Klarinet Archive - Posting 000064.txt from 1994/01

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Welcome to Kristan Tetans where ever you are!!
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 11:13:25 -0500

Kristan has discovered us, and I could not be more delighted. If
we have inspired him to start playing clarinet again, he should
promise us all a pizza when he begins working on the Corigliano
concerto and we should all promise him a pizza if he can play it.

With respect to his Stubbins brand clarinet, I would like to take
a shot at guessing what it is he has.

Bill Stubbins was a long-time clarinet teacher at one of the major
American midewest universities such as Michigan or Ohio or something
of that prestigious nature. I never met Bill but I heard many
things about him almost all uniformly positive.

At one point in Bill's era, it was not uncommon to import unnamed
brands into the US from various sources and then stamp a name on
them here. It even got to be a conceit; i.e., if one had an in, one
could buy such a clarinet and have it stamped with one's own name. I
owned such an instrument around 1948 or 1949. The importer was named
Frank Plochesky so he sold his own brand of clarinets under the
stamped-in name "Frank Plo." It was a pretty good clarinet and the
last one I owned before buying a professional model.

Now back to Stubbins. He was sufficienty well-known and respected
as a teacher that he was probably approached by someone (maybe even
Frank Plochesky) and paid a fee if he would permit his name to be
stamped on a number of clarinets which were then named, "The William
Stubbins Model" or something of this nature. I don't know that this
happened this way or if it happened at all, but it seems logical
in light of my knowledge of the clarinet business right after WW2 up
to the mid 1960s and that is just when Stubbins' reputation was at
its zenith (where it remained until his death).

So that is my guess with respect to his instrument. But I wish to
add a warning to Kristan. An instrument that has sat unplayed for
16 years is probably very, very dry and playing on it without
satisfactory preparation is one of the easiest ways to make it crack
open like an exploding egg. (That's a bit dramatic and somewhat
exaggerated but it is definitely possible.) So before you go too
far, get the instrument examined by a technician, spend a lot of
money getting it to work, and enjoy yourself.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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