{"id":3257,"date":"2022-11-04T22:13:56","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T22:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryarchives.web.illinois.edu\/sousa\/?p=3257"},"modified":"2024-02-20T23:29:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T23:29:25","slug":"celebrate-sousas-birthday-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/2022\/11\/04\/celebrate-sousas-birthday-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate Sousa’s Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Between 1893 and 1932, John Philip Sousa spent twenty-three of his birthdays traveling with his civil band across the United States and England rather than spending his time with his family.\u00a0 Travel by train and ship was always an exhausting affair for the March King and the members of his band.\u00a0 One can imagine that Sousa might have wished to celebrate his birthdays with either family or at least finding time to enjoy a horseback ride across a quiet open field.\u00a0 However, the call of each year\u2019s performance tours was always foremost on Sousa\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

Over these 39 years, Sousa’s civilian band traveled the world playing for large city audiences and small-town communities who were eager to hear his newest march melodies.\u00a0 Sousa spent his first travelling birthday with his band in 1894 with a performance at Cleveland\u2019s Lyceum Theatre.\u00a0 The following year he celebrated his birthday in Mobile, Alabama.\u00a0 In 1898 Sousa\u2019s birthday was spent in both Clinton and Davenport, Iowa, and in later years his celebrations took place in twenty-five different cities and towns including \u00a0Hutchinson, Rock Springs, San Francisco, Bartlesville, Buffalo, Lock Haven, Missoula, Duluth, Morristown, Huntington, Madison, Peoria, Milwaukee, Palo Alto, and Greenville.<\/p>\n

Some years\u2019 celebrations on the road were minor affairs enjoyed briefly with close colleagues.\u00a0 Other years were much grander events graciously greeted by the March King.\u00a0 His seventy-second birthday in 1926 was spent in Milwaukee.\u00a0 According to members of the band, as the train pulled into the station on November 6, the locomotives blew their whistles.\u00a0 When Sousa inquired about the reason for such noise, the band responded, \u201cMr. Sousa, don\u2019t you know it\u2019s your birthday?\u201d\u00a0 The March King responded to their question, \u201cI wish the railroad would save their coal and pay more dividends on their stock.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0At the afternoon\u2019s matinee concert, seventy-two children walked onto the stage carrying a large cake with candles.\u00a0 One boy remained on stage and earnestly looked at Sousa, which prevented the concert from continuing.\u00a0 According to band members, after several minutes passed the honoree turned to the young boy and said, \u201cWell, young man, I\u2019m not going to eat it right now.\u201d\u00a0 After the concert the children had their fill of cake and the rest of it was donated to the city\u2019s other charities.<\/p>\n

While Mr. Sousa may not have greet each birthday\u2019s celebration with grand anticipation throughout his life, let us take a moment to celebrate what would be his 168th<\/sup> birthday on this November 6th<\/sup> and listen to an early recording of the Sousa Band performing the Empire March<\/em> that is part of the Center’s Jack Linker American Bands Sound Recording Collection. This is a great way to celebrate the March King’s birthday.<\/p>\n\nhttp:\/\/archives.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/files\/2021\/11\/Sousa_Band_Empire_March.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between 1893 and 1932, John Philip Sousa spent twenty-three of his birthdays traveling with his civil band across the United States and England rather than spending his time with his family.\u00a0 Travel by train and ship was always an exhausting affair for the March King and the members of his band.\u00a0 One can imagine that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3811,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257\/revisions\/3811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}