He played saxophone in a legendary local boys’ band. He played in all the Boston hot spots of the Jazz Age. He could have had a national career, but he came back to Lewiston where he became a prominent optometrist.

That was Dr. Almo Roussin. He enjoyed fame and recognition for his outstanding musical talent, but home and family won out. Roussin recalled those glory days in a January 1947 interview with Lewiston Evening Journal writer Arch Soutar when they leafed through Roussin’s huge scrapbook of clippings, playbills, autographs and celebrity photos.

He showed Soutar a colored postcard of the acclaimed St. Cecilia’s Boys’ Marching Band and he pointed to himself, a young boy with an alto saxophone among the band members, each with the band’s brightly colored rosette on the hat.

Roussin identified several other boys in the band who rose to prominent position in Lewiston. Edmund Lebel became a well-known local dentist, and his brother Lucien served many years as Lewiston city clerk.

Soutar’s article said Lucian Lebel “was such an outstanding trumpeter that he was constantly refusing offers for national bookings.”

Another Lebel brother, Oscar, became a clothier on Lisbon Street.

Also in that postcard photo were Ernest Desjardin, who became a Lewiston assessor, holding a clarinet, and Arthur Croteau, who became a well-known letter carrier, with a tuba.

The drum major was none other than Dr. Robert J. Wiseman Jr., longtime Lewiston health officer, and his brother Armand was also a clarinet player in the boys’ band.

It was Brother Emond whom Roussin credited for starting him on his career in music.

“He was patience personified, and we have him to thank for a profession that enabled so many of us to earn money for an education later on,” Roussin said. “My last year in grammar school, I played in Lew Barrett’s dance band.”

Almo Roussin went on to play locally in Lew Chandler’s Orchestra. He also was in Dwight Marble’s dance orchestra, which played for all the high school dances in pre-World War I Lewiston and was known as the area’s first “real jazz bands.”

Roussin was playing four or five nights a week. He occasionally played engagements at the Old Orchard Pier, and some nights he was on the bandstand with a new sensation from Westbrook named Rudy Vallee.

After high school, he was planning on optometry as a career, and that took him to Boston for his education. There, in the era of prohibition, flappers and jazz, he quickly found work playing at Crescent Gardens in Lynn, Mass. Soutar’s story said there were other jobs in “dives,” such as the “Bucket of Blood” on Huntington Avenue and “the notorious Rogan’s Hall in Charlestown,” but Roussin also played the upper-crust Copley-Plaza Hotel. It was there that he played the difficult and widely popular “Saxophobia” which was a trademark song of sax master Rudy Wiedoeft. Roussin, who was going by the name of Almo Ross, earned a reputation for playing it faster and better than Wiedoeft, and that gave him a three-year run at the Copley-Plaza. He also played for many society functions around Boston and Newport, R.I.

He was rubbing shoulders with many music legends, including pianist Eddie Duchin, who was studying pharmacy at the time. He also knew pianist Frankie Carle.

Radio was new and Roussin played a role in those exciting early days. In 1926, he was part of one of the first orchestras to go on the air commercially at WNAC in Boston.

“We went on at nine in the morning as the ‘Polar Bears,’ and again in the evening as ‘Ted and His Gang’,” he said. At the same time, he was playing three-hour shows at Boston’s luxurious B.F. Keith Memorial Theater.

Roussin’s 9-inch-thick scrapbook was filled with his memories, but Soutar said Dr. Roussin, as a Lewiston optometrist, had no regrets about giving up show business and returning to his hometown.

The St. Cecilia Boy’s Band continued for decades and Lewiston’s music history is rich in all kinds of performers. It became known as the music capitol of the Northeast in the 1960s, and revival appearances by some of those bands are don’t-miss events right to the present day.

Dave Sargent is a native of Auburn and a freelance writer. He can be reached by sending email to dasargent@maine.com.