James G. Hudson will have a tall order to fill as Kansas University’s director of athletic bands.

Hudson, currently director of bands at Southwest Texas State University, inherits from outgoing director Timothy Oliver the KU Marching Jayhawks, a band that 15 years ago took the field with 275 musicians but has dwindled to 150 members. It was one of the smallest bands in the Big 12 this year.

“It’s really very similar to the program that I inherited at Southwest Texas, except for the fact that there was no tradition at Southwest Texas,” he said Thursday during the second day of a two-day visit to KU. “The KU bands have such a tradition, and they’ve always had such a tradition.

“We’re going to ride on the traditions of the program, and we’re going to try to build and improve on those traditions.”

His strategy will be to make the band more visible on campus and in area high schools. One of the possible reasons cited for the KU marching band’s decreasing enrollment has been a lack of stipends to compensate junior and senior members. KU used to offer them, but they’re no longer in the budget.

And though it would be great if they were, Hudson said, stipends aren’t absolutely necessary.

“I’ve always believed that you give the students a great product — one that they’re proud of and one that they want to perform in — and they’ll come,” he said. “It happened at Southwest Texas with no football team to speak of, no tradition to speak of.”

At Southwest Texas State in San Marcos, Texas, Hudson increased enrollment in the Bobcat Marching Band from 128 in 1992 to 340 in 1998.

“Jim Hudson has that rare quality of being able to ignite a marching band to the highest level of performance,” said John Lynch, KU director of bands and chairman of the committee that hired Hudson. “He brings with him a wealth of experience and the ability to draw talented musicians into the program. He’s a recruiting machine.”

As Kansas University's new marching band director, Jim Hudson hopes to return to the glory days of KU band. Hudson discussed his new job Thursday in Murphy Hall under a portrait of Edwin Franko Goldman, a famous conductor.

Hudson, 46, grew up in Bloomfield, Iowa. He earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Northeast Missouri State University in 1980 and a master’s degree in music education with an emphasis in conducting from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1992.

He said he was thrilled to be back in the Big 12.

“We’re Iowa people originally, so it’s like home to us,” Hudson said of himself and his wife, Denise. The couple has a son who’s a junior in high school. “I’ve always wanted to come back to the Big 12. I’ve wanted to come home for a long time.”

Before graduate school, Hudson held jobs in Iowa public schools. From 1983 until 1990, he was director of bands and music department chairman at Oskaloosa Senior High School in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He also served as assistant director of bands for Oskaloosa Community Schools and director of bands for Harmony Community Schools in Farmington, Iowa.

At KU, he said, he’d like to take the marching band to exhibitions often as possible to increase its visibility. He also plans to spend a lot of time in high school band rehearsal halls around the area.

“In Texas high school band halls, I walk in and people know who I am,” he said. “I think that’s critical.”

As for an instant increase in marching band members, Hudson said that wasn’t likely.

“Is that going to happen next year? Probably not, but we will be laying the groundwork for that. Hopefully the band will be bigger next fall, but I can’t promise that.”

“It’s a challenge. We have work to do, and I know that. But I’ve always been a builder, and I’m looking forward to the challenge of building again.”