The other day I stumbled upon the above lithograph, which is in the digital archives of The Huntington Library in San Marino, California (fabulous place, by the way), and which I had never seen before.
It is not dated, but based on the information written on it, it was likely created in 1895 to promote the Sousa Band tour for that year: what is said on the left was true for 1893 and 1894; what is said on the right was true for 1895; plus David Blakely, who is listed as manager, died in 1896.
What caught my eye, at first, was the presence of not one, but two helicon basses (with two standard tubas in between):
The one on the right I knew all about - that's Herman Conrad (even the face matches), who brought his big BBb helicon with him from Gilmore's Band when he joined Sousa in 1893 (and it was replaced by the J. W. Pepper Sousaphone for the 1896 tour). And while there is some evidence suggesting that Sousa might have briefly tolerated two of these horns in his band, I had not seen any visual proof of it - until now.
So, I posted this wonderful discovery on Facebook, to see what responses I might get, and Mark Heter made a fascinating observation: "It appears as though the engravers may have cut some corners on this one, superimposing Sousa on a previous band (Gilmore's?). I've never seen a photo of Sousa's Band where the musicians are dressed this way. Interesting curiosity."
"Interesting curiosity," indeed!
While the lithograph clearly says, "Sousa's Band at Manhattan Beach," directly below Sousa's green platform, a closer look at the band reveals that Mark may be right!
Exhibit A: Those Antoniophones in the front row!
If you look at the two instruments in the front row, to the right of Sousa, those are clearly Antoniophones (or Orpheons, as Steve Dillon says they are more properly called):
In 1889, Gilmore's Band apparently featured a quintet of Antoniophones, a photograph of which was included in a special supplement to the September 28 edition of
Harper's Weekly:
A year later, in 1890, a handwritten list of the members of Gilmore's Band noted that Harry Whittier was playing an Orpheon, and Eldon Baker the bass Antoniophone:
So, these unusual instruments were a thing, at least for a while, in Gilmore's Band. But there is no record that I am aware of that suggests that they were ever used in Sousa's Band.
Exhibit B: Those band uniforms
Mark was right - there is no extant photo of Sousa's Band that shows them in uniforms as depicted in the lithograph. But they do match what we see in Gilmore's Band in 1892. Check out this photo from Madison Square Garden in June of that year:
Even from this distance, you can see that many of the coats are open, showing the shirts underneath, just like we see in the lithograph. I'll zoom in so you can see what I mean:
Plus, in a lithograph from 1892, featuring that same band of one hundred, we see a bit of the detail of the stitching or piping on the jackets. Here's what I mean:
Granted, the coats are buttoned up here, but compare the stitching with what the lithographer of the 1895 image reveals - it's very similar (although, granted, not identical);
Exhibit C: Back to those two helicons
While we don't have any visual confirmation of Sousa's Band having more than one helicon bass, we do see two of those horns in Gilmore's Band in 1892, as you might have already noticed. I'll zoom in even more on those, from that photo at Madison Square Garden (that's Conrad again, on the right, with the big BBb helicon that he brought with him to Sousa's Band a year later):
So, is this lithograph showing Sousa inserted onto an older image of Gilmore's Band? It sure seems like it! Even the number of band members perhaps suggests this is the case, as it seems that Sousa used around 50 band members in the early years, and there are 62 shown here.
But this also might not be the only time a lithographer got lazy. Here is yet another poster of Sousa's Band, reportedly from 1895, showing yet again a band with (slightly) open coats, and a whopping 79 musicians:
As the old saying goes, I guess we shouldn't always believe what we see - at least when it's a lithograph!
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