Virgil Spurlin (band director)

Virgil Spurlin was the band director at Hot Springs High School in Hot Springs, Arkansas. His students there included the future president Bill Clinton, whose class graduated in 1964, and Clinton publicly thanked him several times while in office.^[1][2]

Teaching Bill Clinton

In a 1992 Time profile of Clinton, Garry Wills wrote that the teenage Clinton became the band director's right hand for statewide planning, and that the band director acted as "another surrogate father." Spurlin told the magazine that Clinton was very talented and dogged in his practice, and that he kept Spurlin busy finding scores for him to sight-read.^[3]

In his 2004 memoir My Life, Clinton describes Spurlin as a man with a gentle, winning demeanor, "a pretty good band director and a world-class human being". He writes that Spurlin organized the State Band Festival, held over several days every year in Hot Springs, and had to schedule all its band performances and hundreds of solo and ensemble presentations. Clinton and other students stayed after school and worked nights to help, and he calls it the first large organizational effort he was ever involved in. The passage was reproduced, with the publisher's permission, in a 2025 newsletter post by Bob Morrison, who says he helped produce the 1999 White House concert on music education described below.^[4]

Public tributes

At the Hot Springs High School "Ultimate Class Reunion" on September 27, 1997, Clinton thanked the former teachers who were present, including "Mr. Spurlin". The note to the published transcript identifies him as Virgil Spurlin, the President's high school band director.^[1][5] At the VH1 "Concert of the Century" on the White House South Lawn on October 23, 1999, Clinton named "my wonderful high school band director, Virgil Spurlin" among the music teachers who had shaped him. He said he did not think he would have become president without school music.^[2] In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC's Today show in New York City on June 16, 2000, given alongside the musician Billy Joel during the "VH1 Save The Music Today" campaign, Clinton said that Spurlin was still a friend of his and still wrote to him.^[6]

Television

IMDb credits Spurlin as himself, "High School Band Director", in the 1997 TV special Bill Clinton: Rock & Roll President. Footage of him was later reused in an episode of Biography.^[7]

Other students

According to Wikipedia, the composer John S. Hilliard played in the Hot Springs High School Band at the same time as Clinton, and he and Clinton shared Spurlin as an influential music teacher.^[8]

Possible grave

A Find a Grave memorial records a Virgil Manley Spurlin (November 10, 1925 – September 14, 2002), born in De Roche Township, Hot Spring County, Arkansas, and buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Hot Springs. It notes service in the Navy and the Marine Corps in the Second World War and Korea. The memorial does not mention teaching or music, so it has not been confirmed that he is the band director.^[9]

See also Spurlins in film and television.