In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [73]
There is no Sousaphone category in the renowned jazz polls. It would be inconceivable to imagine an LP entitled:
HARRY SCHWARTZ AND HIS GOLDEN SOUSAPHONE BLOW
COLE PORTER
IN STEREO
And yet every sousaphone player, in his heart, knows that no instrument is more suited to Cole Porter than his beloved four-valver. Its rich, verdant mellowness, its loving, somber blues and grays in tonality are among the most sensual and thrilling of sounds to be heard in a man’s time.
But it will never be. Forever and by definition those brave marchers under the flashing bells are irrevocably assigned to the rear rank.
Few men know the Facts of Life more truly than a player of this noble instrument. Twenty minutes in a good marching band teaches a kid more about How Things Really Are than five years at Mother’s granite knee.
There are many misconceptions which at the outset must be cleared up before we proceed much further. Great confusion exists among the unwashed as to just what a sousaphone is. Few things are more continually irritating to a genuine sousaphone man than to have his instrument constantly called a “tuba.” A tuba is a weak, puny thing fit only for mewling, puking babes and Guy Lombardo—the better to harass balding, middle-aged dancers. An upright instrument of startling ugliness and mooing, flatulent tone, the tuba has none of the grandeur, the scope or sweep of its massive, gentle, distant relation.
The sousaphone is worn proudly curled about the body, over the left shoulder, and mounting above the head is that brilliant, golden, gleaming disk—rivaling the sun in its glory. Its graceful curves clasp the body in a warm and crushing embrace, the right hand in position over its four massive mother-of-pearl capped valves. It is an instrument a man can literally get his teeth into, and often does. A sudden collision with another bell has, in many instances, produced interesting dental malformations which have provided oral surgeons with some of their happier moments.
A sousaphone is a worthy adversary which must be watched like a hawk and truly mastered ’ere it master you. Dangerous, unpredictable, difficult to play, it yet offers rich rewards. Each sousaphone individually, since it is such a massive creation, assumes a character of its own. There are bad-tempered instruments and there are friendly sousaphones; sousaphones that literally lead their players back and forth through beautiful countermarches on countless football fields. Then there are the treacherous, which buck and fight and must be held in tight rein ’ere disaster strike. Like horses or women, no two sousaphones are alike. Nor, like horses or women, will Man ever fully understand them.
Among other imponderables, a player must have as profound a knowledge of winds and weather as the skipper of a racing yawl. A cleanly aligned sousaphone section marching into the teeth of a spanking crosswind with mounting gusts, booming out the second chorus of “Semper Fidelis” is a study of courage and control under difficult conditions. I myself once, in my Rookie days, got caught in a counter-clockwise wind with a clockwise instrument and spun violently for five minutes before I regained control, all the while playing one of the finest obbligatos that I ever blew on the “National Emblem March.”
Sometimes, in a high wind a sousaphone will start playing you. It literally blows back, developing enough back pressure to produce a thin chorus of “Dixie” out of both ears of the unwary sousaphonist.
The high school marching band that I performed in was led by a maniacal zealot who had whipped us into a fine state of tune rivaling a crack unit of the Prussian Guards. We won prizes, cups, ribbons, and huzzahs wherever we performed; wheeling, countermarching, spinning; knees high, and all the while we played. “On the Mall,” “The Double Eagle,” “El Capitan,”