For many hundreds of Upper Valley folks, the soundtrack of their lives in the late 1940s, the 1950s and into the 1960s was the music of Woody and the Ramblers, a band composed of five local Greatest Generation guys who traversed the region for as many as six evenings a week at a time when dancing rivaled movies as a preferred way to enjoy a night out.

They were emphatic that they be called a dance band and that their music was material that made people want to get up and dance with a partner. They resisted being categorized as hillbilly, western or country performers, though they often included those genres in their playlist. As leader Leon Woodward often said, “If you get people up on the floor dancing, you give ‘em more of what’s getting them out there. ... we always considered ourselves a dance band, not a show band; what’s good for listening often isn’t very good for dancing.”

Rock ‘n roll, television and other diversions would eat into the market for dance music by the mid-1960s and so Woody and the Ramblers scaled back their arduous performance schedules. They would become fixtures for generations, entertaining for benefit functions and at senior citizen gatherings. Audiences by then invariably included people who had danced at their appearances 30 or more years before, and wanted to hear favorites like “Tennessee Waltz,” “Beer Barrel Polka” and “Springtime in the Rockies” once again.

Five men formed Woody and the Ramblers right after World War II. They were Clarence “Ki” LaBombard, “Brother” Wayne Craig, Morris “Red” Landry, Don MacLeay and Woodward. At that time there were numerous locations around the Upper Valley where regular dances were held. Some were in town halls, others in pavilions built just for dances and some were barns repurposed for social activities.

How Leon Woodward came to lead a beloved Upper Valley institution is a story in itself. He was a boy of 8 when he was tasked with burning the insulation off some junked electric wires in a basket. Some blasting caps had been mixed into the jumble of wire and as Woodward knelt down to blow on the flickering fire the caps detonated. Had he been standing, he likely would have been killed.

But he suffered terrible damage to his eyes and during months of hospitalization at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and then the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary it was feared he would be permanently blind. But when bandages were removed, miraculously, he was able to see. He spent many more months in convalescence, during which time he was given a small accordion, which he taught himself to play. By age 16, he was playing a much larger instrument and that led to him linking up with a guitarist and a bassist from the neighborhood and soon word got around.

The trio began playing “kitchen junkets,” simple dance parties in farmhouses around Lebanon and the Mascoma Valley. That would lead to talent shows in Claremont and backing up other acts here and there. Other musicians would join the act from time to time, and after a while people began to call it Woody and the Ramblers. Woodward needed a real job, though, and for 30 cents an hour he started working as a mechanic at the Gateway Motors Ford garage in White River Junction. Over the years he would also work for local trucking companies and for the storied Page’s Model A garage in Haverhill, hunting down vintage Fords in the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire and advising on their correct restoration.

Though he made his living fixing cars, Woodward’s first love was music. When World War II ended and thousands of GIs were coming home looking for good times, the demand for dependable bands was brisk — so brisk that the Ramblers could be out every night if they wished. It was at that time the band took on the shape and energy that would sustain it through nearly two decades of schedules with four, five or even six gigs a week.

Don MacLeay, a steel guitarist, was just out of the service and he layered the grueling music routine on top of his work as a Plainfield contractor. He was the longest-serving member of the band, and was still playing and jamming with friends until shortly before his death at the age of 93 in 2016. Craig played bass, LaBombard guitar, Landry mandolin and they and Woodward and MacLeay all handled vocals. On occasion, two women, Angie St. Cyr and Louise Stevens, would play the piano.

Woodward was an expert square dance caller, something he got into by happenstance. At a dance in Enfield Center, the scheduled caller didn’t show up, so the promoter simply told Woodward to handle the role. He would become a crowd favorite as a “singing caller” handling classic square dance numbers such as “Wabash Cannonball,” “San Antonio Rose” and “Golden Slippers.”

In an interview three decades ago, MacLeay recalled some of those times with the Ramblers back in the day.

“We played some rough places, Rough. Kibbie’s Pavilion in Slab City (a section of Cornish) — there’d be a fight every couple of minutes. We played Tucker’s Barn in South Barre (Vt.), Poor’s Barn up in Williamstown (Vt.), Randolph Fish and Game Club,” MacLeay remembered.

“Then we got to play some better places, like the Roseland Ballroom in Claremont, where we’d play Friday night, and then they’d have a big-name band come in on Saturday night. We played at Tracy Hall in Norwich, Enfield Center, Plainfield town hall. Once we played at Wagon Wheel Ranch in Ashburnham, Mass., where we were on the bill with Ernest Tubb and Hawkshaw Hawkins.”

Woodward chimed in: “People used to dance then. They knew the different dances, not like now where they play one beat for everything. We’d play three foxtrots, three polkas, three waltzes, three square dances, just keep that routine going.”

But as time went on and the band widened its fan base it began to bypass the rough and rowdy venues and eventually a Woody and the Ramblers dance would be a model for decorum, for the most part. Yes, some people consumed alcohol, though it was outside in cars and the exertion of the dancing burned off a lot of the effects of the refreshment. A legendary Hartland constable named Fanny Stillson could pitch a miscreant out into a snowbank in a few seconds. But probably 99% of those dances went off without incident.

In the early post-war years Woody and the Ramblers played for an average $8 per night. Typically they performed from 9 p.m. till midnight; invariably they quit at midnight because they needed time to get something to eat — usually at the Polka Dot Diner in White River Junction. Then they’d race home to catch some sleep, then be off in the early morning for their day jobs. They were able to keep this incredible pace up because they were young, MacLeay recalled.

He said many people thought the Ramblers were drinking a lot because they were often horsing around. But he insisted that the men rarely imbibed. They would decline any invitation to play if they suspected the promoter couldn’t keep order.

These men worked hard all day. Craig drove a taxi, LaBombard managed the hog operation at the Precinct Farm in Hanover, Landry was a brick mason, MacLeay jockeyed bulldozers and backhoes and Woodward fixed Fords.

Dances had become big business, and promoters were making serious money paying the band $40 a night and raking in three or four times that at the door. Woody and the Ramblers finally began asking for and were getting 60% of the gate, and for a time they ran the whole shebang themselves at the Spot o’ Pines Pavilion in Hartland.

In that long-ago interview MacLeay shook his head over one aspect of those years.

“I don’t know what it was, but many of those colorful old dance halls seemed to go up in flames,” he said, ticking off pavilions turned to ash — Roseland, Island Park in West Hartford (twice), Hick Haven in Windsor, Blue Moon in St. Johnsbury, and so on.

In 1949 the band had become so well-known in the Upper Valley that it had a weekly half-hour radio broadcast on WTSL in West Lebanon and WTSV in Claremont and several other stations up and down the Valley at various times.

As times changed, the band did fewer and fewer dances and shifted to a more diverse array of settings: fairs, town celebrations, weddings, picnics, senior centers. Membership in the band changed, too, as one or another would step aside and a new talent would join up.

Late in life Woodward was beset by health problems to the point where he could no longer lift and play his accordion. MacLeay begged him to come along to the Sullivan County nursing home in Unity one day to entertain the residents. After much coaxing, he rode along and MacLeay made sure the accordion came along, too. As the audience filled the room, Woodward found the strength to lift the instrument into position and run his fingers over the keyboard.

Soon he was playing along on some of the familiar melodies, just like in the old days.

Woody and the Ramblers had a theme song, one of those that could get inside your head and roll around all day. It was borrowed and adapted from a classic 1935 cowboy song by the Sons of the Pioneers, (including Leonard Slye, who later became Roy Rogers) and was covered by many others, including Hank Williams:

Hear our song as we ride along,

We’re the happy roving Ramblers;

Herding the dark clouds out of the way

And keeping the heavens blue. ...

Not the kind of tune to get folks up and dancing, but it was just right for the Ramblers’ signature. When a dance wrapped up, they’d play “Now Is the Hour” or “Goodnight, Irene” and then their theme, and it was a signal for everybody to go home.

Steve Taylor lives in Meriden and contributes occasionally to the Valley News. He attended many Woody and the Ramblers dances in the 1950s.