Gilmore and the giant Harvard tuba

One of the more fascinating things I have come across in my research on Herman Conrad is the following poster of Gilmore's Band - presumably based on a photograph (yet to be found) and created prior to Gilmore's death in 1892, when he launched his tour of "One Hundred":

Based on earlier images of the band, Conrad is most likely holding one of those large-belled helicon basses, either five guys in from the right in the back row, or six guys in from the right two rows below that. 

But what are we to make of that huge tuba toward the middle of the back row? Here's a close-up look at it:

Apart from the engraving on the bell, it is a dead-ringer for the giant tuba that is kept in the band room at Harvard University (being held here by my friends Matt Walters and Steve Dillon):

Here's a closer look at the bell engravings that can be seen today:

It says, "Besson & Co. London England Carl Fischer U. S. Agent. New York." The artist's rendering in the poster shows a giant "BESSON" (or rather "?SSON"), which perhaps was, or maybe even still faintly is, there on the upper part of the bell (I haven't seen the horn myself - yet!).

But, again, everything else matches perfectly, so it seems likely that it is the very same horn - and that's what my research has affirmed. In the March 24, 1929 edition of The Boston Globe, there is the following headline and photo:

The article that follows provides us with the earliest known account of the story behind this giant tuba:

Just how much of this story is true? It's hard to say. But the connection with Gilmore checks out. And the timing is right, as Gilmore had plans to take his band of one hundred to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 (although his death on Sept. 24, 1892, obviously changed those plans, and I have found no record of that giant tuba appearing at the World's Fair the following year; it may very well have found its way back to that "store window in New York" following the great bandmaster's death).

Further, the folks at Carl Fischer Music recently posted an old photo, said to be from around 1920, showing that horn in front of their main Boston store. It had apparently made the trip from New York by that time:

Finally, I found a photo published in various newspapers in late Spring, 1928, which appears to be showing us that "farewell appearance" in Boston a month or so earlier, where the horn was "Perched in solitary splendor on a five-ton truck":

But how did this giant tuba end up at Harvard? The earliest reference that I could find that connects it to the university is from late December, 1948, and that appears to be the very year that it fell into the Band's hands. 

In the 1972 Harvard Bulletin, Christopher Johnson wrote that "It is a documented fact that the Band acquired the instrument from Carl Fischer, Boston, on August 24, 1948, for the sum of $100. Fischer's, it appears, was under the impression that the Band was merely renting; but the clerk had scrawled 'sale' on the slip, and the horn was Harvard's."

That report also mentions the legend that the horn was initially connected with Sousa's Band, which is repeated elsewhere, such as the wikipedia page for "Subcontrabass tuba," which states that it was "built by Besson on the suggestion of American Bandmaster John Philip Sousa, who toured using [it] in his band from 1896-1898." But there is simply no documentation for this claim, and it is almost certainly false.

In 1973, a humorous photo of the giant Harvard tuba, which is very similar to the photo above, featuring the three ladies in 1929, was sent out via UPI to newspapers around the country. Here it is:

This photo also showed up in the Fall 1988 edition of the T.U.B.A. Journal, with the following caption that tells a bit more than the newspapers did:

A dramatization of The Tuba's relative size - oboist Laura Carr became the first human straight mute in 1979 [actually 1973]. Band equipment handler Samuel Shaw (left) and Band Director Tom Everett are holding The Tuba. The drama became real just after this photograph was taken. Ms. Carr, hysterical with laughter, became stuck and had to be extacted [sic] with the assistance of two security guards.

That journal article also shows Sam Pilafian playing the giant horn in 1979 - something that he did numerous times, I'm told.

I hope to be speaking with Sam soon to hear more about this beast of a tuba that goes all the way back to Gilmore's Band in 1892. Stay tuned!

For more on this giant tuba, click here.

Merry TubaChristmas, 2018!

We had a great showing for the Lansdale, PA TubaChristmas a few weeks back - about 75 horns in all. The weather brought us inside, to St. John's, but we packed the house! Here are a few photos from where I sat on the stage . . .

Waving our tubas to a grateful audience!

The gallery behind me, and to the left, where the Sousaphones tend to gather!

My view, from above the organ console

Most of us could see the conductor, if we looked real hard!

New home for the first Sousaphone

The great folks at the J. W. Pepper company, in Exton, PA, have finally built a new home for the original Sousaphone. I had a chance to swing by yesterday to check it out. The new case looks great! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Now we know - Gilmore likes Sousa

Nice to see these guys connecting on facebook!

I have to say, I do miss those days!

I woke up this morning to discover that my beloved Trojans, who looked like they were on their way to another ugly loss by the time I went to sleep (about 12:30am - nobody likes the "Pac 12 After Dark" when you live on the east coast!), came roaring back in the second half to pull out a win.

Here's how the tuba section parties in the middle of the Coliseum after a great game like that. Ah yes, I remember those days when I writhed on that sacred turf playing "Animal House"!

Sousa would NOT have been a fan!

More tuba! says the little drum major

An ad is making the rounds lately that gives the Sousaphone some love (albeit in its fiberglass form). "More tuba!" is the punch-line. I love it!

It's Penn State Blue Band time again!

I just watched Penn State crush Kent State, 63-10, and it reminded me that I hadn't posted any photos of my son yet this year. Here he is before the game against Appalachian State a few weeks ago, and during the rainy game against Pitt last week. The Nittany Lions are 3-0 baby!

Tea for tuba - my favorite tea pot!

We were out for a special tea experience with my family recently, and it turns out they had a tea pot that got me really excited! The only thing that could have made it better, or course, is if that bass horn was a Sousaphone!

Finally met Lloyd Farrar in person

I mentioned in a post back in 2015 that music scholar Lloyd Farrar had been connected with the J. W. Pepper company in the early 1990s and had begun the process of clarifying the history of the first Sousaphone (click here to see that post). He wasn't able to get to the bottom of the story, but he definitely got the ball rolling.

After reading about him in the archives at Pepper, and hearing about him from the folks there, I was able to track him down and connect with him over many phone conversations over the past number of years. He has taken great interest in my work, and has been cheering me on in it - both as it relates to Sousaphone history, and even more so in discovering the story of Herman Conrad.

Well, I was finally able to meet Lloyd in person the other day, as he was at the AMIS conference that was being hosted about an hour from my home. His passion for music history is as strong as ever!

Sousa's Band (and us!) at Longwood

My wife and I become members of Longwood Gardens this year, enabling us to enjoy its vast beauty throughout the next 12 months. Here is Kim, along with my son and mother-in-law, down toward the Italian gardens this past week:

What was fun to discover is that there is a bit of history for Sousa and his Band at this wonderful place. While it was long after Herman Conrad, Sousa's first star bass player, had left the band, I thought I'd post about it anyway. Here's the brief mention of the Sousa connection in the museum on the grounds:

And here are a few more shots of the grounds, as they looked this past week:

(That's me on the left)

Conrad: A giant nearly 7 feet tall!

A good friend of mine just sent me the image below, which is the only known photograph of Herman Conrad that I didn't yet possess. It is from the November 1903 edition of C. G. Conn's Truth (vol. 5, no. 7, p. 3), and above the photo it says, "The Long and Short of It."

The accompanying article has this to say:

It is claimed  that if the [Sousa] band was formed up in line with men and instruments classified, commencing with the Piccolo on the right and the Sousaphone on the left, that the stature of the men would conform so perfectly to the size of the instruments, that the shoulder line would make an even upward incline from right to left. 

For instance Mr. Marshall Lufsky, the Flute player is 5 feet 4 inches in height, while Mr. Herman Conrad with the Wonder Monster Sousaphone is a giant nearly 7 feet tall. . . . While Mr. Conrad is a fairly good Flute player, Mr. Lufsky does not claim to be a great artist on the Bass.

Sources are not in agreement as to Conrad's height - one says he was 6 feet 4 inches, another 6 feet 6 inches, and yet another 6 feet 8 inches. But he was truly a giant, and in more ways than one!

When Conrad joined Gilmore's Band

As I continue my research on Herman Conrad, the forgotten giant of the tuba, there remain a few gaps in the story of his illustrious career. But one of those has now been closed, and it has to do with exactly when he joined Gilmore's Band after emigrating from West Prussia in the fall of 1887.

My working assumption was that Gilmore had summoned him from Europe to join his band, as he was in need of a new bass player and had heard that young Herman (just 20 years old when he left for America), was already viewed as one of the best tubists in the world.

And while that may perhaps still be the case, here's what we know from the records that I have been able to track down:

• Conrad sailed on board the S. S. Rhein, from Bremen, around September 20, 1887, and arrived in Baltimore on either October 3 or 6 (there is a discrepancy in the records).
• He is listed in the Detroit directory for 1888 as living with his parents, who had emigrated to America on June 8, 1886. The listing says, "Wonderland, bds e s Clark av 5 n of Dix av." and identifies him as a "musician."
• Wonderland, as it turns out, was a theater in the heart of Detroit's entertainment district (80 Woodward Ave.) that opened on Christmas Day, 1886. Here it is a few years later, on the far right, when it was called the Avenue Theater:

And here is the location of Wonderland in center city Detroit (refer to the yellow dot on this 1897 map):

And here is one notice in the Detroit Free Press, dated June 11, 1887, that reveals what all was going on at the Wonderland at that time:

It appears that Conrad started playing at the Wonderland shortly after he arrived in Detroit, and it was while he was working there that he was recruited by Gilmore, according to the June 16, 1888 edition of The New York Clipper:

The Gilmore Band tour that was in progress was heading toward the Midwest at that time (June), having been in the South the previous month, so perhaps Conrad jumped right in when they were nearby. Or maybe he joined them for their time in Manhattan Beach later that summer. But either way, he was now part of the best band in the world - and he had just turned 21 that Spring!

The prelude to Conn's Sousaphone?

When C. G. Conn introduced his first Sousaphone to the world in January 1898, which shows up in Sousa's Band almost immediately, it wasn't the first big bass horn that he had created for a famous bandleader. A year or more earlier, T. P. Brooke had requested that Conn build him a giant tuba to be featured in his band.

From a newspaper ad in early 1897

In the February 7, 1897 edition of the Logansport [Indiana] Pharos-Tribune, we find this curious notice:

Here is what the "monster tuba" looked like (photo courtesy of Dr. Margaret Downie Banks at the National Music Museum):

 Later that year, in the September 29, 1897 edition of the Pittsburgh Daily Post, we learn that Brooke designed the horn:

But, as it turns out, this was not the only "immense tuba" to be seen in a big-time touring band in the 1890s. Sousa, of course, already had his "Sousaphone," built by J. W. Pepper in 1895, and which toured with his band in 1896. But Frederick Innes also had Conn build him a giant bass horn for his band in 1897! (Did Brooke and Innes know of each other's dealings with Conn?!) Check out what appeared in the July 18, 1897 edition of The Tennessean:

So now we have a new "largest horn ever made" - although we don't yet know how it compared to Brooke's "monster tuba," as there are no specifications provided in the article. But there is a drawing of this beast of a helicon bass:

A week later, in the July 25, 1897 edition of The Tennessean, there is another drawing, this time of the entire band, featuring Innes' spectacular "giant tuba":

We learn a bit more about both of these giant tubas in  H. W. Schwartz's wonderful work, Bands of America, published in 1957 (and, according to the dust cover back flap, Schwartz "was for many years an executive of C. G. Conn, Ltd." - how interesting!). He contends that Innes got wind of Brooke's plan to have Conn build for him the world's largest tuba, but "before it was finished, Innes placed his order for a bigger one - bigger by one inch in bell diameter!" (p. 181).

Schwartz also suggests that the reporter who wrote the article above, about "Innes' Giant Tuba," either

had an uninhibited imagination or (what is more probable) . . . was a young and gullible reporter who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of William Grett, the tuba player. Grett, with his tongue in his cheek, no doubt enjoyed talking about his big tuba and facetiously advanced the hypothesis that this one bass would take the place of four other basses, and that the reason for this was to save Innes money by requiring fewer players. The reporter thought Grett was leveling with him and wrote it up as the truth. (pp. 182-83).

Further, Schwartz wrote that "the facts about [Innes'] tuba came out in the Dominant, a musical magazine of relatively small circulation, edited primarily for professional musicians by Arthur A. Clappe" (p. 183). But I looked through issues of the Dominant from around that time, and couldn't locate what he found, which was this:

Clappe gave the relatively prosaic but accurate specifications of the tuba as weighing sixty-three pounds and as having three piston valves and a bell thirty-three inches in diameter. Its range was the same as any other tuba of the time, going down to the Bb which was in the third octave below middle C. Its principal distinction was its wide bore and sonorous tone quality. (p. 183).

So there you have it - according to Schwartz's research.

The interesting question for my purposes, of course, is whether Conn's work on these two giant tubas of Brooke and Innes had something to do with him building a Sousaphone for Sousa. In less than a year, such a horn shows up in Sousa's band. But did Sousa request it, or did Conn take the initiative? Stay tuned!

Origins still a mystery as late as 1999

Today, I was finally able to see the last time someone weighed in on the origins of the Sousaphone in the ITEA Journal prior to the publication of my articles (the great folks at ITEA have been slowly making past editions of the journal available to members for browsing online).

In the Spring 1999 edition of what was then called the TUBA Journal, Mike Knaack published this:

The subtitle was, "Origins a Mystery, but Its Inspiration Clear," and the content is engagingly written.  The cover of the Journal, as well as the first page of the article features a Conn Sousaphone from 1904:

Toward the end of the first page, Mike wrote, "At this point we get into one of the enduring controversies of the sousaphone: Who made the first sousaphone? Or, more exactly, who made the first one that Sousa really used?"

Mike then shares what he had unearthed at that time about the Pepper claims, as well as the Conn claims, but concluded with this: "Don't look for a resolution any time soon."

Well, the resolution finally came 16 years later, so I guess he was right!

He does, however, pass along some interesting "facts" that are almost surely incorrect. For example, he references Dan Shideler (of UMI) as saying that "the first Conn sousaphone was called 'The Monster' and was a BB-flat model [correct], gold-plated [never heard that before], with a 32- to 34-inch bell [probably not that big] and had four valves [correct]. It had the name 'Sousa' prominently engraved on its bell [correct again], and guesses it could have weighed as much as 75 pounds [yikes! I seriously doubt that!].

Mike goes on to suggest, via a comment by Paul Bierley, that Conn's first horn probably weighed somewhere around 45 pounds, and then adds this: "Regardless, it was large enough that it required a hefty player like [Herman] Conrad (who was about 6 feel 6 inches tall and weighed 275 pounds) to handle it."

Conrad's height is probably accurate, as it is right around the multiple sources that list him as anywhere from 6 feet 4 inches to almost seven feet tall! But 275 pounds? I'm not sure where Mike got that information. Conrad was not overweight in any of the photographs I have seen of him throughout his career (including when we see him with Conn's first Sousaphone in 1898), and 215 pounds is listed as the high end of the normal weight range for a 6 foot 6 inch male. That is, 275 pounds would put him well into the obese range, and he just doesn't look overweight at all.

But those inaccuracies aside, it was great to finally read this article. Thanks, Mike!

Oh, and toward the end of the article, there is a great photograph featuring the two historically significant Conn Sousaphones in the Greenleaf Collection up at the Interlochen Center for the Arts:

The one on the left is the so-called "Original Sousaphone," which dates from around 1905. The one on the right is the richly engraved oversized horn built in 1924 for Conn's 50th anniversary (and that one is indeed burnished in gold, and has at least a 34 inch diameter bell!).