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)