James C. Harper, Sr., on Hearing the Sousa Band
James C. Harper, Sr. (1893-1986) was a well-known band director in Lenoir, NC. Today there is a School of Performing Arts in that city which is named for him.
James C. Harper to David Whitwell
Lenoir, NC, August 21, 1980
I heard the Sousa Band play a number of times in the old Capitol Theater in New York when Mr. Sousa was still conducting and when Frank Simon was on the first cornet chair. They may not have been much better than such bands as those of Arthur Pryor, Vessala and others, but they were certainly different from the others. They had top flight musicians, many of whom I came to know personally later on.
The audience was perfectly quiet during the concert and did no whispering or other signs of inattention. They gave hearty applause and called for many encores.
Sousa did not make any addresses or announcements. One of the players held up a large card each time a number was to be played, giving the title of the next number.
I expected a great deal from the band before I had heard it and I was never disappointed. The band was very versatile and could play either darkly or brilliantly as best fitted the character of the music they were playing.
The Sousa band in its day did not have the competition of television (though it did play over radio at times) and there were neither as many good music schools nor so many other bands to compare it with as would be true today. It was highly advertised and drew big audiences wherever it played.
Sousa was considered a martinet and did not have too great a sense of humor. I think he added a good deal of flourish to his conducting which was as much to impress the audience as of actual guidance to the players. He knew exactly what he wanted in finish and balance, and a player who was overly enthused or played too loudly, was prompted pressed back into good balance with his fellows.
I think Sousa did often conduct from memory though this was not always the case.
Sousa wore white gloves when conducting and an attendant usually brought them to him on a cushion, just before he went on to conduct. I always felt that this was as much to impress the audience as for any actual efficiency in conducting. He liked to experiment, particularly when playing out of doors, and at Willow Grove park he concealed his piccolo players in nearby trees until prominent piccolo passages were called for.
Yes, I admired him as a musician, although I felt he was a little pompous at times.
There are top flight conductors today who are fully as good as Sousa was, but I can think of none who remind me of him or looked like him or his style.
Sousa did not play all his marches at the same tempo or in the same style. He purposely changed many of the dynamics of his marches when they were published for public purchase from the way his own band did them in his concerts. A comparison of the band manuscripts now in the band library of the University of Illinois, as compared with the published editions of the same pieces will indicate this. After Sousa’s death several of his former players issued new printed editions of these marches, with the dynamics, especially the percussion parts, re-written as Sousa actually played them. Gus Helmke, one of his percussionists, and others, issued quite a number of these after the copyright ran out on the originals.
Sousa inspired musicians all over this country and abroad in a way which would be much more difficult to do today. He had been a professional violinist before he became identified with the U.S. Marine Band, and it was after he had greatly improved the Marine Band and made quite a name for himself, that he left the military service and started his own band. He made seven trips around the world and his band played for many of the crowned heads in Europe. His band was considered a large one at a time most local and military bands in the United States were small affairs. His name was widely known and he was in demand to play for national political conventions or the Boston Food Fair when less known bands were not considered.
Probably a good portion of these tours were through the Middle West where communities of foreign emigrants had brought the tradition of community bands with them from Europe and where the public was more band-minded than it would be today. Most of his travel in this country was by railroad train where he used three Pullman cars, all named after some of his marches, and these cars were shifted from one train to another as his itinerary demanded.
I once wrote to Sousa’s business manager Harry Askin asking him where I could obtain a photograph of the Sousa Band. He sent me a photograph of Mr. Sousa and said they were interested in advertising Mr. Sousa and not the band.
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