livelihood was intertwined with the sea. Members of the Maull and Marriner clans had sailed from London to Delaware in the 1730’s, hoping to gainfully ply their maritime skills in the colony.
Grandad—according to my dad—ran away from home at an early age and found work as a “ship’s captain’s boy” on steam vessels traversing the Atlantic coast between Philadelphia and Boston. By the time he was a teenager he managed to teach himself geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus and physics by studying books on those subjects in the libraries of the captains he served. In 1909 he took—and aced—a civil service exam during a time when university degrees were not yet required, and was appointed Chief Engineer of the Torresdale Water Filtration Plant and Pumping Station. Grandad’s untimely death in 1926 left my grandmother Anna Mae Rickards Maull with four children to feed and clothe—and no wage earner. It was decided that my father, Frederick Dunlap Maull, would stop attending the local public school and join the work force. My grandmother Anna did her part by becoming the housemaid of the family that owned the local drugstore.
Dad was skilled with pen and ink in hand, but his dream of becoming an illustrator was promptly abandoned when his father died. Art school was not happening. However, he had brawn and was able to handle physically tough jobs. Digging ditches was not beneath him. Leaving school in the middle of 8th grade, Dad took any work he could find as long as it didn’t require skills he didn’t have. However, horrific events were about to envelop the world. First came the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. By 1933 over 9,000 banks had failed across the United States. Starting in 1935, the Works Project Authority (WPA) would be dad’s primary employer for the next three years. In 1938 financial hardship would continue to plague many U.S. households, including the Maulls.
At left, Dad—by then 26—got himself a job as a truck driver and delivery man for Sears & Roebuck. I remember his telling me that he made $9.00 a week when he first started driving for Sears, or $468 annually. He added that White Castle hamburgers were just five cents then! He also told me that early on in his job as a Sears deliveryman, an organizer from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters came to the Sears store on Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia to organize the truck drivers and helpers who had assembled on the loading dock. Dad said that person was Jimmy Hoffa. To this day I’ve found no way of verifying that part of the story. In any event—whoever it was promised the men
that if they voted to join the union, their wages would double and they would receive health benefits for themselves and their dependents. The men voted unanimously to join Local 17 of the Teamsters Union andtheir salaries did in fact double to $936 a year—a significant improvement—but not enough to make one wealthy. A typical American family was earning on average only $2,100 annually in 1938.
For thirty-nine years my father performed strenuous work that most of us could not have physically tolerated. Five days a week he and his helper on the truck—Danny Mahoney—delivered heavy appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators, along with bedroom and living room furniture. On occasion they would have to negotiate three or four flights of stairs in one of Philadelphia’s walk-up apartment buildings on the narrow cobblestone streets of South Philly. Sometimes the refrigerator would not be the color the customer had ordered, and Dad and Danny would have to walk that refrigerator back down those stairs. During my childhood I could tell which days those were by the mood Dad was in when he got home.
By 1941 World War II was raging. Dad enlisted in the U.S. Army but was sent home when it came to light that he was the sole supporter of his widowed mother. He would be called up later if needed. My mother Helen Jordan, a very accomplished classically-trained pianist, was working—as part of the war effort—as a small parts inspector at the Bendix Aviation facility that made airplane instrumentation parts on Wissahickon Avenue in Philadelphia. As fate would have it, sitting next to her was Danny Mahony’s girlfriend, who told my mother that her boyfriend worked with a very nice man at Sears named Fred Maull. A double date set their romance in motion, and my parents married in 1942.
By the time my brother and I came along, those Teamster dental benefits paid off big time. Howard and I had some of the best teeth in our working-class neighborhood! And dad was proud that he was earning enough to have obtained a mortgage for a house, provide for his family, and eventually send his two boys to universities—albeit with scholarship aid. Throughout his life Dad credited programs created in 1935 like the Works Progress Administration and the Social Security Administration with saving his family from utter destitution during The Great Depression. He remained grateful to the federal government of the United States of America until he died. However, the WPA didn’t just provide work for unskilled manual laborers like my dad—but also for musicians, composers, lyricists, instrumentalists, singers, symphony orchestras, string quartets, and music teachers. The list was long.
This brings me to The Discovery Orchestra’s 2025-26 Season—a season musicallycelebrating our country’s 250th Anniversary! Our next program—Music for the People—is on Saturday, October 18th. Jointly presented by The Discovery Orchestra and Social Impact Studios of Philadelphia, this event will celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Works Projects Administration which provided many thousands of musical artists with employmentunder the aegis of the Federal Music Project (FMP) (1935-1939) and its successor organization the WPA Music Program (1939-1943). The FMP was initially headed by Nikolai Sokoloff, a former conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra!At its height, FMP ensembles—orchestras and chamber groups; choral and opera societies; military and dance bands; and theater orchestras—presented an estimated 5,000 performances before three million people … every week!
Activities on October 18th will include the following.
1:30 – 2:00 PM: WPA Program and its Posters “Fireside Chat”
This chat will feature Ennis Carter, founder of Social Impact Studios and author and curator of Posters for the People: Art of the WPA. Ennis will lead an informative discussion about the impact and importance of the WPA’s Federal Music Project, the first arts program created as part of the New Deal during The Great Depression—and how it was amplified through groundbreaking poster art from the era.
2:30 – 3:00 PM: Piedmont Blūz Acoustic Duo
Piedmont Blūz Acoustic Duo performers Valerie and Benedict Turner are ambassadors of Country Blues music, Piedmont-style fingerpicking, and roots percussion. Their mission is to foster awareness of these unique aspects of African-American culture and the contributions of early blues artists through performing and teaching. Reflecting the extreme hardships of those times, the Blues became more popular and influential than ever during the Great Depression.
3:30 – 4:30 PM: Copland’s Quiet City Discovery Program
As you might have guessed … I’ll be presenting this. The Federal Music Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), commissioned over 7,300 musical compositions by American composers, including Aaron Copland’s Quiet City written in 1939. This haunting music, scored for trumpet, English horn, and strings, evokes the lonely solitude of a large city—like New York—at night. In this multimedia exploration of the music, I will be joined by English hornist, Tyler Selvig.
