Photo: Sousa's Band in Johannesburg, S. Africa, in 1910. This band was renowned for rich musical arrangements.
Photos
from L to R: 1-John
Philip Sousa.
He was born
in
Washington,
D.C. on
November 6, 1854, the third of ten children. His first published composition,
in 1872, was “Moonlight on the Potomac Waltzes,” and he wrote it for a friend
who was trying to impress a girl. Despite the fact that he hardly earned
anything from it, Sousa was delighted that his work was made public,
and determined to become a professional musician. An obstacle occurred when he
fell in love with Emma M. Whitefield Swallow, whose stepfather objected
to the young musician on the practical grounds that he could never support a
wife and family. But nothing would deter Sousa. He promised to come
back in two years, financially successful. And indeed, accepting a conducting
job in Chicago started Sousa’s amazing career. Highly
successful, he returned in two years to Washington, and no objections
were made to the marriage. A happy and successful man, he worked well into old
age, and on February 1932, at the age of seventy-six, he conducted the Army,
Navy, and Marine Corps bands, performing a march he had written in honor of
George Washington 200th birthday. A perfect man for the era,
Sousa was considered one of the world’s greatest composers and conductors.
2-Emma M. Whitfield Swallow became Mrs. John Philip Sousa.
NO ONE CARED WHAT THE LOWER WORKING CLASS PEOPLE THOUGHT: Music produced at home took advantage of the new technologies. A music box, player piano, or phonograph, often called a talking machine, were all used. But at that time most music in the home was still produced by someone at the piano, or perhaps accompanying a family member who would be singing, assisted by sheet music. The gradual drop in piano prices helped, since people could afford them, and they bought sheet music in quantities. As a matter of fact, the sheet music industry drove the hits of the day. Here is an interesting quotation from the trade journal Edison Phonograph Monthly regarding the song, "Pride of the Prairie." It appeared on page 16 in the August 1908 issue: "The past summer brought out some clever popular songs, but none to take the public fancy more than 'Pride of the Prairie.' It was heard in vaudeville, in illustrated songs at the moving picture shows; the bands took it up in the parks and passed it on to the orchestras on excursion boats. It is just the stripe of song that starts the gallery whistling." Perhaps the statement was slightly exaggerated, but it’s important because it mentions the public places where one could hear music. The “gallery whistling,” incidentally, refers to the behaviour of people sitting in the cheap seats of the gallery, mostly lower middle class, white collar workers, skilled workers, and tradesmen. The songwriters measured the potential success of a song by these people’s interest. If they liked a song well enough to whistle, the song would be a hit. True, they could not spend money on the one-sided discs or wax cylinders, this was reserved to the more prosperous classes, but their opinion mattered. No one cared what the lower working class people thought. They earned less than five hundred dollars a year, and could not afford any entertainment whatsoever. The one-sided discs sold very well, despite the high prices. For example, Columbia Disc 1792, which is Billy Murray singing “Meet me in St. Louis” sold, in 1904, for one dollar, and delivered only two to three minutes of music. However, the discs drove the prices of the wax cylinders down; they were more fragile than discs, as the buying public was well aware of, so the price dropped from the original fifty cents to twenty-five cents, creating a brisk trade. Another venue, now lost forever, was once highly popular in theaters such as Coney Island’s Wackie’s Theater. It was called “The Illustrated Song. As the singers performed, colored slides, depicting images related to the theme of the song were projected on the screen behind them. Continues NEXT