Klarinet Archive - Posting 000060.txt from 1994/10

From: "Jay Heiser, Business Development" <jayh@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: Keilworth straight alto (a Stritch in time...)
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 13:24:37 -0400

-->I alluded to some weeks back when I posted a message asking about the
-->existence of a saxophonists' list and raising the question of how far the
-->discussion was normally allowed to veer away from clarinets.
There is a usenet group alt.music.makers.woodwinds that seems to be
virtually dead. :-( There's a flute mail list.

-->
-->In the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD ... there is an article about Kirk
-->which says his two atypical horns (stritch and manzello), well, here's
-->the exact quotation ...
-->
-->
--> In a music-shop basement Kirk discovered a manzello and a
--> stritch, rare horns apparently used in Spanish marching
--> bands. The manzello approximated the pitch of the soprano
--> saxophone - close as they said in the booths, but no cigar
--> - and the stritch was an off-pitch alto saxophone.
-->
-->
-->I have couple of Kirk's albums which show him playing these two horns.
-->They are not "straight" in the sense of a modern straight soprano. The
-->neck has a curve about like that of an alto _clarinet_ (different bore,
-->obviously) and the bell appears to have about the same degree of curvature.
-->The overall effect is like a stretched "s" curve, with about the middle
-->80 % of the horn straight.
The Keilworth's aren't completely straight either -- they curve out a tad.

-->
-->Can anyone possibly confirm the "Spanish marching band" portion of the
-->quotation, or is that apocryphal?
-->
I've heard the basement story often enough to believe it, but I've never
heard about the spanish marching band. Seems to me that there was an
article in "Saxophone Journal" in the past few years about Kirk's horns.
He had all kinds of specially modified stuff and as I remember the story,
it has disappeared. He'd altered some of his horns so that he could
play them one-handed (handy when you're playing 3 saxes at once).

There were lots of experimental saxes before WWII -- Sax Journal has a
column on vintage horns and has covered some of the 'straight' saxes.
I forget what Conn called theirs, but I'm sure they made more than they
sold, so its easy to believe that a kid could find one in the basement
of an old music store.
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