Buescher advert from Metronome in January 1926, asserting the transformative

saxophone and have fun, rather than devote time to serious study. At the beginning of her 1922 Progressive Method for the Saxophone Kathryne E. Thompson somewhat maternalistically implores the student to:

give to your saxophone the same consideration you would any other musical instru- ment, such as violin or piano or the human voice, and [. . .] not make the serious mistake of regarding it as TOO EASY to require practice. This is a mistake often made by the beginner, as the simple fingering of saxophone is quickly learned, and the student starts to play songs, etc, and to neglect tone and technical practice, and sometimes does not discover what a very serious mistake this is until he has wasted many months of valuable time.94

But the ‘simple fingering of the saxophone’ proved alluring to many, and for those who hoped to gain a degree of mastery in a rather shorter time than Thompson would have liked, there was plenty of printed support. The Illustrated Five-Minute Course for Saxophone was perhaps the most extreme example of this trend, but Bonnell’s Saxophone Made Easy: A New Method for Playing the Saxophone Without a Teacher, or DeVille’s Eclipse Self-Instructor for Saxophone, to name but two, provided plenty of competition.95

The notion that the saxophone was an easy instrument to play was not confined to the popular amateur market, but gained some ground in the military also. A diary belonging to the bandsman Phillip Jones gives some insight into how saxophone neophytes went about learning the instrument at the time. Jones later became a respected composer and conductor in New York, but in 1917, during World War I, he was drafted into the US Infantry. The day before joining up he was given a ‘bright, shining B–flat Tenor saxophone [. . .] purchased at Carl Fischer Instrument Co.’ He writes of his learning process:

Miller [the bandleader] says my saxophone is a good one and easy to play. He showed me a lot about the instrument and had me practice in the band barracks [. . .]. At the end of six hours I had mastered the fingerings but have trouble with my lips in getting the tones. In other words I have no embouchure. Miller gave me a lesson at night and was most encouraging. He tells me that in a week, after I can play the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, he will make me a regular bandsman.96

The composer and scholar Walter Piston used a similar ruse, learning the saxophone at short notice in order to be accepted into a Navy Band, as did the young George Gershwin, who also anticipated being drafted at about this time and hoped to join an army band.97

Other methods were aimed at those with greater technical proficiency, either because they presumed some level of professional engagement – such as The Ernst Modern System of Improvising and Filling in for the Dance Saxophonist98 _{– or because they} encouraged advanced music reading skills: Thompson’s Practical Studies in Bass Clef for Saxophone endeavoured to persuade saxophone players first to read and then transpose from the bass clef, to prepare for those occasions when it might be ‘desired to substi- tute saxophone for cello or bassoon or trombone in [the] orchestra’.99 _{Ben Vereecken’s}

Foundation to Saxophone Playing (1917) has a similar section offering ‘Practical Hints regarding Transposition and Adaptation of Orchestra Parts to suit the Requirements, Character and Peculiarities of the differently pitched Saxophones’. Explicit instruc- tions on transposing at sight are included, such as ‘to read the Viola part properly, ignore the alto clef and substitute the treble clef and read and play the part one tone lower than written.’100 _{His later ‘advanced’ method The Saxophone Virtuoso (1919)} provides an extensive series of transposition exercises, and he observes in the preface that the ability to transpose was ‘one of the most important and essential needs of the professional Saxophone player’. Successful completion of the method promised, perhaps a little optimistically, ‘mastery of the clefs, transposition, technical control and every other problem of the saxophonist’.101 _{These skills of musical adaptation and} transposition at sight are less important today, when bespoke saxophone parts are the norm, but they would have been called upon quite regularly in the late 1910s and early 1920s. For several years stock arrangements for theatre and dance bands (‘orchestras’) included parts only for string instruments, and thus any saxophonists in these bands would have needed to read from the string parts, particularly the cello line. Unlike the symphony orchestra, where such instrument substitution would have been deemed inappropriate, these more utilitarian contexts welcomed the musical flexibility such skills afforded.

But for many the saxophone was first and foremost a novelty, fun instrument on which to play well-known tunes and from which one could easily obtain weird and wonderful noises. Hence the widespread identification of the ‘moanin’ saxophone, and the perception in some quarters that the instrument was good only for novelty sounds such as ‘laughing’ (a series of descending tones preceded by short upward glisses), ‘slap tonguing’ (a form of percussive attack not unlike string pizzicato), and other comic effects. Belwin published a method entitled Sax-Acrobatix, ‘a book of saxophone stunts and tricks’ that gave explanations and practice exercises that sought to help the saxophonist achieve, among other things, ‘the laugh, the bark, the klack, the caw, the moan, the meow, the cry, the yelp, the sneeze’ and so forth.102

Such characterisations were circulated even by those who had a vested interest in the instrument’s overall success. A brochure produced by the Buescher company in 1921 observed that:

Two saxophones, a piano and traps [i.e. drum kit], will by themselves make an excellent band producing all the necessary weird effects. In any town the talent can be found for a band of this character which will instantly leap into popularity for entertainments, concerts, and dance music. If more players are available, more Saxophones can be added – the more the merrier, and the greater number of grotesque effects it is possible to produce.103

A contemporary review of a 1912 Brown Brothers performance noted that ‘the Saxaphone [sic] is, unaided, a humorist. It looks like a sea horse and sounds like a canned fiddle. One, alone, gnaws at a funny bone, but six, ranging from a little one, with the voice of a deflating rubber bladder, to a paternal one that croaks like a musical bullfrog, are too much for any audience.’104 _{With such sentiments so widely}

expressed, and with the visual association with clowning central to several variety acts, it is unsurprising that the saxophone should be seen as a comedic, novelty instrument. And while the exhortations of some musicians sought to downplay the saxophone’s novelty value and reinforce its claims as an instrument worthy of serious study for serious musical ends, such voices were frequently lost among the chorus of others seeking to exploit for commercial gain the instrument’s widespread popularity.

By the early 1920s the saxophone’s adaptability was being harnessed in many contexts. In addition to the vaudeville, circus and minstrel circuits already noted, it was a constituent part of many cabaret bands. It was also heard in the picture houses, where its versatility could be put to good effect. It could be used to accompany the silent movies of the time: the Cincinnati Gem Theatre, for example, was using a saxo- phone trio for this purpose as early as its 1911–12 season;105 _{or a vaudeville act like} the Brown Brothers might form part of a series of entertainments that would include films interspersed with live acts.106

Above all the instrument came to be seen as quintessentially egalitarian. It was, in a sense, of the people and for the people: a mass-produced musical instrument catering for the musical aspirations of the masses. But it was this very egalitarianism, the notion that you could somehow be musically proficient without the need for intensive study supervised by authoritarian figures, that challenged conventional attitudes to musical learning and irritated those of a more highbrow musical disposition. These issues will resurface in Chapter 8, but it was to take the saxophone many years to lose such associations, and that this was achieved at all is due in large part to the arrival of several prominent virtuosos, who demonstrated how high levels of technical accom- plishment could be achieved on the instrument without sacrificing popular appeal.

The rise of the saxophone virtuoso

Early performance standards on the saxophone in the more utilitarian contexts in which it was found were often not especially high. For example, recordings made between 1911 and 1913 by the English music hall artist Gertie Gitana, who played saxophone as one part of her act, demonstrate the very rudimentary skills that were probably typical of many of her ilk.107 _{Even the recorded legacy of a group such as} the Brown Brothers indicates technical abilities that today would be regarded as somewhat pedestrian, notwithstanding their enormous popularity at the time.108 Elsewhere, however, much higher performance standards could be heard, particularly by saxophone soloists working with professional bands. Among the rank-and-file musicians within the saxophone sections standards were generally good, and, as already noted in Chapter 3 with respect to E. A. Lefebre, solo opportunities were occasionally available to those who were particularly talented. But the rivalry between players to obtain the most lucrative appointments, in addition to the competition often existing between professional musicians to outdo each other in the demonstration of technical excellence, all helped to increase performance standards in the early years of the twentieth century. Smith and Holmes noted in 1916 that ‘there is no question but what the grand old LeFevre [Lefebre] was a great artist on the saxaphone [sic], and perhaps no one has ever surpassed him in tone production. However, when it comes

to execution, Harry Lewis, Ben Vereecken, Homer Dickinson, Tom Brown, Benne Henton and a score of others have him tied to a post.’109

Jean H. B. Moeremans (d. 1937/8?), in particular, demonstrated outstanding technique, and his position as soloist in the Sousa band, having succeeded Lefebre in 1894, meant that his performance skills were heard by a wide audience. Like Lefebre, Moeremans provides another example of a European-trained saxophonist finding a more natural home for his talents in the USA because of the greater employment possibilities the country offered. Born in Belgium, he appears to have either worked or studied in Paris in the early 1890s.110 _{He was a member of the Belgian Guards} band before emigrating to Canada.111 _{He performed as a soloist with Sousa every} year except 1901 for more than a decade, giving his final concert in 1905, and his repertoire comprised solos from mid-nineteenth-century composers such as Demersseman and Singelée combined with some of his own compositions and Sousa’s Belle Mahon.

Although Moeremans had declined to take part in Sousa’s long European tour of 1901, he did join him for a thirty-week tour in 1903, which began in England on 2 January of that year. The tour was ambitious, and although scaled down from its original aspirations the band still performed 362 concerts in 133 different towns, covering all the major cities of northern and central Europe.112 _{Sousa’s soloists} included the outstanding trombonist Arthur Pryor and the renowned violinist Maud Powell. That Moeremans could comfortably share the stage with such luminaries is further testament to his abilities, and to Sousa’s imagination in seeing the value of a saxophone soloist on the programme. The tour was a significant success, and we may assume that the praise heaped by the English press upon Moeremans’s performances not only reflected his expertise but was also replicated in other European countries. The Sousa band’s performance at the Queen’s Hall in London met with observations such as: ‘Mr J. H. B. Moeremans played a saxophone solo with extraordinary skill’; ‘Mr J. H. B. Moeremans’s fantasia on the saxophone was one of the striking features of the concert’.113 _{In the provinces the novelty of the instrument still provoked} commentary, and some critics continued to find it necessary to provide an introduc- tion to the instrument for their readers. Thus the Sheffield Independent noted that: ‘Mr J. H. B. Moeremans is a saxophone soloist. The saxophone is something like a big Dutchman’s pipe, elaborately silver-mounted, the bowl curving up towards the mouthpiece. Its tone is that of the clarionet or the cornet, and at times of the bassoon.’114

Moeremans’s profile with the Sousa band was such that he was asked to make a number of recordings as a soloist, for the Victor and Berliner labels, in addition to those he made with the band. Indeed, he was the most frequently recorded saxophonist in the early years of the recording industry, prior to about 1910 (see pp. 180–1). After he left the Sousa band in 1905 Moeremans continued to work as a soloist with other bands, albeit never achieving the same profile he had with Sousa; to a considerable degree he disappears from the historical record, and died in Belgium sometime in the late 1930s. But he had played a significant role in bringing a higher profile to the instrument in many contexts where it was still unfamiliar, and in demon- strating the high performance standards that might be achieved on it.

Sousa retained saxophonists in his band after Moeremans’s departure, but without an identifiable soloist. The next saxophone player of significance to join the band was another Belgian, Benjamin Vereecken (dates unknown), albeit not until about 1910.115 Vereecken joined Sousa, having been a flute soloist in the Arthur Pryor band (the famous trombonist having decided to run his own band by this time), and had previ- ously worked in circus bands in Europe. Certainly Vereecken was the principal saxo- phone player during Sousa’s renowned world tour of 1911, and he also supplied numerous arrangements for the band; however, there is no surviving documentary evidence that indicates he was performing prestigious solos as Moeremans was, nor does he appear to have made any solo recordings. Perhaps his most significant legacy was the two methods he wrote in 1917 and 1919, and he contributed a monthly series on saxophone technique in The Metronome in the early 1920s. His pedagogic work thus made him a significant influence on saxophone performance practice in the USA in the 1920s and 30s.

Two further Sousa soloists are also noteworthy. H. Benne Henton (1867–1938) was the first American-born saxophonist to achieve an international reputation. Like most saxophone players of the time he started on clarinet, before leaving home to join the Ringling Brothers circus band. Henton, like Vereecken, provides a specific example of a circus or vaudeville player whose talents allowed him to succeed in more musically demanding contexts. He was a founder member of the Bohumir Kryll band from 1906, then frequently a saxophone soloist with the Conway band between 1909 and 1918. Thus he already had a significant national reputation before joining Sousa in January 1919, and this was further enhanced by several recordings that he made for the Edison and Victor labels between 1910 and 1918. Henton had considerable tech- nical ability. A supplement issued by the Victor company in October 1916 described him as ‘the Paganini of the Saxophone’;116 _{even allowing for journalistic hyperbole} the comparison is striking, and reflects something of his superior technical skills in comparison with other saxophone players of the time. Henton was perhaps the first soloist to make virtuosic use of the extended altissimo register (although the possibili- ties offered by this register had been recognised in the nineteenth century). As early as 1911 he was performing a cadenza as part of his own composition titled Eleven O’Clock, which was published the following year. The cadenza makes use of the

66. Sousa’s saxophone section in 1919, with