Page 28 - July18LivingSCCLmagazine

THE MARCH KING
There’s nothing like a stirring march to get our patriotic juices flowing, and there’s nothing like a Sousa march to top them all. John Philip Sousa* was born in 1854 in Washington, DC. He began with the violin, at age six, and went on to master the piano, the flute, and several brass instruments. He was a natural. His father, a trombonist in the US Marine Corps Band, enlisted his son, age 13, in the Corps as an apprentice so that he wouldn’t run off and join the circus – the circus band, of course.
After his first stint with the Corps ended in 1875, he learned to conduct while he was in a theatre orchestra. Thus, when he rejoined the Corps, at the age of 26,
it was as leader of the band. He led the Marine Corps Band for twelve
more years, after which he left to form his own band. In the years that followed, the Sousa Band performed
all over the world. Interestingly though, over all the years, they marched only eight times.
You can sense the concert audiences sitting and tapping their toes to the Sousa marches, but there was other music offered as well. Sousa, The March King,
By Lee Johnston
also wrote
many popular
operettas, dozens
of songs, and
other pieces
such as overtures
and suites.
Among his 136
marches, though
we may not remember their names, the tunes of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “The Washington Post,” “Semper Fidelis,” and “The Thunderer” are familiar to us all.
...
In almost every marching band across the country, there is at least one person
beholden to Sousa for inventing the sousaphone. A typical concert tuba weighs in at 25 to 35 pounds, and though a sousaphone can weigh just about the same, the tuba’s circumference is several feet. It’s fine for a player to let his chair hold it for him while he plays in the orchestra, but it is a beast to heft if he has to march with it.
Sousa recognized the problem. In 1893, providing ideas about what he needed, he asked a Philadelphia instrument maker J. W. Pepper and Sons to
“Da, da dee dah-dah, de dah, de dah, de dah.” Of course you recognize the opening bars of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Don’t you? (There’s no way to put those opening bars, plus the cymbals clash, into print. You’ll
have to hum and clash to yourself.)
28 LIVING @ SCCL, July 2018