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The Imperfect Saxophone: Not Just a Clown\u2019s Instrument<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n This exhibit examines America\u2019s complex social and cultural relationship with the saxophone during a period known as the \u201csaxophone craze.\u201d\u00a0 Adolphe Sax\u2019s most recognized instrument, the saxophone \u2014 invented and first produced between 1844 and 1845 \u2014 has had a very complex musical and social life.\u00a0 Originally developed to blend the distinct tonal qualities of the woodwind and brass instruments commonly used by Europe\u2019s military bands, the saxophone\u2019s startlingly unique sound made it difficult for professional musicians and composers of that time to embrace the instrument.<\/p>\n Despite Sax\u2019s initial hopes that both symphonic orchestras and wind bands throughout Europe would eventually utilize the saxophone, the horn initially became an exotic novelty and was treated more like a musical clown than a fine-art instrument.\u00a0 America\u2019s minstrel and vaudeville circuits were much less hesitant to accept Sax\u2019s novel instrument in their performance routines. \u00a0By the 1910s, the Five Musical Spillers, a vaudeville act, began incorporating saxophones into their performances with great success. They often used comedic humor and popular ragtime melodies to keep their audiences engaged with their performances.<\/p>\n The breakout saxophone ensemble during the 1910s was the Brown Brothers led by Tom Brown. \u00a0Performing first as a trio on the minstrel circuit and later as a quintet and sextet on the vaudeville circuit, they were the first major saxophone ensemble to profit from making commercial audio recordings. \u00a0By the early 1920s they were among the most popular and highest paid ensembles, earning nearly $1,000 per week. \u00a0\u00a0Up to 1914, the Brown Brothers wore military band uniforms.\u00a0 Once they began performing in the Broadway production Chin Chin<\/em>, they instead began dressing as clowns.\u00a0 During this period, ensembles like the Brown Brothers helped popularize the instrument while embracing a musical clown mystique by performing popular ragtime works dressed as clowns.\u00a0 Despite appearing as a musical clowns, the repertoire that the Brown Brothers played required serious technical and musical skill.<\/p>\n Music instrument manufacturers of the time designed their saxophones around the needs of these top performers, but also capitalized on the growing popularity of the instrument among amateur musicians.\u00a0 These manufacturers also took the opportunity to improve Sax\u2019s imperfect instrument, adding new keys and improving their methods of construction. As these innovative improvements were made to the horn\u2019s original design and performers refined their ability to play this new family of music instruments, audiences quickly embraced the saxophone\u2019s many unique musical qualities.\u00a0 This virtual exhibit, “The Imperfect Saxophone: Not Just a Clown’s Instrument,”<\/a> exhibit highlights the saxophone\u2019s imperfect musical beginnings and musicians like the Brown Brothers\u2019 performances that made it a truly unique instrument.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Singing the Temperance Blues<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n America\u2019s 18th<\/sup> Amendment, more commonly known as Prohibition, took effect in 1920, and quickly influenced all aspects of society, including music composition. \u00a0However, songs and morality plays about the benefits of banning alcohol had existed in America long before the amendment\u2019s ratification. The first temperance songbooks appeared before the Civil War as public interest in the prohibition and temperance movements gained momentum. During the mid-1860s urban neighborhoods blossomed with new arrivals from Europe, and new moral reform groups saw prohibition as their only remedy for controlling the country\u2019s increased use of alcohol.<\/p>\n Musicians working in New York\u2019s Tin Pan Alley and clearly on the other side of the Prohibition debate, frequently composed comical retorts to Prohibition that skewered America\u2019s \u201cwet\u201d and \u201cdry\u201d movements.\u00a0 Tin Pan Alley was the epicenter of America\u2019s popular music scene between the late-1880s and 1920s, and its most recognized composers \u2013 Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter \u2013 served as musical foils to Prohibition.<\/p>\n Unlike the Prohibition songsters that helped empower the suffrage and temperance movements, Tin Pan Alley songs swooned to the joy of alcohol. Songs like Jean Schwartz\u2019s Sahara (We\u2019ll Soon Be Dry like You)<\/em>, Albert von Tilzer\u2019s I\u2019ve got the Alcoholic Blues<\/em>, and Irving Berlin\u2019s I\u2019ll See You in C-U-B-A<\/em> expressed comical distain for prohibition\u2019s benefits to society.\u00a0 Other songs, like Goodbye, Wild Women, Goodbye<\/em>, lamented America\u2019s expulsion from the garden of free-flowing alcohol.<\/p>\n The Sousa Archives\u2019 virtual exhibit, Singing the Temperance Blues<\/em><\/a>, illustrates the complex morass of America\u2019s Prohibition movement during the 1920s through popular sheet music cover art, melodies and lyrics, and historical sound recordings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n America\u2019s Imaginations through Letritia Kandle and Eddie Alkire.\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n America\u2019s fascination with Hawaiian culture reached its peak during the Great Depression. The country needed a temporary escape from the Depression\u2019s daily uncertainties, and its people eagerly embraced Hawaiian music for their imaginary travels to exotic places. By this time, \u201cslack-key\u201d guitar had already become a part of mainstream American musical culture with its use of altered tunings and finger picking techniques first popularized in Hawaii by Portuguese sugar cane workers. Slack-key styles of the 1830s blended western-European performance techniques on a six-stringed instrument, called the guitarra portuguesa<\/em>, and traditional Hawaiian melodies played on a four-stringed instrument originally called the ukeke<\/em>, but today referred to as the ukulele<\/em>.<\/p>\n Two of America\u2019s leading performers, innovators, and educators of Hawaiian music in the 1930s and 40s were Letritia Kandle (1915-2010) and Eddie Alkire (1907-1981). Like many Americans, Kandle\u2019s first encounter with the guitar was through Warner Baxter\u2019s performance as the Cisco Kid in the film, In Old Arizona<\/em> (1928). Although her early music experiences were with the Spanish style guitar, after watching performances during the Hawaiian exhibit at the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, Letritia was inspired to take up the Hawaiian guitar. The following year she formed an all-women\u2019s steel guitar ensemble called the Kohala Girls. In 1937, Paul Whiteman invited her to perform with his jazz band during his radio hour. She performed on an instrument of her own design; a four-neck electric guitar called the \u201cGrand Letar.\u201d By the early 1940s, Kandle had become a leading teacher of the steel guitar in downtown Chicago and eventually became the conductor of the Chicago Plectrophonic Orchestra, an ensemble made up of various string instruments including ukuleles and steel guitars.<\/p>\n Eddie Alkire began his career as an electrician in the coalmines of West Virginia. In the mid-1920s, he taught himself to play the steel guitar by enrolling in a series of correspondence courses. In 1929, he left electrical engineering to perform with the Oahu Serenaders, a group affiliated with Cleveland\u2019s Oahu Publishing Company. As a member of this unique music ensemble, Alkire performed weekly on nationally broadcast radio shows on NBC and CBS. In 1934, he left the Oahu Publishing Company and formed his own music-publishing company and steel-guitar correspondence school. Five years later, he invented a new 10-string electric guitar, called the EHarp (pronounced Ay-Harp).<\/p>\n This online exhibit\u00a0 \u201cAmerica\u2019s Hawaiian Imaginations through Letritia Kandle and Eddie Alkire\u201d<\/a> examines the innovative teaching methods and new guitar technologies developed by Letritia Kandle and Eddie Alkire during the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n Myers Sheet Music Online Collection<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Throughout 2014 the staff of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music worked with William Brooks, Professor of Music at the University of York, and the University of Illinois Library\u2019s Digital Content Creation, Content Access Management and Metadata units to digitize the WWI sheet music contained in our James Edward Myers Sheet Music Collection.\u00a0 World War I is considered by many music scholars to be the most musical war in America\u2019s history.\u00a0 The music from this time was created by all sorts of Americans: professional songwriters, acclaimed composers, church musicians, well- and little-known performers, and uncounted singing teachers, small-town bandmasters, and amateurs.\u00a0 Their melodies and lyrics reflected various public perceptions of and responses to America\u2019s evolving relationship with this War, and much of this music resonated local themes that were specific to communities, ethnic groups, or organizations.<\/p>\n The WWI music contained in the Myers Collection documents not only what was produced by Midwestern publishers but also offers a compelling cross-section of popular musical practices and tastes across the Midwest between 1914 and 1918.\u00a0 The music, lyrics, and graphic art illustrations contained in this new online resource are intended to provide insights into American life during and after the War for students, teachers, and scholars interested in learning more about Midwestern perceptions of this military conflict.\u00a0\u00a0 For further information on the James Edward Myers Sheet Music Collection please call 217-244-9309 or send an email to sousa@illinois.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/99\/2024\/02\/Alcoholic-Blues-3-small-1-278x300.jpg\")
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Sousa Archives\u2019 World War I Sheet Music Resource<\/strong><\/p>\n
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Reaching Beyond the Walls of the Concert Hall: A Live Improvisation Concert Featuring the Sal-Mar Construction<\/strong>![\"Sousa](\"http:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/99\/2024\/02\/Sal-Mar-Small-237x300.jpg\")
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