A Tale of Two Tubas...

I have been shifting old photos. Not digital, but the kind you hold in your hands if that description helps anyone and I came up with these two. Before the old memory fades to black I'll try to reconstruct the story. 

This first photo is of Morgan playing with an old gold sousaphone. Morgan was born in 1987. That red wall paper and it should be noted that the other wall to the picture takers back is also red wall paper but of a different pattern that all went away in about 1990. The house plant in a mop bucket style of decorating as well as the green linoleum floor also did. The horn must be on loan from Angelina College where I had been playing in the community band. After a long gap I started playing again out there a few years ago and there is a gold sousaphone that could be this one piled up in a back storage room.  

Piled next to the gold sousa in the storage room is a fiberglass horn that is this one. I recall having it on loan and playing it on some community band gigs but while I can't really recall any of these during the years of the child raising and I don't recall why I had one and then the other I do recall Morgan taking the valves out of this horn, banging them around which required music shop repair done just in time for some event I played. 

I do remember having this horn at home when I came into possession of my current horn, a 1936 King 1240 recording bell concert tuba. I recall the day when I returned the sousaphone to the Angelina College Music department. I went to an office with the horn. At the time I knew no one working there. I said "I've had your horn at home on loan and thought I would return it." They said, "OK," and accepted it. 

I don't know where this photo was made. Probably the next thing that happened is that I ran into that light fixture and broke it. Tuba players do stuff like that all the time.   

So there you have it. A bit of history added to the tuba story and maybe some one will add a bit more when they see these photos one day. I do notice from browsing of the internets there are a lot of band geeks in the world studying about buying shiny new horns. As the owner and player of an 84 year old horn and a New Orleans music fan where a 100 year old horn is not uncommon it makes me a bit sad that these tubas are piled up back in a storage room. 

May they one day be free. On a wall where the paneling does not quite meet the door frame you can peer in and catch a glimpse of the red wall paper so I guess you can consider that it is kind of free, free enough to make you wonder why.