One Baby, One Tuba...

It's become a custom. You get a baby. The parents have to be agreeable. You put it in the tuba. You make a photo. The course of that baby's life is forever changed, spun off in new directions with possibilities endless and uplifting. Here is Ezra making his debut on the big horn. 

In case you wonder where this all started it was in 1969. I know they called it the summer of love and all that hippie dippie stuff but it is the year was when I first started playing tuba. As you can probably imagine it was a couple of more years before I produced meaningful tones but in 1969 that first day I held a horn change was in the air and has crept through time and lives ever since. 

I have noticed a couple of things about tuba. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I guess it all has to do with how you handle change in your life and a close encounter with my 1936 bell front King concert tuba can change your life. It can make a statement. One of my heroes is the guy in a video who shadowed a KKK rally while blasting away on tuba, practicing his free speech just as they were practicing theirs. I'm looking for that kind of opportunity and as an old Boy Scout and Scout leader I am following the reliable motto "Be Prepared" by planning to play the cowboy standard, "Home on the Range" if I am ever given any chance such as this. 

Speaking of chances my other grandchildren have had theirs and here are older photos of tuba christenings.

The first. Coraline in the tuba. 

Warren in tuba. 

Warren does not look happy about trying new things. "don't want to grow up like Pop-Pop."

Coraline gets ready to blow. 

Tuba, the way, the truth, the life. Look for the next baby in tuba by Christmas time. Of course family tuba pictures are pro bono. If you have a a baby I have a tuba. Price can be negotiated.