Sousa’s Band “La Lettre de Manon” Edison Standard Record 10317 (1910) composer Ernest Gillet

Sousa’s Band plays “La Lettre de Manon” on Edison Standard Record 10317, issued in 1910.

John Philip Sousa was among the most important figures in American music.

He was born on November 6, 1854, in Washington, DC, to Antonio and Elizabeth Sousa.

He played violin in a number of orchestras prior to assuming, at age 26, the post of U. S. Marine Band director in 1880, a position he held until 1892.

The first recordings associated with Sousa were made by the U. S. Marine Band in 1890. It was not the full band since recording technology at the time could accommodate little more than a dozen players. It recorded at least 229 titles for Columbia by the summer of 1892.

The conductor left the band on August 1, 1892. He had started forming his own band, which by July had been engaged for the October dedication of Chicago's Columbian Exposition. Patrick Gilmore died on September 24, which created a rare opportunity to hire great musicians. This death also left a void that Sousa could fill.

The new band was at first called Sousa's New Marine Band but this name was short-lived due to objections by the U. S. Marine Band. It was renamed Sousa's Grand Concert Band. Records identify the ensemble as Sousa's Band.

Sousa's name brought much-needed prestige to the fledgling recording industry, and he was presumably paid well for this.

"The Menace of Mechanical Music" is the title of an article he wrote for the September 1906 issue of Appleton's Magazine, and it contained this line: "Canned music is as incongruous by a campfire as canned salmon by a trout stream."

It is understandable if Sousa in the 1890s viewed records with such contempt that he declined to conduct during sessions. Recording and playback technologies were decidedly crude throughout that decade. Brown wax cylinders and Berliner discs hardly did justice to Sousa's Band, whose concerts thrilled audiences. By 1906, technology had advanced significantly, but records still could not deliver the rich sounds of live performances (companies naturally stressed that record buyers could hear Sousa's Band in their homes at any time, which is a worthwhile point never addressed by Sousa).

Sousa mainly worried that mechanical music--records and player pianos--threatened the livelihood of musicians, which was a genuine problem, but that he openly criticized recorded music after taking so much money from various record companies is remarkable.

Sousa did not conduct during a recording session until December 21, 1917.

Sousa's attack on mechanical music in Appleton's Magazine alarmed some in the record industry but companies that induced Sousa to sign a contract--Edison's company and later Victor--took advantage of it in advertising. Page 17 of the January 1907 issue of Edison Phonograph Monthly features an advertisement (designed for Edison dealers to duplicate in local newspapers) stating, "Even John Philip Sousa, who has no use for phonographs, has been forced to recognize the Edison Phonograph as a formidable competitor. The two-step king says that people will no longer go to concerts if they can have music in their own homes so easily and so cheaply as they can with the Edison Phonograph. This is an unwilling tribute, but it nevertheless is a tribute."

Arthur Pryor led many sessions from the late 1890s until this trombonist left the band in 1903 (the first Victor recordings of Pryor's Band were made on November 24, 1903).

Curiously, no Sousa's Band discs issued by Victor open with spoken announcements though such announcements were standard for all other performers in the company's earliest years, including soloists from Sousa's Band who made discs. Soloists who made recordings as featured artists include Walter B. Rogers, Arthur Pryor, and Emil Keneke.

No new Sousa Band records were made from December 1912 to November 1915, and thereafter sessions were irregular, with only one or two during most years up to the final session on July 1, 1930 (usually only two or three titles were cut per session). Sousa did not lead his own band in late 1917 or 1918 but was instead a trainer of bands at the U. S. Naval Training Station at Great Lakes, near Chicago.

From the mid-1920s onwards, with the advent of the microphone and the marketing of equipment that played electrically recorded performances, military bands on records sounded far better than in the old days of the acoustic process, but by this time military bands were passé. It appears that some Victor records of the early electric era credited to Sousa's Band actually featured Arthur Pryor's Band.

The first Sousa Band records made with the electric process were conducted by others, but Sousa himself presided over a session on September 4, 1926. He led not his own band but the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company Band,.

He died on March 6, 1932, in Reading, Pennsylvania.

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