Klarinet Archive - Posting 000134.txt from 1994/07

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Russ Howland's brother
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 06:47:07 -0400

I never knew Russ Howland (except for a brief telephone call that I'll
relate in a minute), but I knew his brother Paul who was a free lance
clarinet player in NY.

When I moved back from France in 1964, I had a brand new basset horn that
I simply could not play. I couldn't get a sound. It was very difficult
to play in that my reeds were all too hard (and I was too stupid to
try lighter and lighter ones because it wasn't macho to play on a
2 reed), etc., etc.

The only guy in NY who had a basset horn and who played it professionally
was Paul Howland. I called for a lesson and he seemed disinterested. I
called a dozen times and he agreed to see me simply to get me out of his
hair. Paul had an old basset horn that I told about in a previous
posting. It was a Buffet dating from around World War 1 or maybe
even earlier.

He fixed a mouthpiece for me using an old vacuum cleaner, forced me into
using lighter reeds, told me a whole bunch of stuff that I was doing
wrong, and started me off on an understanding of the peculiarities of
that instrument.

Paul was a steady sideperson for the Metropolitan Opera and played
basset horn there for at least 25 years. He had been in the Sousa
band when Sousa died in 1932. He was a magnificent bass clarinet
player and was the first guy I ever met who could transpose A bass clef
music with such extraordinary facility.

When Paul died, I tried to buy that basset horn of his, but his brother
Russ had already gotten it. Russ later sold it to whoever is
principal in Denver. And I called him once to ask about the instrument
he told me that he was sorry he did not know of my interest or he
would have sold it to me. Paul had played the instrument on the
recording of the Mozart Requiem with Bruno Walter. It was a great horn.

Paul had suffered a great tragedy. He and his wife were childless and
then they were fortunate to adopt. That was tough to do in the 1930s.
His son was killed in a car accident only a few weeks before I called
him and asked about taking basset horn lessons (for which he refused
to take any money). Those who knew him well said that he was never
the same after that and he died shortly after I played a gig with him
in NY at which he played bass and I played basset horn on a performance
of the Strauss Invalid's Workshop. It was on that gig that I saw how
he transposed A bass clef music with such fluency. I think that that
was about 1965. He was a great player!

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