Deck the halls with lots of Tubas!

Wishing you grace and peace this beautiful Christmas Day. Here are some of the highlights from the various Tuba Christmas celebrations this year, where Sousaphones figured prominently:

New York City

West Lafayette, IN

Jacksonville, FL

Fort Collins, CO

Los Angeles, CA

Anything you can do, I can do . . .

Not to be outdone by Conn's 50th anniversary Sousaphone (see post below), the Holton Company created its own oversized, ornately engraved horn. Well, okay, it appears that it was actually over 10 years later, in 1935, but one has to wonder if they were perhaps thinking of Conn's beautiful creation when crafting this mammoth Holtonphone:

Image found online here

According to a C. G. Conn website that is no longer online (but thankfully I had printed out a hard copy of the article), a page titled "Holton Donates Historic 'Holtonphone" to National Music Museum," reveals the following:

Ornately engraved and decorated with cast brass wreaths, ribbons, and a natural horn extending through a lyre, the mammoth "Holtonphone" was the company's largest Sousaphone model. The bell decoration features a large elk head with 12-point antlers. The 58-inch-tall, model 130 Sousaphone with a 30" bell was marketed in Holton's 1935 catalog as the "Revelation BB-flat mammoth Holtonphone, the size recommended for both band and orchestra."

The article also explains that this historic Sousaphone was donated to the National Music Museum (along with a lot of other stuff) in 2008, marking the 110th anniversary of the founding of the Holton Company.

The largest playable Sousaphone

Image courtesy of Mark Overton at saxophone.org

Marking the 50th anniversary of the company, this notice appeared in a 1924 edition of C. G.Conn's Musical Truth (vol. 14,no. 36). Here is what the first two paragraphs say:

As a fitting emblem of its progress during the fifty years since its founding, C. G. Conn, Ltd., has just completed the construction of the world's largest playable Sousaphone, which is illustrated to the left. This remarkable instrument is finished completely in burnished gold, with oxidized silver and other precious metals used to bring out the details of the highly ornate engraving which entirely covers the bell, inside and out. This engraving alone required more than three solid weeks. The bell itself is 10 feet, 2 1/2 inches in circumference, and the instrument weighs nearly fifty pounds. Were this monster Sousaphone to be listed for sale the price would be in the neighborhood of $3,000.00.

This titanic instrument will be on display at the various Conn branches and agencies  throughout the country during the coming months.

This historic horn is currently part of the Greenleaf collection of instruments at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, MI. Having visited there just this past summer, I had the chance to see it hanging on the wall:

 

 

If I knew what I was encountering at that time, I would have arranged to examine this amazing instrument in more detail. But click here for a video of Ian Church, who was able to do just that, courtesy of John Beery, the curator of the Greenleaf collection, who is also featured. And just to give you an idea of how large this Monster really is, note the photo on the left, showing it in 1927 (C. G. Conn's Musical Truth, vol. 17, no. 44).

Here's a more recent photo of the Sousaphone, showing the ornate engraving on the inside of the bell, when it was displayed previously at the Elkhart County Historical Museum:

Photo found online here, at the Conn Loyalist website

Girls just want to have fun, too!

There may very well have been women playing the Sousaphone prior to the 1920s, but it is during that decade, according to my research, that they began getting much-deserved publicity.

For example, Cleora Miller, pictured at left, began playing when she was twelve years old, and while she was still in her teens, she was considered "One of the most remarkable lady Bass Virtuosos." In a 1924 edition of  C. G. Conn's Musical Truth (vol. 14, no. 34, p. 15), in which the quote is found, Miss Miller is further described as

an Artist on the Bass of exceptional ability. Her Bass solos consist of heavy numbers demanding rapid technique which she executes with perfect ease and assurance on her Conn Sousaphone. The audience always marvels at the versatility of Miss Miller for she is so "tiny" and yet handles the Monster Sousaphone with such apparent ease. . . . Miss Miller is the star of her own Musical Company which is considered as one of the highest class musically on the stage of all time.

Ellen Ross

In 1925, we hear of Georgia Bigelow Bryan, Sousaphonist with the Bigelow family band (Musical Truth, vol. 15, no. 37, p. 16); in 1926 we read of Cleora Miller once again, as well as Gertrude Stevens, Sousaphonist with the Lopez Debutantes (vol. 16, no. 40, p. 16); and in 1927, Ellen Ross shows up in the gallery and is called "a classy bass player" (vol. 17, no. 43, p. 21).

Toward the end of the decade, all-girl bands began to appear (as the men didn't want the ladies in their groups, regardless of how talented they were!), such as the Parisian Red Heads, shown here in 1929:

Click here for more info about female jazz groups starting in the 1920s

One of the most successful of the all-girl bands (well, all-girl except for the director) was Phil Spitalny & His Musical Queens, shown here in the 1930s:

Note how the Sousaphone is being held! Click here for another group similar to this one

The photo at the right is floating around the internet (can't imagine why), and while I cannot confirm this, one source contends that it is the Sousaphonist from Spitalny's group. If so, she would totally blow away the stereotype of Sousaphonists being large, overweight men!

Before leaving this topic, check out this ad I came across when browsing old editions of The Instrumentalist. It is promoting King Sousaphones in the November 1955 edition:

 

Sousaphones roar into the 20s

As far as I can tell, the 1920s represent the heyday of the Sousaphone. Virtually every major instrument company offered one by this time, and they were showing up everywhere - in concert bands (Sousa had 5 or 6 Sousaphones in his band for many of those years), marching bands, dance bands, community bands, and even the jazz bands that began to blossom during that decade. For example (and click on their name to hear what they sounded like back then):

The Carroll Dickerson Band at Chicago's Sunset Cafe in 1922

The Wolverines in 1924, with Bix Beiderbecke on cornet

The Erskine Tate Orchestra in 1925, with Louis Armstrong (4th from left)

Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra in 1926 (I think)

Conn remained the "world's largest manufacturer" of band instruments at the beginning of that decade, and here are the Sousaphones they offered in 1921:

All Conn images courtesy of Mark Overton at saxophone.org

If you read the fine print at the bottom of these pages, you'll notice that Conn also offered a four valve version of their Sousaphone Grand (including a "Jumbo" in both three and four valve), as well as four valve "Giant," four valve "Monster," and three or four valve "Jumbo" versions of their upright bell horns. Take your pick!

And with the 1920s I began to see something I hadn't encountered before in my research - women playing the Sousaphone. But I'll save that for my next post.

Sousaphones not made by C. G. Conn

In this blog so far, apart from the very first Sousaphone, which was made by J. W. Pepper, I have focused exclusively on horns that came from the C. G. Conn factory. This shouldn't be surprising, as Conn really was the one to champion and perfect this new instrument. But other companies jumped on the Sousaphone band wagon soon enough.

For example, Frank Holton, who had played trombone in Sousa's Band in 1892-93, formed his own instrument company in Chicago in 1898, and introduced his "Holtonphone" in 1909. I have yet to come across a picture of that horn, but I'm guessing it was a raincatcher, given that the forward-facing bell had only just been invented by Conn the previous year.

Holton moved his company to Elkhorn, WI in 1917, and in 1925 put up this sign at the entrance of the city:


According to The Music Trade Review of February 7, 1925, from which the above image comes, "The signboard is a handsome piece of work and in its prominent location on the main highway it will be seen by thousands of tourists traveling through Wisconsin. It is painted in striking colors and shows a pretty girl playing a large Holtonphone."

Here's the 1932 version of "The No. 130 Revelation Holtonphone," from the Holton catalog that year:

The year 1909 also provides the earliest evidence I have come across for the "Buescherphone" - a raincatcher made by the Buescher Band Instrument Co. of Elkhart, IN:

Image courtesy of horn-u-copia.net

Elkhart, of course, was the location of the Conn factory, and Gus Buescher had worked for Conn prior to starting his own company right there in the same town in 1894.

Henry Charles Martin had also worked for Conn at one time, and started (or actually re-started) the Martin instrument company in 1905 in Elkhart as well. I'm not sure what year Martin began building Sousaphones, but a 1916 catalog confirms that they included raincatchers referred to as Sousaphone Helicon Basses.

Here's a page from a Martin catalog a few years later (not sure of the date), showing that the word "Helicon" had been dropped from the name, and with the fine print saying, "Also with Bell to the Front":

 

The H. N. White Co. (1892-1965), based in Cleveland, OH, started producing "King" Helicons (eventually called Sousaphones) as early as 1910, if not earlier. Here is a surviving horn from that year:

Photo courtesy of The Tuba Exchange

King Sousaphones have been a popular choice over the years, as evidenced in this 1956 ad featuring the Purdue marching band Sousaphone section:

Ad found by the author at the USC library

J. W. York, based in Grand Rapids, MI, also made Sousaphones from at least 1910, as did a company called Keefer, based in Williamsport, PA. The Keefer horn, at least in 1922, was called a "Wagnerphone." As the catalog page below says, "its volume and breadth and depth of tone make it a credit to the name it bears - 'Wagnerphone.' Wagner himself could not wish for a more fluent speaking instrument or one of more majesty and solid volume." Interesting - I had never heard of Keefer before!

Image courtesy of horn-u-copia.net

There have been many other companies over the years to produce Sousaphones (one source mentions almost 100 of them), but the ones above, with the possible exception of Keefer, seem to have provided the biggest competetion for Conn back in those days.

The last gasp for upright bells

The year 1908, when the bell-front design first appeared, really was a major turning point in the history of the Sousaphone. It marked the beginning of the end for upright bell horns, that is, the end for the original Sousaphone design.

By 1926, Conn had stopped making bell-up Sousaphones - much to Sousa's dismay, I would think (see post below) - and other companies appear to have done the same at around that time. Everyone, it seems, preferred the bell-front horns.

But thirty years later the original Sousaphone design did make a brief comeback. Starting in 1957, as noted in the catalog for that year, Conn's popular 20K Artist BBb Sousaphone, which listed for $740 (plus $53 if you wanted the silver finish)  had an extra upright bell available for an additional $75 (or $90 in silver). Or one could simply buy the 21K Artist BBb Sousaphone - a new model that was the same as the 20K, but with an upright bell only:

Image courtesy of Mark Overton at saxophone.org

The Conn catalog from 1958, from which the image above comes, offered this brief explanation about the benefits of interchangeable bells:


It would appear that this experiment lasted only a handful of years, with the 21K being discontinued by 1962. But I came across some anecdotal evidence suggesting that other companies may have revived the upright bell (however briefly) a number of years before Conn did.

In the article "Employing the Tuba as a Solo Instrument" by Rex Conner (side note - I studied with Rex back in 1979 when I was at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, MI), which appeared in the February 1954 edition of The Instrumentalist (vol 8, no. 6, p. 26), it says this:

We have often wondered why major symphony orchestras employ the upright bell rather than the bell-front tuba. This question was answered quite adequately by Bruce Jones, director of the Louisiana State University Band, at a recent clinic in Missouri. When we listen to a string bass section in an orchestra, regardless of where the players are standing, the tone is non-directional. It comes from all over the orchestra and supports the entire orchestral tone.

Not so with the bell-front tubas. The tones, good or bad, smack the listener right in the face, usually quite blatantly. Mr. Jones told us how he had his sousaphone players turn their bells toward the wall in a demonstration that gave a very fine effect. A recent picture of the Louisiana State University Band reveals that it is now using bell-up sousaphones just as Sousa originally designed them. It now has two sets of bells for sousaphones, one for marching and one for concert work.

The question, of course, is where Mr. Jones obtained that second set of bells - the ones that pointed straight up - back in 1954. Conn wasn't making them (yet), but perhaps other companies were.

Sousa stays with raincatchers

Sousa, as you can imagine, was a big fan of the Sousaphone. After all, the new horn, with its big upright bell, was his idea, as he explained in his autobiography, Marching Along (published in 1928):

Way back when I was with the Marines [1892] they used a Helicon tuba wound around the body. I disliked it for concert work because the tone would shoot ahead and be too violent. I suggested to a manufacturer that we have an upright bell of large size so that the sound would diffuse over the entire band like the frosting on a cake! He designed a horn after that description and it has been in use ever since, by many bands, under the name of the Sousaphone (p. 334).

When the bell-front design was introduced by Conn in 1908, Sousa was not interested. He stayed with the original Sousaphone model, popularly known as a "raincatcher," for his entire career as a bandleader - ending with his death in 1932. At times, Sousa used as many as six of these "Monsters" in his band, as can be seen in this photo from 1925:

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress online

Sousa simply loved the sound of those big old bell-up horns. As he was quoted in The Christian Science Monitor of August 30, 1922: "It is my belief, when properly played, that the Sousaphone tone mingles with better effect with the tones of other instruments, string and brass, than is the case with the ordinary bass instruments [meaning string basses, tubas, helicons, and perhaps even bell-forward Sousaphones]" (from the article, "Sousaphone Seen as Possible Substitute for Upright Tuba," p. 8).

Curiously, there is one photo of the Sousa Band from December 1921 showing a bell-front horn in the midst of four bell-up Sousaphones:

Photo courtesy of Paul Bierley, The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa, p. 34.

However, as Paul Bierley explains, "Sousa temporarily permitted the 'bell-front' sousaphone in the back row while a 'bell-up' model, like the other four, was being manufacturered." Clearly, he didn't want to do any long-term damage to his beloved "frosting on the cake"!

The benefits of bell-front horns

Most people have no idea that Sousaphones began as bell-up horns. In fact, when someone sees an old "raincatcher" today, they may not even realize that they are looking at a Sousaphone. But once the bell-front design was introduced in 1908 by C. G. Conn (shown at left), it wasn't too long before it came to dominate the Sousaphone market - and there has been no other kind of Sousaphone made for over 80 years now (with one brief exception - stay tuned).

Why did the bell-front design become so popular? In reading the earliest notices about Conn's new Wonderphone instruments (referenced a few posts below), the following benefits are mentioned:

• The sound can be directed at the audience (although that is exactly what Sousa didn't like about Helicons, whose bells point somewhat forward, and this gripe gave rise to the original Sousaphone with its upright bell).
• Soloists will sound better (but I'm wondering . . . were there any Sousaphone solos back then?).
• The appearance of the horn will be more attractive (although this is surely subjective - but hey, people do seem to like big shiny things, and few things are bigger or shiner than a Sousaphone bell!).
• Being adjustable, the bell can be turned in any desired direction (expect upwards, of course).
• For example, if the horns are put in the front rank of a marching band, their bells can be pointed backwards so that the rest of the band can hear them (this was actually mentioned, although I've never seen a photo showing this approach).
• On the other hand, if the horns are put in the rear rank of a marching band, with the bells pointing forward, everyone else can hear them quite well (which is the approach seen regularly to this day).

Interestingly, one thing that was not mentioned at all is how a forward facing bell could help in the process of recording. After all, these bells did come to be known as "recording bells" - at least in connection with tubas.

As far as I can tell, the bell-forward design was a particular hit with marching bands, but eventually began to be the horn of choice in concert and dance bands as well - even though Sousa, that most famous of band leaders, never made that switch himself (more on that next).

Merry Tuba Christmas, 2012!

Today was our annual Tuba Christmas celebration at the Railroad Plaza of Lansdale, PA, where we had a great showing of Sousaphones, along with about 70 tubas, euphoniums, and baritones:

Rehearsing at the local Fire Department an hour ahead of time



Between songs out on the Railroad Plaza - the weather was great!

The horn I am playing (the one with a wreath on the bell on the right) is a 1927 Pan American 64K Sousaphone that my son and I acquired for free almost exactly a year ago. After a massive cleanup job, and having a new neck tenon soldered on, we discovered that it played great, and today was its first public appearance:

One of my friends, with whom I play tuba in our local community concert band, brought his circa 1919 Buescherphone:

The most ridiculous instrument?

Image found by author

This photo and brief article appeared in the March-April 1953 edition of The Instrumentalist (vol. 7, no. 5, p. 21), supposedly providing a thumbnail sketch of the earliest history of the Sousaphone.

Notice what it says about the bell-front design, which appeared in 1908:

None of the earliest information on Conn's Wonderphone Helicon (as it was called for the first ten years of its existence), suggests that Mr. Conn reacted initially in this way (see post below). But perhaps he did - who knows?

However, other parts of the article are inaccurate, so that should give us pause. For example, it says that this new bell-forward horn was called "the sousaphone grand," but that name wasn't used regularly until 1918.

Further, the article states that John Kuhn, "a member of Sousa's band," weighed in on the new horn, telling Conn that he "really had something there." But Kuhn wasn't with Sousa's Band until 1915, and according to this photo from 1912 (C. G. Conn's Musical Truth, January 1912, vol. 9, no. 10), which is four years after Conn introduced the bell-forward design, Kuhn was still playing a bell-up Sousaphone - not a Wonderphone Helicon:

Image courtesy of Mark Overton at saxophone.org

Finally, while I have already shown in a previous post that the Sousaphone in the photo at the top of this post is most definately not the "Original Sousaphone," I discovered this week that it isn't even the Sousaphone that "'Stars' In Movie" - that movie being Stars and Stripes Forever (1952).

The Sousaphone shown with the article is a four-valve Monster Sousaphone (while the four valves cannot be seen, the tubing coming from the fourth valve is clearly visible). The Sousaphone used in the movie is a three-valve Monster, as seen in this photo from one of the scenes in the film:

The bell comes forward (1908)

On December 26, 1907, Charles G. Conn drafted a letter to the U. S. Patent Office that would bring a dramatic change to the Sousaphone, as well as to other bell-up instruments. Here's a portion of what he wrote:

The object of my invention is to construct the bells of brass wind musical instruments with curved axes and by attaching these curved bells to the bell-tubes of the instruments by means of curved sleeves, to provide a bell-front instrument having a much larger field of adjustment than heretofore.

The application was filed on February 13, 1908 (although not approved until August 17, 1909), and included the following diagram:


Image, along with entire patent info, available online here

The Feburary 1, 1908 edition of The Music Trade Review (vol. 46, no. 5, pp. 40-41) reported on this "new Wonderphone family of instruments," where "the volume of tone for the entire band can be directed toward the audience instead of being partly projected skyward or toward the ceiling as with the bell-up instruments" (p. 40). It also revealed that Conn "has been working on the development of these instruments for the past two years," and that "pirates [are] already in evidence."

Three weeks later, the journal further reported on "The Wonderful 'Wonderphone'" (MTR, February 22, 1908, vol. 46, no. 8, p. 40), and five months later, published this full page feature (MTR, July 11, 1908, vol. 47, no. 2, p. 37):


Image courtesy of The Music Trade Review online

The instrument on the left above is what we know as the Sousaphone today, but since that name was already tied to the bell-up horn that Pepper first built sometime between 1894-96, and Conn improved upon in 1898, this new bell-forward horn was dubbed "The Helicon BBb Bass Wonderphone."

That name, or something close to it (e.g. "Wonderphone Helicon") seems to have remained until 1918, when the bell-forward horn began to be referred to exclusively as "The Sousaphone Grand" (see C. G. Conn's Musical Truth, May 1918, vol. 10, no. 22).

Click here for more on the bell-front design.