This Guy Has My Tuba...

Spotted this photo hanging in the County Line BBQ out on FM 2222 near Austin recently. It's Ben Bernie and Orchestra. Ben is the violin player in the middle of the group. He is co-composer of "Sweet Georgia Brown." Looks like the tuba player has a horn just like my 1936 King Tuba. I don't know why this photo hangs in the County Line. Nothing I could find indicates a Texas connection.


Second photo is cropped up a little closer to show Bernie, sitting with violin and to give you a better look at that big tall healthy man of a tuba player. Something about a guy like that I like. I want to be him when I grow up. I do note also that the clarinet player is something of a gear hound. He has lots of horns. I like gear but it's hard for a tuba player to be a gear To have TAS which stands for Tuba Acquisition Syndrome which is a disease usually cured by your wife. 










Third photo I cropped up the banjo player for a better look. Kind of slight and sickly compared to the big old tuba guy, but cute and I bet the girls liked him. Needs to wash hands, looks like he's getting the head of that banjo dirty. 

So my final impression of this photo is I bet all these guys crowded in room sometime in the 1920s or 30s would smell a lot like tobacco smoke and a little bit like some kind of booze, probably what ever kind was available. With a banjo and a tuba it would be noisy. I am just guessing about the booze and I know for sure about the noise as I have a horn just like that guys and also banjos but as to the tobacco this is what the web says about Bernie;

"He died from a Pulmonary embolism, brought on from his years of smoking his famed cigars, in October of 1943."