Strictly Oompah: Merry Tuba Christmas, 2012!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Merry Tuba Christmas, 2012!

Today was our annual Tuba Christmas celebration at the Railroad Plaza of Lansdale, PA, where we had a great showing of Sousaphones, along with about 70 tubas, euphoniums, and baritones:

Rehearsing at the local Fire Department an hour ahead of time

Between songs out on the Railroad Plaza - the weather was great!

The horn I am playing (the one with a wreath on the bell on the right) is a 1927 Pan American 64K Sousaphone that my son and I acquired for free almost exactly a year ago. After a massive cleanup job, and having a new neck tenon soldered on, we discovered that it played great, and today was its first public appearance:

One of my friends, with whom I play tuba in our local community concert band, brought his circa 1919 Buescherphone:

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Sousa on the Sousaphone

"The Sousaphone received its name through a suggestion made by me to J. W. Pepper, the instrument manufacturer of Philadelphia, fully 30 odd years ago. At that time, the United States Marine Band of Washington, D. C., of which I was conductor, used a double B-flat bass tuba of circular form know as a 'Helicon.' It was all right enough for street-parade work, but its tone was apt to shoot ahead too prominently and explosively to suit me for concert performances, so I spoke to Mr. Pepper relative to constructing a bass instrument in which the bell would turn upwards and be adjustable for concert purposes. He built one, and grateful to me for the suggestion, called it a Sousaphone. It was immediately taken up by other instrument makers, and is today manufactured in its greatest degree of perfection by the C. G. Conn Company, of Elkhart, Ind." (John Philip Sousa, Christian Science Monitor, August 30, 1922, p. 8)