In the world of John H. Bell, there were no personal MP3 players and no car stereos.

Bell was well-known in Lawrence 100 years ago as the owner of a successful music store and as a composer of band marches – a wildly popular form of music at the time.

His marches, with titles such as “Old Nippers Hick Nut Dance” and “Ragged Rapscallions,” have been largely forgotten and haven’t been performed in decades. But this weekend, one of the works will be dusted off and performed in South Park during a concert to celebrate the city’s 151st birthday.

Some see it as a reminder of how entertainment – and life in Lawrence – has changed.

“We live in an age when music is readily available to us in a pre-recorded fashion,” said Steve Jansen, a local historian. “Back then, if it was going to happen, it had to happen locally. … To me, whenever you can tend the flowers that once grew here, you should do that.”

The Lawrence City Band will perform Bell’s “Intrepid Leader” march during a concert that begins at 4 p.m. Sunday in the bandstand at South Park. The city commission approved $4,000 for the concert this summer after the Sesquicentennial Commission put forth a plan to have a birthday party for the city every year.

The idea to perform one of Bell’s marches came from Robert E. Foster, conductor of the city band and director of bands at Kansas University.

Kansas University Professor of Music Robert E. Foster poses with a collection of sheet music by longtime Lawrence resident John H. Bell in his office at Murphy Hall. Foster will conduct a performance of Bell's music on Sunday for a celebration of the city's 151st birthday.

Foster said he’s had a box full of Bell’s music since the 1970s but has never found a good opportunity to use it.

“That music, I would bet, has not been performed publicly in way over 50 years,” he said. “Most people don’t know it exists.”

Bell came to Lawrence in 1884 while in his early 30s. He opened a small music store in the 700 block of Massachusetts Street and in 1909 began making pianos in a factory on East Ninth Street – near the site of what’s now the Bourgeois Pig, 6 E. Ninth St.

“Lawrence at the turn of the century had about 20 regional industries – like bicycles, pianos, cigars – things we would never think of for a town of about 10,000 people,” Jansen said.

In 1900, the store moved to 925 Mass. That’s where 88-year-old Clyde Bysom remembers it being in 1925, when he moved to Lawrence and began buying and selling horns at the store.

“They had instruments, they had a repair place, they had all the sheet music,” said Bysom, who plays saxophone with John Weatherwax and the Junkyard Jazz Band. “People used to buy the current songs, the piano music, and play and sing from it. … Dancing was a big thing. We played dances three or four times a week. That all required music and instruments, so the Bell Music Company was quite a flourishing place for a long time.”

The store moved to 825 Mass. in the late 1960s and closed during the 1970s.