Scene from Stars and Stripes Forever, where the Sousaphonist just came in out of the rain!
An interesting question was asked of me yesterday, by my good friend and world-class trombonist and music historian, Douglas Yeo, regarding just how to spell the acquired nickname for the original Sousaphone design, where the bell pointed straight up: "Raincatcher," "rain-catcher," or "rain catcher"?
I had poked around a little bit, a few years ago, to see what I could find out about the origin of this understandable, and certainly humorous, nickname for the horn bearing the name of its designer. But, curiously, I couldn't find any reference to it earlier than 1953 - even though the original Sousaphone appeared way back in 1895.
Here's that reference from 1953, which mentions the recently released 20th Century Fox movie, Stars and Stripes Forever:
For starters, the basic history laid out in this brief report is incorrect, or at least misleading. Just to clarify:
- The very first Sousaphone was not built by Conn in 1898, but by Pepper in 1895 (although Conn's version of the Sousaphone was introduced in 1898).
- Sousa was not the one responsible for moving the bell forward in 1908, as he stayed with his bell-up design for the entire life of his incredible concert band.
But there might be something to the claim that "When marching bands came into vogue, the Sousaphone was dubbed the 'rain-catcher.'"
Military bands had been marching long before the invention of the Sousaphone, and college marching bands started forming long before that modified helicon appeared as well (
Notre Dame's band is said to have been formed way back in 1845, making it the first).
The marching band at the University of Illinois is said to be the first to perform at halftime of a football game, in 1907, as well as the first to use Sousaphones, which appear to have been purchased late that year, according to the December 23, 1907 edition of
The Champaign Daily News (note the last sentence):
These horns would have had upright bells, as the bell-front version, called the Wonderphone helicon bass by Conn, didn't appear until the following year, 1908. So, if it ever rained at a game of the Fighting Illini, their Sousaphones would have definitely, ahem, caught rain!
However, the first Sousaphone to be featured on the march goes all the way back to September 5, 1899, when a "monster four-valve Sousaphone," built by Conn for the A.O.U.W. Military Band of Cedar Falls, Iowa, was featured in the Grand Army parade in Philadelphia on that date. Here's the report, from the April 1900 edition of C. G. Conn's Truth (note the second to the last sentence, at the bottom):
Interestingly, the first known occasion where Sousa's Band marched - and they hardly ever did - was later that month (September 1899), and his featured Sousaphone was clearly part of the parade (played by Herman Conrad, lower left; note Sousa himself, lower right, and a helicon bass, upper right):
I'm not aware that it rained at either of those parades in September 1899, but the Sousaphone would have been seen by thousands of people, so it wouldn't be surprising to discover that the nickname "raincatcher" dates all the way back to that year - which, to be clear, is just four years after Pepper built the original Sousaphone, and not quite two years after Conn built his version.
Or perhaps the nickname goes back to 1903, when Sousa's Band was in England. Check out this report of how the band members, including Conrad with his massive Sousaphone, had to walk three miles to their hotel in the freezing rain:
Did you catch it? Conrad apparently joked that the Sousaphone normally "weighs 33lb" (which, in itself, should cause us to marvel at his stamina!), but after the three mile walk in the freezing rain (assuming it was still raining at that time), "it weighed three hundred and thirty-three before I got to the hotel"! Raincatcher, indeed!
But, alas, I have yet to find a reference to that actual nickname that pre-dates 1953. Strange!
And as to how it should be spelled, history might suggest that it should be "rain-catcher," with a hyphen, as that is the main way the term is spelled in news reports in the late 19th century.
The earliest reference I could find is from 1885, and refers not to an actual rain-catcher device, but to the summer street cars in St. Louis, which became a kind of rain-catcher, "to the great discomfort of the passengers"!
However, more recent reports often spell it "raincatcher," without a hyphen or a space, such as this little trivia piece from 1982:
For me, I've decided to stick with "raincatcher," as that's how Clifford Bevan spells it in his definitive work,
The Tuba Family, when he discusses the history of the Sousaphone (2nd edition, 2000). And Harvey Phillips does the same in his book,
The Art of Tuba and Euphonium (1992).
It's pretty hard to argue with those guys!
But I do hope to eventually stumble upon a much earlier reference to when the Sousaphone picked up that nickname. The search continues!
