Claude Gordon Brass Camp 1992 - Claude Gordon on Virtuosos and Their Cornets and Trumpets

Mr. Herman Kennan, who is the president of the American Federation of Musicians.
Mr. Kennan, in just a half a second we found a couple of folks here who play piano and I'm sure there are many, many others here in the studio.
What is there about this thing that we had on the board there, the new dance band of 1959, how did that come to be?
Well Dick, thousands and thousands of youngsters throughout the United States and Canada have become skilled musicians.
And to give them an opportunity to display their skills, the American Federation of Musicians initiated a new program this year to find the best new dance band of 1959.
Well how on earth do you ever go about finding all of these people? There are so many of them.
That's quite correct. However, we have 700 locals in the United States and Canada and through these offices we set up the machinery to find the best new band.
170 bands participated in this contest. Some 3000 musicians and the survivors of this contest are here tonight.
That's the Claude Gordon Band from California, the great band from California.
Mr. Kennan, hold on, we'll introduce these fellows. They all had to play the same song at one part in the contest and it's a thing called,
I could have danced all night.
I could have danced all night.
Let's go.
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
See, that's a swinging groove. Claude Gordon and the Gordon Band. You know, most of these fellows look kind of on the young side.
Pretty young. The average age of the band dick is 24. We have some as low as 19.
Where do you play most of your engagement? Well, mostly on the college and high school dates in the last year.
Incidentally, Dick, we have an album out designed for the younger folks called Jazz for Geneagers.
Geneagers? Great. What is the reaction to young people in the band like this?
Well, we find it's excellent. In fact, we're very happy about it. It seems to be a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for big bands among the younger folks.
This we're extremely happy about.
We're extremely happy to have you here as the winner of the bowl that makes you the best new dance band of 1959. Congratulations.
Now, you all had to play, I could have danced all night. Did you have any other things you could do?
Yes. In fact, we had one tune that we think had a lot of influence in the contest, strictly designed for television.
With your permission and approval, I'd like to do it.
A thing called Fantasia? Fantasia.
Alright, Fantasia!
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Fantasia
Okay. Thank you.
This, the gradual movement toward the all brass band started in 1815.
Now, that was before the cornet was even invented.
But back at that time, they had key bugles and over the shoulder.
It was horrible looking instruments. They were really ugly.
Now, the colleagues down the road at Kevin Air, they have a museum of those vintage instruments during the Civil War.
And ugly, ooh. But that's what they used.
Now, the valve came later. They didn't have valves then.
Now, the cornet was created in France in 1825.
So, you see, the cornet is a very old instrument.
And we can still say we're probably just coming out of the pioneer stage.
Valve designs were starting to be developed in about 1830.
And that made the beginning of the brass band era in this country at about 1835.
And advising by the turn of the century, there were over 10,000 brass bands in America.
The people loved them.
Let's think of that, over 10,000 brass bands.
Now, that made a lot of room for instruments, didn't it?
And the early instruments looked like blacksmiths made them.
And that's probably the type of thing that Herbert Clark learned of.
Boy, they weren't easy to play either.
They have a record that came out in one book on the history of the Civil War instruments that they made with those instruments.
And it sounded pretty darn good. I was so surprised. They really did.
Now, there were two Boston firms that became notable in making brass instruments.
And there were others. I'm not going over all that. You can get books on that.
Now, there was Samuel Graves and E.G. Wright in Boston.
Now, later on, the competition was coming up, and the instruments were getting better.
They banded together, Graves and Wright, and formed what was called the Boston Musical Instrument Company.
And they manufactured a much higher quality than the others were doing.
And that came out to be, of course, a much more expensive instrument at that time than the foreign imports, which everybody was generally using.
And they prospered up until after World War I, and most of them didn't do.
There was Diston, J.W. Pepper, and you probably see some of these on instruments.
Sherman Clay in San Francisco, Montgomery Ward, Sears, and you could get a horn in for about $8 to $65.
Of course, you could buy a cross and over covered wagon back there for $10, too.
Then Lion and Healy became a monstrous opera.
Okay, now then, in 1876, C.G. Kahn, who was a great politician and an organizer, he patented his well-known rubber rim mouthpiece.
Now that was very necessary sometimes back there. In New York, when you get 30 below zero, that's why he worked on something like that.
It wouldn't be good to be played all the time, but in a winter time, if you played and put your mouthpiece up and 30 below zero, and you take it off, all the skin would come with it.
I'm sure as a little kid, you had the experience of putting your tongue on a metal pole in sub-zero weather.
You take your tongue off the pole, and most of the tongue stays on the pole.
He became famous for that, and as a result, he built an unrivaled manufacturing plant.
The Kahn Corporation, I would say that his band is a company that sold more horns and everything to today, even collectively.
They produced a massive amount of estimate, and in 1883, that was in 1876, then in 1883, the factory burned down.
Just gutted it, destroyed it, and he rebuilt it, and started it again, and I'll be darned the second factory burned down.
But he wasn't to be dotted, he rebuilt it again, and he started again.
At the end of World War I, C.G. Kahn was producing 10,000 glass instruments a year and 5,000 woodwinds, and he was smart.
He got the great artists of the day to endorse his instrument.
As I said, he became the standard in this country.
Actually, he was a very enterprising guy, and he put out some marvelous things.
He was always trying things, and he put out some very good instruments.
He had a total of up to 10,000 times 1,000 instruments by the end of World War I.
Boy, that's a lot of instruments, and that's what they were putting out.
He had a monstrous factory, employed a tremendous amount of people.
Now, he had some great engineers with him.
Gus Bisher, we used to call him Bisher.
Gus Bisher was one of his engineers, and he started his own company later on.
There was Frank Holden, he was one of them, and he started his own company later.
Then there was Blessing and Marking.
They all were with Kron originally.
Now, at the same time in Cleveland, there was a mouthpiece, well, not mouthpiece, a repairman.
His name was H.N. White, and he made horns for guys, and he made a trombone for a guy named King.
And the horn became so popular, people would come in and say, I want that horn you made for King.
And then pretty soon they'd come in and go, I want that King horn.
And that's how the King, here's a policeman company, got started, and became very, very successful.
He stayed in Cleveland.
And up until the Bench Company bought him out, no, they bought the Bench Company out.
And then they became very successful for a long time.
And that's when I came on the scene with Bench.
And I designed the Bench trumpet, and I was looking for another trumpet.
My vessel was wearing out, and I couldn't find anything that played like it.
So I tried all their horn, and it didn't work.
So I picked one off, it was just black, I picked it up off the hook in the factory, and I played it, and it played good.
And I asked Don Bench, I says, can I buy this one?
He says, sure, we're up and running with that.
And it was a large horn.
And I worked on that, changed things around development, and that became the old C.G. Bench.
And that was King's best seller for quite a few years.
They just sold all kinds of them, Europe, the United States.
I never lose one dime.
Not one dime.
But the King Company itself, the old guy, were some pretty nice people, and they really knew the business.
And then a new president came in, and he got rid of every one of those old timers.
And then the company started going down the hill.
He tried to steal my C.G. seller.
My wife told me one day, she had one candy sense of people, and she said, don't trust that guy.
And I said, don't trust him.
She says, yeah, I had the prototype then of the seller.
And she says, put that away.
And so I did, I locked it in trouble.
And you know, sure enough, he was looking for that horn and all that.
And Zeke Castle had all the manuals.
And he called Zeke and he said, I want you to make 100 of those C.G. Sellers.
There wasn't a seller yet.
He just said, let's C.G. box.
And Zeke said, oh, I can't do it.
And he says, look, I'm telling you to do it.
Zeke said, well, Gordon has a manual.
I can't do it.
He locked it a little bit there.
But boy, he was standing up for me.
He hung up the phone and he called me and he says, get over here and get these manuals.
He said, did you authorize Menchie to build that horn?
I said, no.
He says, then get over and get these manuals and get them out of here.
So I did.
At 3 o'clock in the morning.
Sure enough, the next day Menchie shows up at the factory and he says, those Gordon
manuals in this factory and I want them.
So I came close to losing that horn.
Once he'd had the manuals and he wouldn't have made it right.
They tried to do it but they can't.
That's why Zeke says, I can't make it unless you're here to say that's what he'll do.
So anyway, that's the short story of that.
Now, way back in 1885 and maybe before, thank you, before 1885.
Now, I never did get an exact date on this horn but it could be even way back into the 1830s.
I don't know.
The French company was Petroix.
And I know that Blanc had a Petroix that he was very proud of and it looked like this.
And that was made in France way back then.
The lead pipes all came out.
That's so they could switch lead pipes and change pitches.
They'd have an A pipe and a B flat and a C because the instrumentals weren't trained then as musicians.
They'd take these parts and they were an A.
Most of the players were cowboys.
You know, out in Montana and Texas and that.
And they loved to play so they'd upon a horn and learn to play it.
And that's how the band leaders became to be so that when they walk on the bandstand everybody's like this.
And that tradition still stays in the symphonies because a guy would come into town, a musician,
he played all the instruments and he would teach everybody to play the instrument and whatever instrument.
And then he would direct the band.
And so he became the one that was everybody's teacher.
Now amazingly they played pretty well.
None of these, unless I say so, were small.
They were all good open bores.
Yeah, it plays very well.
And that's the old couture.
That's one of the very first of the instrument companies.
All right.
Now then after that, the Greaves and Wright got together over here.
Now that was imported from Europe.
Greaves and Wright informed the Boston Company.
And they came up with a horn that got very, very popular and they still look foreign today.
There's not many of them around.
And that was the Boston Three Stars.
Now they made two of Boston Three Star and Boston Four Star.
The three we have seen to pick up.
I can't locate any Boston Four Star.
This is a beautiful instrument.
Isn't that nice?
It's small.
Oh, they're fun to play.
They're right in front of your face.
They're not far out here.
They're great.
It's like the thumb in your nose is somebody.
And this one is excellent.
Now the new horn that I'm sorry we don't have yet.
Zig is making the prototype.
It's going to be the CG Cornell.
And it'll look just like that.
We copied that design.
This was an instrument that Claude had been looking for for a number of years.
And his birthday party a few years ago.
A number of us in Los Angeles had found this.
Had it all re-played and put that together.
And it was a gift to him on his birthday party.
On a Sunday afternoon one day.
So it was pretty neat.
Looks like a good horn.
Now interestingly the bore size on there gets way above 480.
Now the D pipe starts off at .360.
Now most of our modern horns that you go in the store and buy start out at 345.
So that's too small.
And that blew free and easy, didn't it?
And someone would say, oh a bore size that big, that would be hard.
I can't feel it.
It was easy.
Much easier than a small boy.
I noticed a young man on the Air Force band last night.
He breathed good from there.
He'd come out to the market like this.
And you notice his cheeks right here and it got red.
And along comes this guy.
Triple C's you know.
And I fired the guy.
He came out and he played his best.
I think that's great.
He wasn't intimidated.
Okay.
Now then the next thing that came over from France was the instrument that became the standard of the world.
And all the Grand Prix prizes, it really, and it really was a horn.
Everybody copied that horn.
Everyone.
When Bach, the engineer from Germany, came over here, he copied the Bessel.
In fact he ordered a carload of bells, a whole great carload of bells from the Bessen Company.
And all the first ones out of New York had those Bessen bells.
They looked for a hundred years.
They looked for the secrets that made this horn play so well.
Not all of them.
In fact most of them played very poorly.
But once in a while there'd be a jack.
This was one of the jacks.
And all my recording, all my studio work was done on this horn.
And then it got so thin and the threads were so worn out that I couldn't keep them on.
And I had a little stripper, that was a stripper valve.
He made the best valve that was ever made.
They just never stopped.
They were as fast as lightning.
That's very thin.
Notice his patches all over.
It doesn't weigh anything.
So nice and light.
I could run my finger through there, but I'm not going to push.
This, in this country, was called the Mayhawk.
Now that was old Bessen's wife marketed over here.
And, oh, there were several.
There was Fabrication.
There was, oh, what's the Italian name, who believes me?
Huh?
Well, there's the other F Bessen.
And I got a pic.
They call that the, hmm?
Yeah.
Well, then they have the English version.
But they had another one of those.
Rappawanna.
That's a Bessen.
You find some of them in New York.
And then the one, how's that?
You all set?
Yeah.
Okay.
They had the small Bessen, which I didn't like at all.
And Ben has designed his one off of that.
Anyway, this is the one.
This is a marvelous one.
That's the one that was on the tape.
Our con gave us all new crumpets when we won the contest.
And they represented them up, and he gave me this one.
He said, we want you to play that on the show.
Now Peewee, my manager, he had business north of my home.
He managed Harry Jones, and he managed my band.
So I'm sitting there, and we're playing, and it comes time for the,
I got halfway through the solo on the dress rehearsal, and I stopped.
I said, hold it.
I said, Peewee, get out in the car and get my Bessen.
I cannot play this horn.
It was one of those heavy con constellations.
And just so much back pressure.
And I couldn't play until like that, a lovely song, like One Fine Day.
I just couldn't, it was kicking back.
So he went and got the Bessen in front of it.
It was like seven happening.
And I forgot to even show the con on the show.
The next day at eight o'clock in the morning, my phone in the hotel ring,
the guy says, what happened?
I said, what do you mean what happened?
He says, where was the con?
I said, uh-oh.
And I said, I'm sorry.
I said, I can't play it.
I said, if you get me a horn, I can play it, and I'll play it.
But that wasn't going to work.
You know what happened to Con and myself then?
Yoop.
They never put out another one.
They never did anything.
Okay.
Oh, yeah, before they have to go.
Yes.
All right.
Let's take a little ahead of time here.
And there's an English trumpet player named Winford Kipp.
He's long gone now.
And now these, remember, these recordings were not electric recordings like we have today.
They didn't have the marvelous recording system that they have relegated to recording rock and roll on.
But we have recording systems to handle beautiful symphony orchestras and the stereo, none of that.
These were made on a disc record cut in wax by a vibration of a needle.
They'd play in a horn, and the needle would vibrate.
They'd turn this on, and it would cut the wax.
So you don't get the sound.
But you listen to this man's technique, and it's tremendous virtuosity.
And I'll let you listen to his range.
Okay.
Now, this is way back.
Winford Kipp.
["Winford Kipp"]
We're here for the doctor's here.
Okay.
Thank you.
["Winford Kipp"]
["Winford Kipp"]
["Winford Kipp"]
["Winford Kipp"]
["Winford Kipp"]
You see, high notes are not new.
["Winford Kipp"]
All right.
Now then, after the...
["Winford Kipp"]
After the Neon came out and everything, now then there was what they called the prototype.
And that came out, I believe that was England.
And that was another beautiful little cornet.
Yeah, that was London.
Now, generally the London Bessons did not come up to the French Bessons.
I never have figured out why.
But they didn't.
But this happened to be a good one.
I've talked to some lately that said they played some London Bessons now that were excellent.
Notice what they did.
They had, instead of having the pads, I like those old keys that are kind of rounded.
And underneath they had cork instead.
And I don't know about that, I'm not going to time that.
But many of them had the springs in the bottom of the valve.
They didn't have the guides up there.
Now this one won't be quite as free as the other ones.
["Winford Kipp"]
All right.
That was the French Besson prototype.
What was the inscription on the regular Besson?
It said F Besson, and then it had, it said something.
No, it's not on that one.
It's what they always call, well, I want the such-and-such a model.
Hm?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brevetay?
Yeah.
And I think that's the name of the horn, and it isn't.
That means pat the flag for it.
The horn.
They always call it the name of the horn.
All right.
Now then, in 1883, the king was producing his cornets out of Cleveland.
And he put out one, and I was very fortunate to pick it up, called the, well, I gave it
the name, the head of his master model.
He was popular more than was the old king master.
This was the pre-master.
It came out ahead of that in 1883.
I just think 1983 would have been 100 years, wouldn't it?
And now we're to 1992.
So that horn is close to 200 years old.
That's pretty good shape for that.
110?
I just got the degree.
I can't tell you.
Now notice, they were very clever.
Those guys were great at dishing up.
They didn't always have time to use water keys, so they put both on one.
Isn't that clever idea?
So this was the pre-master model king, 1883.
Sounds good?
Not tight, huh?
No.
It's open.
Now then, after the pre-master, now then, he put out what they called the King Improved
Perfecto.
This was 10 years later.
This one, it might have been improved and all, but I didn't like the looks of it there as well.
They were trying many things.
Remember, this was all in experimentation states.
And they were trying, I don't like the way the configuration of the bell here at all.
But it evidently worked pretty good.
But it never stayed around, so I don't think it got too popular.
Yeah, improved perfecto.
Very light.
It was interesting.
On the hand-made instruments, they were light.
But it's also interesting, oops, we creased one didn't we?
The hand-made instruments, everybody said, oh, this is hand-made, I want a hand-made instrument.
You know, there's no two hand-made instruments exactly alike.
Like lots of times the guy would be forming the slide or something, it wouldn't fit.
I don't like that shit.
Sometimes that's what happens.
Where on the machine, it was accurate to the hundred thousandths of an inch.
There's the difference.
Some places machines are better in hand.
Today, the parts that are done by hand sometimes are disastrous out in the factories.
We get lots of things.
Every horn like, every one of those solvers you play should play identical.
But the assembler is crimped the slide here, moved one here or something.
And they can all be corrected so that they all play exactly alike.
But sometimes when they come out of the factory, they're not like that due to the assembler thing again.
It was an okay horn, but it was one of the greats.
But on that line of ascent that they were doing there, it was great.
Now then, came out the horn that, how'd you dip that out? Did you oil it, Paul? Did you clean it?
It feels like it's twisted.
Don't use the second knob.
This was the horn that Bill Stagers liked and played all the time.
And he played it, well, as you'll see in this recording.
But it's pretty, isn't it?
And they were comfortable to play.
You know, they're right in front. They're not all that bumping it up.
The tuning slide was under here.
I can't really pull it out on him.
This was a good horn. It is tight, however.
I think it starts at 345, that was the general.
Now I can't get them. If I get them, I'll put a thrill in there and put them out to where they belong.
And they're made to play beautifully.
Maybe we got it on the wrong song.
Sorry.
That's the one we could use.
Alright, now then, that was 1915.
Now, in about 1906, Bisher came out with his own horn.
He'd opened his own factory at this time.
It never got to be a real popular horn.
And they subbed it and they called it, it's light.
And you can see his configuration. He's got it folded up all around.
They put this out under what they call the two-tone series.
Bisher two-tone instruments.
And they went for, I don't know, what's the only second bow still?
I just bowed a C to an F, something like that.
Now there, the bow's going the wrong way.
Alright, here we are with the Bisher.
Alright, now then, you've all heard the name Liberati.
He's the one that was unfortunately put in the book,
where the very tip of the tongue never rises.
He was a phenomenal player.
And stop and think now, this is back in, well, pre-, before the turn of the century.
And just a great player.
Now let's listen to Liberati, Paul.
That's Edison doing the announcement.
This was made, I took it off of a cylinder record.
I don't know whether you guys have ever seen that or not.
The little cylinder, it would fit over like an axle,
and then the needle would put down on top of it.
This is the earliest of recordings, and I dropped that and broke it.
But fortunately, and it was old anyway, that was really wax.
Like when they go in the studio and they say, well, we've got to cut wax.
They're not, there's no wax to it anymore, but that's where that started.
Alright, Liberati, and that's Edison doing the talking.
That's Edison doing the talking.
That's Edison doing the talking.
That was Alexander Liberati.
He's been dead for a lot of years.
Now then, another one that worked in the cotton factory was Coher.
And from what I understand, like I read the Pioneers of Brass book,
which, get a hold of it, because there's a lot of information on it.
And evidently, I never heard of him, never heard anything about him,
evidently he was like another Arturo Sandoval, another unbelievable player.
I've seen prints of his music, and you look at it and you think, my gosh,
he's going to play this?
And evidently he just played the daylight side of it.
And he came up with his idea that he wanted, and this was impossible in 1913,
and you couldn't do this, is make a cornet or trumpet absolutely conical,
which would be ideal.
But in order to do that, you've actually, in a horn, you've got three trumpets.
You've got one on the first grab, one on the second, and one on the third,
and the combination.
Now, if you try to make it conical all the way, you've got the problem
of these crossovers.
So you have one slide that would be too big, one that would be too small,
and so forth.
He bridged that gap and figured out how to put that together.
Now, the horn is long gone now, mostly because it didn't look pretty.
That's what it looked like.
Now, we're going to shine that before us.
We've got to get some ambitious students to polish this horn.
This was the courier.
And the mouthpiece, that was his, if you notice.
It's got a big drill in it.
So why don't them back more?
And it's long gone.
Now, he took the Herbert Clark idea and made it conical.
So don't get it in this way.
But this horn blows amazingly well.
Now, as I say, they were all experimented.
And it worked well for a while, and of course, then it didn't catch on
like anything else.
It just didn't catch on.
The mouthpiece is pretty catchy saying, you know, contact is away.
And it's also not around.
No, it's not.
I don't know whether that was on purpose or whether it was where they made it.
A lot of those mouthpieces in those days were tasked.
Well, the scary part is it was really tough.
Yeah.
It blows very free, don't it?
Yeah.
The thing about it is the mouthpiece kind of fits around the lips.
You go, oh, that's kind of cool.
Yeah.
Tomorrow I'll put all the vowels in backwards this morning.
Well, it was all right.
It was really cool.
Yeah.
Tomorrow I'll put all the vowels in backwards this morning.
Well, it was really cool.
All right.
Now then, Houghton came into this position.
And he first came out with the Houghton new proportions.
Now, you can see how they were experimenting with things.
This was all new proportions now.
And I picked this up in Cleveland, I think.
But they were pretty winky.
Now, this is what they call burnished silver.
Most of them came out with that.
And then the bell was the polished silver.
And this blew pretty darn well.
Second vowel again.
We got sabotage in here.
Carl's been at it.
Yeah, the conga.
Quick switch to A.
They all had nice big, that's what you call, cornets on them.
Now then, later, Houghton was the combo-ness with the Susa band.
And Clark and Houghton became very close friends.
And so they, the next thing that came out from Houghton was the Houghton-Clark model.
Now, I never did know or find out if Clark designed this or if Houghton just designed it.
And it came out under Clark's name, which could be.
But this was a very popular cornet for a while.
And notice, now they talk about Clark and that ridiculous letter that, oh, that's filthy, but that is so bad.
Anyway, they talk about the Clark of the cornet.
He loved the cornet, so eventually he's going to be leading that way.
But even he, it was getting longer.
It wasn't a little short anymore.
And gold bells. Isn't that pretty?
That was the thing. And silver was gold bells.
And a lot of them you'll find of these old antiques were engraved with gold.
Boy, when they cut out, some of them were entirely gold.
Like I noticed Arturo had his gold-plated.
But when you come out there, when he did real white-stripped-out gold, boy, it flashes like crazy.
So this was the Houghton-Clark.
Yeah, now that's notably better than the new proportion.
And I said Clark probably had something to do with that.
They probably worked and tested and worked and tested like crazy.
Now that while we're on Clark, let's play one of his old recordings.
This one is originally called Caprice-Briandre.
Now I have to tell you how they recorded in those days.
Now it'll say on some of the old records that you ever find in, Herbert L. Clark with the Sousa band.
Sousa refused to record.
He never did make a record.
He said it was going to destroy the musician.
And in lots of ways it has.
And he was very farsighted, so he wouldn't have anything to do.
So what they do, they took 15 or 16 of the 120-piece Sousa band and brought that in to record with.
And they have the same arrangement as they use on the 120-piece band.
So the accompaniment is not that good and it's not the Sousa band.
But that's what they recorded with.
Now have you ever seen the horn of the old ad of the Victrola where they had the horn and then they put it down
and the dog would be sitting there and say his master's voice.
That's what their recording machines looked like.
And they would get 25 of them in a semicircle.
And then they'd walk around and their solos would stand where it seemed most appropriate.
And they'd record it.
In the band, in the accompaniment, the baritone as usual, the timbre of the baritone,
you could hear that thing honking through all the time.
So that is not too good.
So anyway, they'd record it.
And now they'd have 25.
The recordings were about that thick.
They were wax, a flakiness to my head then.
And you might still find some somewhere.
I doubt it because they got old and chipped, you know.
When they got done with the 25, they'd take them out, stack them up.
Now they'd put on 25 or this and they'd have to do the solo again.
They'd keep repeating that process all day long.
Now how tired would you be at the end of the day if you'd been playing one of these solos
over and over constantly, all day?
And you know the thing you'll notice about it, seldom if ever do you hear a miss.
And they couldn't dub in.
Now you go into the room and they'd clip out the notes and record that little bit
and they'd paste it in and so you get a machine record.
There's no mistakes.
But these, they played them every time.
Seldom if ever do you ever hear a mistake.
That's why sometimes some of the notes and the endings will be a little different.
Maybe they felt, oh boy, I got it now, and they'd go higher and things like this.
That's why some of them won't be the same.
Now about Clark, you'll notice that when he comes in, boy, it's like a thrust string.
There's no fear in that matter.
Like that.
Just beautiful the way he, there's a tap and he comes in.
Now some would be saying, gee, what a double-toe.
I don't think he double-toed this.
I think he was single-toeing it.
So let's play that.
All right.
Sorry.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Yeah.
Beautiful, wasn't it?
Now I had somebody, a young man came up and he said, well, my teacher told me that Herbert Clark didn't play that well.
He said he didn't have a good sound.
He said, sound off of those recordings, all you get is the pitch.
Because they didn't pick up sound.
They just picked up off of an old, that needle vibrated when he played in that horn.
And that was the sound.
You didn't have sound, stereo and all that.
He had the most beautiful, gorgeous sound I ever heard.
It was just amazing.
The minute the horn is on, just fell.
And he was the most, probably the most respected cornetist that ever lived.
That's all I ever heard all my life was a kid when I was running with Herbert L. Clark.
You look in any book, any history book, they'll have a page or a half page on some cornet.
And then you come to Herbert L. Clark and there'll be a section that's there.
So what a statue that man had.
And a beautiful man on top of it.
Now then, that was clear back in 1920, probably, before that.
I was just about that high then.
Okay, now there was also another one that I mentioned was Father Crill.
And he's a reviewer, renewed him, and I printed it in the class.
Because he used pedals, they didn't think he played high.
There's nothing further from the truth.
He was like an Arturo Sandoval.
He played high as you want to go or as low as you want to go.
Let's play.
High notes are inevitable if you play correct.
Remember that.
Don't try and build your high notes first.
Build your instrument first.
Don't put the roof on before you put the foundation down.
So they're inevitable. They'll come.
Now then, Crill was the one that I told you about.
The teacher told him to throw the horn in the lake.
There'd never be a play on.
Well, this is what he emerged as.
And he's doing here, if you've got your arbor book, turn back to the solos and follow them along.
This is the arbors working of Carmel of Venice.
Another Carmel of Venice.
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
Carmel of Venice
I believe that he was playing the Houghton Clark cornet because all the pictures I've
seen of Quill, he had the Houghton Clark cornet in his hand.
So you see how these guys were all intertwined back there, great friends and great players.
All right, now keep going with the next one, just a little bit of Quill again, and he's
playing the pedals, notice when he played, and I noticed our Quill last night when he
was running the pedal, he had a big sound in the pedal, and he was jumping off his, he
was playing like one of the old timers, okay?
Now that goes on and on and on, and he amazed people with that.
They asked him how he did that, and he said he didn't know.
It was something, you know, humor, exactly what he was doing.
All right, now then, along comes 1885.
I wasn't even born yet.
In fact, I think Quill was, what, 65, I think 1865.
So he was probably 20 years old about this time.
Did I get that right?
Okay, 1885, and Con came out with a horn that's never been forgotten.
This horn now, if you pick one up, probably costs $7,000.
It's the old Con Wonder.
I had a very difficult time.
I hunted all of the United States for this horn, and found it over in a music store in
where it was laying down.
Yeah, he can tell you the story of it, the Con Wonder, okay?
Notice that they have the same thing.
Now, here was a very interesting thing about this horn.
They all had information problems.
Remember, you can't build a brass instrument in tune.
You have to play it in tune.
But you could move the slide while you were playing.
So if it got too bad, you could push here or here.
And that's the tuning slide.
It had the same triangular water key.
You get it all at once.
Now, that isn't saliva coming out of there.
I don't even want to tell you.
Water condenses.
If you're playing hard, boy, that horn gets very warm right through there.
And that's water that'll condense.
No way you've got enough saliva in your system to go around a French horn player's chair.
They get like a river.
They have the same lead pipe that would come out in them.
It's a marvelous old horn.
And you have to thank old Con for these innovations.
He was never, he never stopped.
He was always coming up with something new.
One never knows where one finds it.
Some guy down in North Carolina.
A lot of students.
And the entire lead pipe is missing in this one in some place.
And the guy wanted over a grand for it.
So I've gone to a lesson.
You ever find one?
Not for a week.
Ten days later, I'm in this music store in Seleucid.
And there's some stuff that was in her shop.
What do you have on the top of the shelf?
Probably half way up this wall.
There's just little tiny black belts sticking out of the shelf.
I feel like I go, just try it out and see what is it.
It's an old cornette thing.
I go, oh, so I climb up and I pull it off the shelf.
There's no slides, no valves, no receiver.
And I kind of go, just kind of rub it and it goes.
No way, right?
But it's nothing wet.
It's all black.
And I go, well, you know, I have a trumpet in my room.
I want to make a lamp out of it.
I was wondering, do you got any other parts I can make a white switch or something?
The case is right there someplace.
Right?
So I mean, under the table I go throwing stuff in other places.
And these little cases are little camera boxes.
And I open it up.
And on the top, I still have the blue ribbed Kahn Wonder Cornette.
Still in silver.
The lamp and the case with the valves, all the slides.
The B-flat and the A-slide.
Put it together, right?
Like this.
I open up the bottom of the case with some music wire.
A mute.
An autographed Jules Levy mount piece.
An autographed Walter Rogers mount piece.
Now I'm sitting in line.
Right?
And I say, well, you know.
What do you want to do with this, David?
I'm going to lay it around for years.
Well, look.
50 bucks?
Yeah, cool.
So I took it home.
And 50 bucks went to church regularly for a couple days.
And I just took it home and cleaned it up.
This is exactly how it looked.
Right?
So I go.
Right?
So my lesson was that Wednesday night.
So Claude had just gotten his brand new desk.
OK?
It's one of these things that look like in the Pentagon.
OK?
And it's Claude Jordan.
Right?
And he had a rule.
Don't touch my desk.
Otherwise, 17 rank stuff.
OK?
Every day.
OK?
So the old studio had windows all the way around it.
So I came up with my big old Claude case.
Put my books down.
And I went.
And he just went.
And I opened it up.
And I put this in the case.
It was amazing.
And I went.
Oh, I forgot something, Claude.
Just hear the teeth breathe.
Right?
I'm going to kill him.
So I go out to my car.
And I open the trunk up.
I'm looking in the window.
Right?
And Claude's sitting there, I'm sure, thinking about ways
to kill me.
All of a sudden, he spots me.
Now, you've got a feature of Claude Jordan.
Jump into a box.
And he sees the case.
And all he sees is the feet up the top.
Right?
And I come back, and then he goes.
Where'd you get it?
It's yours.
And I gave the case to him.
I gave him the whole thing.
And he's been looking for this thing for years.
And I think just, I mean, it's like.
And if you look in the back of your arbons, that's that cornet.
We took that picture to put the arbons in.
1885 cornet.
Now then, that was the Con Wonder.
All right.
1917.
Now, I'm just one year old when this came out.
1917, number 13.
The Con came out now with the new Wonder.
The Con New Wonder.
This was a beautiful creation.
Now, this is all gold plated.
When it's shined up, it's gorgeous.
Now, he had quite an idea.
Because again, you have to play a lot of A cornet parts.
And the musicians were, like I said, a lot of them were cowboys.
They played well, but they weren't studied musically.
And transposing was just out of the question.
And they had a lot of A cornet parts.
Now, at the studio, we got so we could read A just as well as B-flat.
I had a way of doing it.
I never learned to transpose.
I just had to do it.
So I started doing it.
And in the studios, one of the first transpositions I drew on it was an A.
And so I wrote it down, one interval, and changed the key signature to half a step.
It was in C, I'd read it in D, and changed the key signature.
And you'd actually read it just as well as that.
But not these guys.
So I came up with this horn.
Now, notice all this little mechanism?
Can you see it there?
All this mechanism here?
Now, the trouble is, you could pull that slide out and make it about a half a tone.
And that's what they were doing.
But then the whole horn was horned there on the tune.
So they made this mechanism.
Now watch.
When you pull this out, it hits a trigger.
And watch these slides.
You see them?
It pulls every one of those slides just enough.
And you push it back in?
Close it.
Now you could say, well, how'd you tune the horn then?
You didn't tune with this slide.
It stayed in.
You tuned it here.
You see this wheel?
And it moved there.
Now this is what you could really call a tuning bell.
And that was the original idea.
And it was beautiful.
This is nothing.
The tube comes like this.
And you could tune it while you're playing or anything.
Now that makes sense.
It's not like the Schulte thing where you have to undo the bell and move it back and forth.
That's stupid.
So that became the new wonder.
And as I said, this is all gold.
That's a treasure.
I don't think you have a chance of finding that in 100 years.
Now, I learned on a horn like this.
I'll show you that in a minute.
And I'm going to have him play a solo here by one of the all-time greats.
If it weren't for Booze, this man would have had to cry.
And you'd be hearing a lot about it.
I don't know how many of you ever heard outside of here of Donald Stakers.
A few of the older people have.
Now, a phenomenal player.
Terrible.
Poor alcohol.
Like a poor guy.
And this is his record of, yeah, I think it's Karl Levinis, right?
Every soloist had his own idea of Karl Levinis.
Still going on today.
Okay?
Now, he's playing that King Master model.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
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Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Okay.
Okay.
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Okay.
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Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Now, actually, the audience has got, so they expected these solos.
Now, actually, the audience has got so they expected these solos.
Everyone knew that he'd do carol then.
That's the one Rich did such a very good job on on this concert the other night.
And Brad Pitcher did such a good job on French horn, that's it, in fact.
And this year, Brad did, as you maybe remember, a Paganini version of a carol.
So it was just all kind of, and all interesting, and funny.
All of them, but intriguing in a different way.
All right, now then, you might just touch on the next one.
I don't want to run out of time.
Touch on the next one. This is Stager's Appellate.
It's on the other side of the record, which you won't be able to find.
And Pat O'Reilly did such a good job on Clark's carol again the other night.
Right there, that's funny.
Thank you.