No Sousaphone Solo? C'mon, Man!

Check out the second-to-the-last paragraph of this report of a Sousa Band concert in Baltimore in early 1922:

The soloist on "the huge bass tuba," which would have been one of the four (or possibly five) Sousaphone players that made up the tuba section at that time, would have probably been Sousa's young hot-shot on the bass horn, Bill Bell, seen here a week earlier on the far right:

While Sousa chose not to feature Bell at this concert, he did feature him at times during the years Bell was in the band (1921-24).

Interestingly, one player who was featured at that concert was flutist Meredith Willson, who went on to write the book, music, and lyrics of the iconic 1957 musical, The Music Man.

Even more interestingly, Willson chose to leave out the bass horns in the lyrics to his famous song, "Seventy-Six Trombones." The closest we get are "double bell euphoniums and big bassoons"! Granted, it says "there were horns of every shape and size," but no explicit mention of a tuba or a Sousaphone. C'mon, man!

Here are the full lyrics:

Seventy six trombones led the big parade,
With a hundred & ten cornets close at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows,
Of the finest virtuosos,
The cream of every famous band.

Seventy six trombones caught the morning sun,
With a hundred & ten cornets right behind.
There were over a thousand reeds,
Springing up like weeds,
There were horns of every shape & size.

There were copper bottom timpani in horse platoons,
Thundering, thundering, all along the way.
Double bell euphoniums and big bassoons,
Each bassoon having its big fat say.

There were fifty mounted cannons in the battery,
Thundering, thundering, louder than before.
Clarinets of every size,
And trumpets who'd improvise
A full octave higher than the score!

Seventy six trombones hit the counterpoint,
While a hundred and ten cornets blazed away.
To the rhythm of Harch! Harch! Harch!
All the kids began to march,
And they're marching still right today!

In the 1962 movie, where the song is featured during the closing credits, there are five Sousaphones shown briefly at one point (with Buddy Hackett playing one of them), but I didn't get a sense of how many were in the band overall. Given that there were, uhm, seventy-six trombones, I would think there would have been a truckload of tubas as well!

But hey, there is that one (detachable) upright bell tuba in the small band indoors, before the magical transformation, where the player's mother blurts out, "That's my Barney! That tuba's my Barney!" Absolutely awful playing, of course (and even worse acting as far as looking like he was playing that horn), but a great scene!

Here's the whole thing - enjoy!