ESPN at least got it half right

This may very well be the first time a Sousaphone (or at least half a Sousaphone) has been featured on ESPN's college football home page. I love it - even if it does feature a rival band!

Introducing a fiberglass Sousaphone!

The year 1961 brought what is arguably the most significant development in the history of the Sousaphone. Here's what was reported in the Wednesday, July 26 edition of Variety that year (p. 51):


While I don't know if the very first fiberglass Sousaphone can be identified today, the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, CA has one of the earliest ones on display, having been built in 1962:

Photo taken by author

Of course, other instrument companies immediately began producing their own fiberglass Sousaphones, as they knew they would be a hit with school bands (being so much lighter and much less easy to damage). For example, here is an ad from September 1961 for the RMC/Reynolds Contempora version:

 

Sousaphones and World War II

The Conn factory in Elkhart, Indiana (postcard from the 1930s)

According to the article titled "Conn" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (second edition, 2001):

During World War II, C. G. Conn Ltd. retooled the Elkhart plant to manufacture products for the government. No musical instruments were produced for civilian use in 1942-6. The resulting loss of sales, as well as a delayed reconversion of the plant in 1946, caused a serious decline in Conn's status as the leading band instrument manufacturer in the USA.

One has to assume that other companys were similarly diverted from producing musical instruments for the public during those challenging years. But in the January-February 1950 edition of The Instrumentalist (vol. 4, no. 3, p. 8), this brief notice appeared:

Solving the big problem of pain

The Sousaphone, of course, is quite a pain to carry for very long - there is simply no way around it. Whether in marching band or concert band, you are guaranteed to have at least 25 pounds of brass pressing down on your shoulder for the duration of the event. Ouch!

This reality led Edward J. Gulick, who worked for the C. G. Conn Co.,  to file the following patent on February 15, 1929 (I'm surprised it took so long before someone thought of this):


Patent application and drawing below can be found online here

Here's the illustration that accompanied the patent application, showing the device on a Helicon bass, but it would have been the same for a Sousaphone:

I've not come across any photos of this device actually being used, but perhaps it was. What I have seen are various attempts to put padding of some kind on the branch part of the horn, where the weight rests on the player's shoulder (even some of the big and tall guys who played for Sousa's Band did this).

Another option, for a concert setting at least, was to do what the gal to the left did back in the 1930s, although that doesn't quite look right, does it? (Might as well just play a tuba with a recording bell.) But in 1948 a band director from the midwest named Harry Wenger came up with a great solution. Here's what the advertisement looked like in the May-June issue of The Instrumentalist of that year (vol. 11, no. 5, p. 46):

The ad goes on to list the price at $29.95, and states that the chair is "a must item for the young beginner or the girl sousaphonist" (how's that for a sexist remark!) and that it "serves as a rack when [the] instrument is not in use." Here's the notice for the new invention in that same journal, but back on page 35:

When I first started playing the Sousaphone, way back in when I was in 4th grade (1970), that chair was the only reason I was able to fulfill my desire to be a tuba player at that young age. I distinctly remember crawling into the chair, with it's forest green seat pad, and playing my heart out with not a single ounce of weight on my shoulder (marching band, of course, was a different story, but I was bigger and stronger by that time, and the horn was made of plastic - more on that shortly).

I suppose it has never been easy to get comfortable sitting while playing a Sousaphone - at least until that chair came along. Even the men in Sousa's band, as you can see below in this photo from 1930, seemed to have their coping mechanisms:

Photo courtesy of Paul Bierley, The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa, p. 54


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"!